Another post of weather and climate, brought-on this time by forecasts for my little bit of ground here in California’s Central Valley to undergo maybe a ‘sun’s anvil‘ facsimile of mega-hot days, and, shit-on-a-stick, will aparently start tomorrow.
Triple-digit temperatures are charted upward starting Thursday (104-degrees), Friday and Saturday (110), to Sunday apex of 113-degrees, staying in the low-hundreds though the middle of next week.
And it most-easily could be even hotter — these are just estimates.
Existing day-by-day in those temperatures is a sweaty drag. The air feels warm and heavy. colors seem to blur in the waving, bright sunlight and life slows when you’re out walking around in it. After spending nearly three decades on California’s coasts — 17 years on the Central Coast, then 12 on the northern end — I’m not used to this shit at all. Great thanks for air contiioning — water-flushed swamp coolers just wouldn’t cut it now. In the mid-80s I lived about an hour south of where I’m at now, and had a swamp cooler, which did the job (in those days).
These times are different by different-high levels of intensity
We’re hot-blast o-matic:
Extremely dangerous heat is coming to the San Joaquin Valley this weekend, particularly Saturday and Sunday. #cawx #HeatWave2021 pic.twitter.com/NQsb6Tz7qe
— NWS Hanford (@NWSHanford) July 7, 2021
As the statement above screams: ‘Don’t Be A Statistic,’ and don’t make trouble for yourself.
My whiny ass isn’t alone, however, the whole west appears as various shades of hot-red, and some portions don’t have the comfort of AC –an overview at The Washington Post yesterday afternoon:
Now, southwest Canada and much of the western United States are bracing for another bout of exceptional heat amid a pattern that could once again place records in jeopardy. Death Valley, Calif., might spike to 130 degrees.
Temperatures up to 25 degrees above average could dominate most of the West this weekend into next week, with little relief in sight for quite some time. Odds favor anomalously hot and dry conditions to prevail into the fall.
On Tuesday, weather models were hinting that a building ridge of high pressure over the West, colloquially known as a summertime “heat dome,” would become established over the Four Corners region later in the week. By Saturday, it will be reinforced by a secondary such system passing through west central Canada, the two systems’ synergy resulting in widespread unusual to record temperatures.
Excessive heat watches blanket much of southeast California in the Mojave Desert, as well as southern Nevada and adjacent northwest Arizona. Heat advisories and excessive heat warnings extend through the Great Basin northward into interior northern California, western Utah, southeast Oregon and southern Idaho.
And we’re mentioned in the Post:
The heat will not just fester in the desert —– it will scorch populous areas already gripped by extreme to exceptional drought. More than 25 million Americans will endure triple-digit heat over the coming week, many of whom reside in California’s Central Valley.
Highs in much of the San Joaquin Valley will top 95-degrees on Wednesday and Thursday. Highs between 100 and 105 are likely Friday before the heat ramps up markedly toward the weekend.
By Saturday, most of the Golden State’s interior valleys will be looking at highs approaching 110 degrees.
Maybe cause for hope:
Model ensembles are not suggesting that upcoming heatwave centered on CA will be as extreme as recent event in PacNW/B.C. But that's perhaps an unrealistically high bar, as this recent event was one of the most extremely anomalous heat events on Earth in recent history. #CAwx pic.twitter.com/TrjEmnHZha
— Daniel Swain (@Weather_West) July 6, 2021
Despite it all, maintain a certain cool…
(Illustration out front found here).