8/4/2010 Jay Yunker | Category: Industry News | 503 Views | 0 Comments |

As we head into August there are signs that the weather patterns will be making a rather dramatic shift from June and July which featured a continuous stream of warmth and humidity and above normal temperatures.  Surprisingly, during that same time the temperatures in northern Canada and around the Arctic Circle were running below normal and appear to have set a record for the coldest summer on record at the North Pole.

Between the weak sun, cooling oceans, increased cloud cover from galactic cosmic rays that generate more cloud nuclei and increased aerosols from numerous active volcanoes around the planet we’re setting the stage in the Northern Hemisphere and North America for what they’re seeing in South America right now…bitter cold and snow over a broad area.

Before all of that develops, we need to break out of the heat and humidity across the eastern United States.  Did you know that most of the U.S. has been cooler than normal from January through June 2010?  You wouldn’t know it from the false reports being released by NOAA and NASA recently that suggest that this is the hottest year on record, but the fact is that we’re running below normal in the United States and the data for the rest of the planet is so skewed and biased that they show warming in the Arctic while actual surface temperature readings there show this as the coldest summer on record.  Both San Diego and San Francisco have had one of the coolest Julys on record.  They are on the Pacific Coast, right?  Well, in South America there have been at least 1,500 deaths from unusual cold in their winter, and the coldest countries are…on the west coast, next to the Pacific Ocean.  The lesson to be learned is that the Pacific has a huge influence on the weather over nearby landmasses.

Let’s extrapolate that further.  In the fall and winter, our jet stream becomes stronger and shifts south across the United States.  With the westerly winds bringing more air eastward from the cooling Pacific Ocean, what do you think will happen?  We’re going to run colder and at times much colder, across much of the United States this autumn and winter. 

Okay, back to why I wrote this article…the changes I see in August.  As we transition from summer into fall, the colder air across the Pacific basin and across far northern Canada will start spilling south sooner than normal and lead to some big temperature swings across Canada and the northern United States east of the Rocky Mountains.  The southern states may get some unusually cool weather as early as mid to late September and I expect early frosts and freezes in many growing areas in September and October.  Until then, a more active jet stream will produce quick warm-ups here in the Ohio Valley followed by rapid cooling at times.  As the change from warm to cooler takes place, powerful thunderstorms will be possible and this week we’re already seeing a risk for severe thunderstorms in the Ohio Valley…for three consecutive days (Tue – Thu)! 

Cooler and less humid air arrives for Friday and Saturday as even cooler air builds in Canada for a push late next week.  I am not expecting any records to be set here, but a number of days will be below normal and August may be the only summer month that comes in below normal in temperatures in the Cincinnati Tri-State.   The drop in humidity alone will feel much better and be a big change from June and July.

As a side story, likely related to the more active jet stream, the tropics are quieter than normal in a year that the “experts” forecasted a much above normal season, and our latest anemic tropical storm,“Colin”, is barely a tropical storm and not expected to get much stronger or impact the United States.  As I have stated to my clients, a thought echoed here, it will take a record-breaking pace of storm development in the next 8 weeks to get to the forecast levels from the National Hurricane Center.  They are updating their forecast on Thursday.  Do you think it will reflect the quiet or will they stubbornly stick with something that probably won’t happen?  It just goes to show that warm Atlantic waters and La Nina in the Pacific don’t automatically mean we’ll see more hurricanes.  Weather is much more complex than that.

Enjoy the changes in August and get ready for higher heating bills in the autumn and winter…

Written by: Cincinnati Weather ExaminerRich Apuzzo