4 ms·

I'm not a climatologist or meteorologist or anything of the sort, but how does this metric of 125° for >= 0.5 days reach as far north as Minnesota and central W

by pc86 4y ago

I'm not a climatologist or meteorologist or anything of the sort, but how does this metric of 125° for >= 0.5 days reach as far north as Minnesota and central Wisconsin, yet southern counties bordering Mexico escape it? I assume it has something to do with spikes - the average summer temp of those AZ/NM/TX counties is almost certainly dozens of degrees higher than Minnesota and Wisconsin, where perhaps MN/WI have isolated days that are somehow hotter? Something to the effect of an AZ county averaging 120 but staying pretty consistent while a WI county averages 100 but could spike to 130? What causes that type of discrepancy over such a large geographic area, and is it coinciding with the Mississippi River just a coincidence? Edit: This article - https://projects.propublica.org/climate-migration/ https://projects.propublica.org/climate-migration/ - posted by a sibling comment makes me think exactly that. The southwest gets very hot and generally just stays that way. That midwest region has very large temperature swings which can surpass the hottest in the southwest. It also tracks with my experience since moving to southern Wisconsin a few years ago. Bitterly cold winters but also surprisingly hot summers with several 100+ days being pretty common.

eesmith 4y ago
Nor am I a climatologist nor meteorologist, but this looks like it's related to the dry line > A dry line (also called a dew point line, or Marfa front, after Marfa, Texas)[1] is a line across a continent that separates moist air and dry air. One of the most prominent examples of such a separation occurs in central North America, especially Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, where the moist air from the Gulf of Mexico meets dry air from the desert south-western states. The dry line is an important factor in severe weather frequency in the Great Plains of North America. It typically lies north-south across the High Plains states in the warm sector of an extratropical cyclone and stretches into the Canadian Prairies during the spring and early summer - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_line at what is culturally referred to as the 100th meridian. > In the central Great Plains, the meridian roughly marks the western boundary of the normal reach of moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, and the approximate boundary (although some areas do push the boundary slightly farther east) between the semi-arid climate to the west and the humid continental (north of about 37°N) and humid subtropical (south of about 37°N) climates to the east. The type of agriculture west of the meridian typically relies heavily on irrigation. Historically the meridian has often been taken as a rough boundary between the eastern and western United States. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100th_meridian_west https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100th_meridian_west The 125° is for heat index, which combines temperature and humidity. The humidity in that region is more variable than the humidity in the desert south-west.
contextfree 4y ago
St. Louis has pretty crazy weather fluctuations sometimes with occasional hot days in the middle of winter and cold days in the middle of summer. One day the temperature dropped from 60°F to 0°F over the course of something like six hours IIRC - I was actually out walking throughout.

by pc86 4y ago

eesmith 4y ago

Nor am I a climatologist nor meteorologist, but this looks like it's related to the dry line > A dry line (also called a dew point line, or Marfa front, after Marfa, Texas)[1] is a line across a continent that separates moist air and dry air. One of the most prominent examples of such a separation occurs in central North America, especially Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, where the moist air from the Gulf of Mexico meets dry air from the desert south-western states. The dry line is an important factor in severe weather frequency in the Great Plains of North America. It typically lies north-south across the High Plains states in the warm sector of an extratropical cyclone and stretches into the Canadian Prairies during the spring and early summer - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_line at what is culturally referred to as the 100th meridian. > In the central Great Plains, the meridian roughly marks the western boundary of the normal reach of moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, and the approximate boundary (although some areas do push the boundary slightly farther east) between the semi-arid climate to the west and the humid continental (north of about 37°N) and humid subtropical (south of about 37°N) climates to the east. The type of agriculture west of the meridian typically relies heavily on irrigation. Historically the meridian has often been taken as a rough boundary between the eastern and western United States. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100th_meridian_west https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100th_meridian_west The 125° is for heat index, which combines temperature and humidity. The humidity in that region is more variable than the humidity in the desert south-west.

contextfree 4y ago

St. Louis has pretty crazy weather fluctuations sometimes with occasional hot days in the middle of winter and cold days in the middle of summer. One day the temperature dropped from 60°F to 0°F over the course of something like six hours IIRC - I was actually out walking throughout.