Hot Times Already On Earth In Just First Month Of Year

Global temperature anomalies for Sunday, January 28.
Most of the world is warm compared to normal, in
some cases record warm. Note this is temperatures
compared to the average from 1979 to 2000 a 
period when global temperatures had already
increased due to climate change. 

UPDATE FEB 1

More wild record highs have come in since this post three days ago,

The most incredible to me came in from Maple Creek, Saskatchewan on Tuesday.

The temperature there reached 70 degrees, breaking the record by a full four degrees for the

highest January temperature in that province. 

The normal high temperature this time of year in Maple Creek is in the low 20s.

Churchill, Manitoba, on the shore of Hudson Bay, reached 38 degrees. The normal high in Churchill this time of year is 5 above. 

Today, February 1, the Maldives became

the first nation or territory this year to set its all time high temperature for any day of the year. It reached 92.5 degrees.

On Wednesday, the temperature in International Falls, Minnesota, the supposed "Icebox of the Nation" set a new record high for the entire month January with a high of 53 degrees. It was the first time on record temperatures ever reached 50 degrees in International Falls. 

 

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION JAN. 29

We're had another really warm January here in Vermont this year,

It might not feel like it, given all the storms and ice and clouds and gloom we've had.  Chances are low that it will make the top ten warmest, but it's still much balmier than Januaries of the past.  

Meanwhile, the heat is really, really on in other parts of the globe.

Last year was the hottest on record for the Earth. Many experts are saying 2024 will be even hotter. It's less than a month  into the new year, but we're off to a good start in fulfilling that hot prophesy. We're seeing incredible warmth in almost too many spots on the Globe to count.

Throughout history, with or without climate change, there's always been weather extremes. You were always sure to find a couple spots with the warmest temperatures in memory and a couple of others that were coldest that anybody recalled. 

In the age of climate change, you still get a few instances of nasty Arctic chill. But those are far outweighed and outnumbered by the super warm spots. This winter, El Nino is supercharging that trend. 

Heat records  are being set in the United States and around the world at a dizzying pace. Even in spots that haven't seen record heat this month - like Vermont - it's still strangely warm. 

Let's start it all of in the good ole U.S. of A. 

UNITED STATES

While we in Vermont were locked in a Steven King style "Mist" on Friday, Washington DC soared to 80 degrees, their hottest temperature on record for the entire month of January. Their previous record for earliest 80 degrees of the year was on February 21, 2018. On average, Washington's first 80 of the year hits on March 28.

The dew point - a measure of how humid it feels, peaked at  66 degrees in Washington during the January heat wave. That occurred in the morning before the heat peaked. But still, the nation's capital had by Vermont standards an uncomfortably muggy July morning. 

Elsewhere, Charleston, South Carolina tied its January record, reaching 83 degrees. Other record highs included 80 degrees at Baltimore Harbor and 83 degrees in Wilmington, North Carolina. 

This national warm spell helps reverse a trend this month in which record lows in the United States were exceeding record highs. In the age of climate change, most months have more record highs than lows,

Elsewhere, record highs were reported in Washington State and Oregon Sunday, with highs of 61 in Seattle and 63 in Olympia.  Record highs in Oregon included 69 in Eugene and 66 in Salem. The near record warmth is expected to spread into the Northern Rockies, Northern Plains and Upper Midwest by middle of the week.  

 Great Falls, Montana, which bottomed out at an absolutely bitter 34 degrees below zero on January 12 and 13, begun what was expected to be five consecutive days with temperatures in the 60s starting Sunday. 

We've had several bouts of this kind of "weather whiplash" in the United States, including here in Vermont, in which whatever rare moments of record or near record cold is followed immediately by record warmth.

Weather historian Maxmiliano Herrera has - as always - been so helpful documenting these weird and frequent heat waves.  I 

Let's take a global tour and check out just part of the widespread heat Herrara has found over the past few days.   

 Europe

January, 2023 brought some of the hottest midwinter conditions ever recorded in wide swaths of Europe. Weather and climate experts were stunned by the level of winter heat last year.

Then January, 2024 hit. Herrera is calling this "the most insane event in European climatic history, beating 1-2 January, 2023."

Here's just some of the reasons he's saying this: 

The temperature reached 66.5 in Kinlochewe, Scotland Sunday, the highest January temperature on record for anywhere in the United Kingdom. It was also the hottest temperature on record for all of meteorological winter in Scotland, which runs from December 1 to February 29. There was another unconfirmed report of 68 degrees in Scotland that is being investigated. 

Dozens of cities across France reported record highs, with some towns reaching as high as a summer-like 79 degrees. 

Some summery temperatures this past week included 74 degrees in Collobrières, France and Cuenca, Spain, 64 degrees in Imst Austria and 62 degrees in Piotta, Switzerland. Andorra had its hottest January day on record with a reading of 69 degrees. 

Record highs for the month of January have also been reported in Spain. 

South America

Argentina has been having repeated bouts of heat for at least six months now.  They basically endured a year without a winter back in July and Augusts. The heat trend  is continuing this month.

Just one example: Trelew, Argentina just saw its hottest day on record with a high of 109 degrees. Surrounding nations aren't doing much better. Talca, Chile broke its all time record high temperatures last Monday, reaching 102 degrees. Peru is dealing with a record breaking heat wave this weekend. This past Monday, Talca, Chile.

Herrera noted that the most striking part of South America's recent heat is how widespread it has been. Almost all the continent has been broiling in extreme heat over the past week or more.

Africa

The high temperature this past Tuesday in Dimbokro, Ivory Coast reached 103, their hottest January day on record. It was 115 degrees in Vioolsdrif, South Africa. 

On the complete opposite end of Africa, several cities in Algeria this past week recorded their hottest January days on record. A couple cities in Tunisia did the same. 

Elsewhere

Instances of record January warmth were also reported in parts of Australia, Mexico, the Caribbean, and around the Mediterranean sea. South-central Canada looks destined to have record January heat as well as the month closes out. 

There are signs that new outbreaks of record January heat will continue as we close out the month in the next few days. I expect the same out of February at this point. 

With all the heat records being set this month,  it will be interesting to see whether January, 2024 becomes the hottest January on record for the world as a whole.

At this point, I'm betting that happens. 

 

Weird Ash Cloud Smothers Paraguay

A wall of ash and dust roaring across parts of 
Paraguay earlier this week. 

As I've noted a few times lately already, the parts of South America south of the Equator (meaning all but the northern tip of the continent) have suffered a horrible, hot stormy summer.  

Punishing record heat waves have been punctuated by violent storms and torrential rains that have proved quite deadly in places like Ecuador and Argentina.  

It just got even weirder.

A huge haboob swept into large swaths of Paraguay. Haboobs are usually dust storms. This one was worse - largely ash from wildfires.

Haboobs are usually massive walls of dust, usually triggered by desert thunderstorms, that sweep across the landscape, cutting visibility often to near zero.  You might be familiar with haboobs that often strike Arizona during the summer monsoon season, when thunderstorms throw up these massive dust storms that then sweep into urban areas like Phoenix, Scottsdale and Yuma.

As the Washington Post explains: 

"Residents of southern Paraguay experienced an apocalyptic looking scene Monday when a mile-tall wall of smoke, ash and dust descended on the landscape. Day turned into night around dinnertime as the smoke blotted out the sun, extinguishing the formerly partly cloudy skies as strong winds surged through the region. The smoke, originating from wildfires in Argentina, was enough to cause streetlights to turn on and pose a respiratory danger. Residents' eyes also probably stung from ash and fine particulates."

The worst of this ash haboob hit around Ayolas, Paraguay, a city of 65,000 near the Argentine border.

As the Washington Post reports, the area of Argentina where the ash storm originated has endured two years of drought that allowed wildfires to consume almost two million acres by late February. Nearby farmland has turned to dust in the drought. 

The combination of massive areas of burned out landscape and dust bowl farmlands created the conditions for the ash haboob to form.

The part of Argentina where the haboob originated often gets intense thunderstorms, much like the Great Plains of the United States see in the spring and summer. These storms can produce hail the size of soft balls or greater, tornadoes and ferocious straight line winds. 

Intense thunderstorms formed this past week, and with all that ash just sitting there, the wall of soot was born.  Since there was so much ash mixed in, the haboob was much darker, and felt much more toxic than a regular dust haboob. 

La Nina, an atmospheric and oceanic cyclical weather pattern, often contributes to droughts in the area where the ash haboob originated. But of course chances are that climate change made this situation worse. It was likely hotter in recent months in South America than it otherwise would be without climate change.  

I don't know whether the ash haboob would have happened without climate change, but I imagine it wouldn't have been as bad as it was with it. 

Whether or not there's a strong or weak link to climate change, this ash haboob is the kind of event that sticks in the local populations' collective mind and makes them more concerned about climate change.

Examples of these kinds of weird things are increasing. Residents of the San Francisco Bay area are still weirded out by that day in September, 2020 when massive California wildfires turned the sky into an apocalyptic orange. 

Or the "Day After Tomorrow" like flash flood scenes from New York City last September from the remains of Hurricane Ida.   

What weird, awful scenes will climate change present us with next? Stay tuned! 

 Video: 

The Guardian displays views of the ash haboob in Paraguay:

It Wasn't Just U.S. That Had Incredible Late Dec/New Years Warmth

Map from Pivotal Weather depicts record heat in much of
Europe over the New Years holiday. 

 The world had a dizzying array of record warmth during Christmas week and the first couple of days of January.  

Though there were certainly cold sections of the world, too (I see you, Northern Plains, Pacific Northwest and southwestern Canada!)  much of the world was hot, hot hot as 2021 closed and 2022 began.

A lot of the data I have here in this post comes from Extreme Temperatures Around the World (@extremetemps) on Twitter, which is a great resource to track all these weird records that keep happening. 

Several spots in the United Kingdom had their hottest New Year's Day on record. Scotland had its hottest New Year's Day at 15.9 C or 60.6 degrees F.  Wales also had its warmest first day of the year with 15.6 C or 60 degrees F. 

Paraguay had its all time record high for any date on January 1 as one town soared to 45.6 degrees C, which is a scorching 114 degrees Fahrenheit. The old record was set just last year. 

Also in South America, the closing days of December brought Buenos Aires, Argentina a record high for the month of 40.1 C or 104 F.  It was also the hottest it's been in the Argentinian city since 1999.

On New Year's Eve, some German towns and cities set records for hottest December temperatures as high as 16.9 degrees C or 62.4 F.  Note that due to the normal seasonal downward trend in temperatures, you'd expect the hottest December records to come early in the month. 

Elsewhere in Europe, Bilbao, Spain recorded its warmest December day on the 30th with 24.7 C or 76.5 F.

Back here in the United States, there was a report of a temperature reaching 99 degrees in Falcon Lake, in far southern Texas on New Years Day. If this report verifies, it will be the hottest temperature recorded anywhere in the United States during January. 

As previously reported, Alaska also had its hottest temperature on record for December, and it was the hottest day of any between November through mid-April.  I initially said that reading was 65 degrees, but there was also a report of 67 degrees in or near the same town. 

This is one statistics heavy post, I get it.  But it's an illustration of how heat records are falling so rapidly around the world as the climate warms.

These patches in which a lot of record fall around the world seem to come in waves. This particular wave seems to be over, as fewer big records, if any are falling around the world as we make it throuh this week. 

However, I'm sure there will be plenty more heat records as we make it through 2022.

Weird Geeky Weather: Record High Pressure And A Weird Subtropical Storm

World record setting high barometric pressures is
occurring in Mongolia. Above is a winter scene from that
nation's capital, Ulaanbaatar. 

 Weather geeks are geeking out over a possible world weather being set in Mongolia of all places.  

There, it appears the strongest high pressure system on record is freezing the region out. 

Reports are coming in of barometric pressure of 1093.5 mb or 32.29 inches, according to aviation meteorologist Michael Adcock

For comparison, on average, the barometric pressure is around 29.92  inches. Readings of 31 inches are extreme and quite rare. 

The extreme barometric readings in Mongolia will have to be verified by the World Meteorological Organization to become official. 

Strong high pressure systems are most likely in the northern hemisphere during the winter as cold, dense air builds up in Arctic regions.  Sometimes, these particularly cold systems head south, bringing frigid air to the mid-latitudes. This is when you're most likely to break high pressure records. 

For instance, some of the highest barometric readings here  in Vermont - a little over 31.10 inches  -occurred with an Arctic high pressure system in 1920 that brought temperatures in the region to the minus 20s and 30s. 

True to form, it's frigid in Mongolia.  This nation is normally bitterly cold in the winter anyway.  Normal low temperatures this time of year in the capital Ulaanbaatar are around -10.  Low temperatures in this likely record strongest high pressure there are in the minus 30s. 

By the way, in and of itself very high or very low barometric pressure is not dangerous to humans. Only the weather associated with these phenomenon.  Obviously the frigid weather in these Arctic high pressure systems is dangerous.

Very low pressure is associated with intense storms, which of course tend to be risky. 

RARE SUBTROPICAL STORM

A subtropical storm named Oquira has formed in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Uruguay, South America. This area doesn't usually have much in the way of tropical storms. 

Tropical and subtropical storms depend on warm ocean water to develop. The South Atlantic between South America and Africa tends to be relatively chilly due to ocean currents, so this type of storm is rare off the coast of South America.   

It doesn't look like much but this is a satellite view of
Subtropical Storm Oquira off the coast of 
Uraguay, South America.  Subtropical storms
are rare in this region. 

Also, there tends to be strong upper level winds in the area off of South America, which discourages tropical storms from forming. 

This is the third subtropical storm to form in the Atlantic off of South America this year, which set the record for the most such storms in the region in a single year. 

This of course, is in the same year in which a record was set for the most tropical storms in the Atlantic north of the equator.  (As we know, tropical storms and hurricanes are much more common in the Atlantic between North America and Africa).

Subtropical storms are hybrids between regular old storms which have colder cores relative to the atmosphere around them, and tropical storms, which have warm cores. 

This storm - Oquira- has no chance of developing into a hurricane.  Only one storm in the South Atlantic has been known to become a full-fledged hurricane. That was Hurricane Catarina in 2004, which caused a lot of damage in southern Brazil.