Time-splitting history: Hot, and hot, this late-afternoon Saturday here in California’s Central Valley — according to the NWS, looks like we’re going to miss hitting triple-digits temperature-wise today by just one degree In fact, we were forecast for a high of 104, but for some clouds, we remained cool (typed in way-ironic fashion).
Our eventual plight, however, is on its way:
New Weather West post is now out: Exceptionally broad and persistent west-central U.S. ridging to bring periods of elevated heat and monsoon moisture to CA and the SW, with record heat across Intermountain West. Plus: dry lightning risk in California?
— Daniel Swain (@weatherwest.bsky.social) 2026-07-10T21:52:28.000Z
Swain interprets our environmental situation:
An extreme, and likely record-breaking, blocking ridge will develop over the Central U.S. by Sunday and persist for most of next week. This will bring record heat (see below) to some parts of the country (though probably not CA), and will also (in conjunction with an offshore low pressure system) bring increased humidity, as well as a chance of thunderstorms, to much of California. While just as extreme as initially indicated, the ridge axis is now expected to align about 500-1000 miles east of its originally predicted location–so the most extreme heat will, accordingly, be shifted eastward as well. It’s quite rare to see a ridge this broad centered in the north-central U.S. this time of year–this position allows it to affect the weather, albeit in different ways, across nearly the entire continental United States.
This extremely large, persistent, and intense “heat dome” associated with the blocking ridge will likely bring record-breaking temperatures across a wide region extending from the eastern Great Basin eastward to the Upper Midwest (so from Utah to Minnesota). Countless daily records will be set, but quite a few July monthly records will also be at risk and even a few all-time, any month records. Part of the reason for this is that the most extremely anomalous warm air temperatures during this event will be several thousand feet up in the atmosphere versus near sea level, so higher elevation locations could see some exceptional warmth (Salt Lake City and Grand Junction, for instance both could tie or exceed their all-time records). Overnight minimum temperatures in some high-mountain locations in the Southern Rockies will not drop below 70F for several days, which in some ways is even more extraordinary.
If interested, go read the whole post from yesterday at Swain’s Weather West — educational, graphs and all.
And going weather/climate change/environmental aspects further afield, some nerve-wracking climate change shit:
Every so often the Earth produces a signal that is impossible to ignore. It shows sea-surface temperatures in the Niño 3.4 region of the equatorial Pacific, one of the most important parts of the Earth's climate system. #climatecrisis #auspol www.lyrebirddreaming.com/post/the-gra…
— David Tomkins ? (@davidctomkins.bsky.social) 2026-07-11T12:34:22.399Z
A noted point:
Ultimately, though, climate change is not really about ocean temperatures, atmospheric circulation or statistical anomalies. It’s also about people. Hotter oceans contribute to higher food prices, more destructive storms, declining fisheries, increased insurance costs, reduced water security, damaged infrastructure, worsening public health and displacement of communities. They exacerbate inequality because it’s invariably the poorest and most vulnerable who have the fewest resources to adapt. They also increase geopolitical instability as nations compete over dwindling resources and respond to growing humanitarian crises.
This is why graphs like this matter. Not because they prove that catastrophe is inevitable, and not because they predict the precise sequence of events over coming years. Science rarely deals in absolutes. What they show is that Earth is moving beyond the range within which modern human civilisation developed. We’re entering climatic conditions that our infrastructure, ecosystems, economies and institutions were never designed to accommodate.
The question is whether we’re willing to pay attention and act before the changes become too large, too rapid and too interconnected for us to manage.
Further shit predicted: the upcoming (maybe parts of it are already here) El Niño — via the Guardian this past Thursday:
Models show there is now an 81% chance that a very strong El Niño “that would rank among the largest El Niño events in the historical record going back to 1950” will develop before the end of this year, forecasters said in an advisory released on Thursday. There is almost near certainty – a 97% probability – that the conditions will persist through spring 2027.
“The odds and the magnitudes just keep rising,” climate scientist Daniel Swain said in a broadcast discussion on Thursday, explaining that the conditions observed were already in record-breaking territory. “El Niño so far, for the calendar date, is as strong or stronger than we’ve ever seen before, and that is a trajectory that is expected to continue,” he added.
My latest on El Niño here.
Enough weather madness, closure is an illusional/delusional flashback w/o the heat:
Heat domed, or not, yet here we are once again …
(Illustration out front — and above — ‘A Break in Reality,’ by Xetobyte, found here.)
