Phone/ Internet Outages NOT Caused By Solar Flare; Also Illustrates Why You Should Have Alternate Ways To Get Weather Warnings

 Well, Thursday was a real mess with phones and the internet, wasn't it?

Phone outages across the U.S. especially with carrier
AT&T, probably weren't caused by solar flares and
highlight the need to have backup ways 
to receive needed information.

Most wireless providers have reported outages today, with the most apparently suffered by AT&T.  

There was all kind of speculation as to what went wrong. In the end, it was some sort of system expansion and upgrade that went awry. It wasn't a cyber attack, which is nice.   

I did see speculation all day Thursday that it was a solar flare.  While some scientists say it's possible, many meteorologists and others strongly doubted that this was the cause.  

Those meteorologists were right. 

It's true that there were two big solar flares early Thursday.  I guess first we should figure out what a solar flare is.  As always, NASA is most helpful. 

According to NASA: "A solar flare is an intense burst of radiation coming from the release of magnetic energy associated with sunspots. Flares are our solar system's largest explosive events. They are seen as bright areas on the sun and they can last from minutes to hours."

Large solar flares can mess up electrical grids and cause other issues here on Earth, but that kind of thing is rare. 

 It's true that the solar flares happened at about the same time the phone outages hit. But correlation is not necessarily cause, as I'm sure you've heard before. It was probably just strange timing. 

As Space.com reports:

"Some solar scientists have cast doubts on claims that there is a connection between the two events. 'Flares only cause radio degradation on the 'dayside' of the Earth......the U.S. was not affected by the event, So it's just coincidence,' solar astrophysicist Ryan French at the National Solar Observatory posted on X."

 The solar flare probably did cause some radio outages over the Pacific Ocean, but those problems are unrelated to U.S. phone issues. 

COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN

This all started in the early morning hours Thursday and lasted a good part of the day. a  It affected a lot of people, even those who are not experiencing outages.

For instance ,I had to cancel an online session with someone Thursday afternoon.  I could get to the person I was trying to reach, but she could not reach me. Luckily, this was a non-critical meeting. 

I can't say that for every situation going on today. In some cities, like San Francisco, people couldn't even call 911. The San Francisco Fire Department released this alert:

"We are actively engaged and monitoring this. The San Francisco 911 center is still operational. If you are an AT&T customer and cannot get through to 911, then please try calling from a landline. If that is not an option then please try to get ahold of a friend of family member who is a customer of a different carrier and ask them to call 911 on your behalf. Do not call or text 911 to simply test your phone service."

Well, yeah, who the hell has land lines these days? Especially in techy San Francisco? By the time you get ahold of a friend to relay a message to 911, it would also probably be too late. 

All this is to say and emphasize that if you ever need weather warnings, make sure you have more than one way to receive those warnings. 

Luckily, there was very little in the way of severe weather anywhere in the United States Thursday. But if there was any kind of dangerous weather, chances are that app on your phone wouldn't be able to mention the tornado or flash flood headed right toward your house. At least no today, with all that service trouble. 

That's why a back up, like a weather radio, or even just a local television or radio station would provide the alert instead. 

If you had these at the ready, that is. 

It's a reminder to all of us not to get overly dependent on one thing. Didn't your mother tell you not to put all your eggs in one basket?

New England Stays Cool For Now, But Some Adjustments Coming

For what it's worth, NOAA's Climate Prediction 
Center brings likely above normal temperatures
to New England around July 16-22 after 
what has been a relatively cool-ish summer so far.

 We've got another cool weekend going, with temperatures this bright Saturday running about 10 degrees cooler than "normal" for this time of year.

It got down to at least 37 degrees this morning in Saranac Lake, New York, and 43 degrees in the Northeast Kingdom hamlet of Gallup Mills. Today's highs will only make it to the low 70s for most of us. Bright sunshine will take any edge off the chill, for those sensitive to cool July weather.  

We'll continue to more or less avoid hot weather, but slow adjustments are coming that might, maybe give us a somewhat hotter, more humid second half of July. 

A persistent "heat dome" of high pressure has kept things hot across most of nation except the Northwest and Northeast, which have been outside this area of high pressure. The heat dome has been sloshing back and forth a little, intensifying the heat for awhile in say, parts of the Rockies and High Plains, then shifting it back again toward the Midwest and South. Rinse and repeat.

Since this hot high pressure in the atmosphere has never made it to the East Coast, we've been left with a mostly coolish flow of air from the northwest as we sit north and east of the hot air core.

This state of affairs will continue, but as I said, subtle changes are coming.  I don't see this dome of hot air establishing itself over us anytime soon.  But there are signs that we will be close enough to that terrible air to change our weather for the second half of the month. A little. 

The usual caveats apply.  Long range forecasts are iffy.  The computer models aren't really in agreement with everything, either. They differ on where the center of the heat will be, the orientation of the flow of air north and east of this heat dome, and how strong that heat will be.

Right now, what I'm giving you isn't much more than a parlor game for weather geeks. But it will still be interesting how this plays out for the second half of July. 

The consensus seems to be that the heat dome in the country's middle will intensify even more as we head into later next week and perhaps the week after. If worst case scenarios come true, there could be some all time record highs set somewhere in the Midwest, and perhaps South. 

I have to wonder with the heat in central North America getting more expansive, could it be easier for us in Vermont to get some squirts of hot, humid air between the parade of cold fronts coming down from Canada?

And if that happens, will there be more showers and possibly severe storms? After all, rough storminess almost always rides along the northern edges of these terrible heat domes. We don't know for sure, as we can't anticipate how clusters of storms will behave much more than two or three days out. 

We do know that after our cool weekend, Monday will turn increasingly warm and humid. Nothing extreme, but you'll feel it, compared to this weekend. Another cold front Tuesday could trigger showers and storms. It's possible, but certainly no slam dunk, that a few storms Tuesday could get strong.  It depends on how winds, clouds and instability develop. We'll get a better handle on this by Monday. 

The northwest flow brings in cooler air for the middle of next week, but with another asterisk. High pressure is also intensifying in the western Atlantic, as it often does this time of year. That tends to slow the cold fronts coming down from Canada and also tries to deflect them away from us a bit. 

Though we won't get much rain, the cold front and trough of low pressure will be slow to leave after Tuesday, leaving us with a risk of showers Wednesday and to a lesser extent Thursday.

The air coming in after Tuesday is on the cool side for this time of year, but as cool as we're getting today. So it will be relatively close to normal next week.

For what it's worth, the American model in particular has us turning warmer and more humid starting about a week from now and then continuing for about a week. It also depicts several batches of showers and storms coming through during that period. 

Overall, the European model doesn't seem to keep us quite as consistently warm and humid in about a week, and continues our familiar northwest flow.  That would keep us cooler and drier, relatively speaking. Both models agree we in New England won't get into the super hot air further to our west. We shall see! 

If it does warm up and get more humid, there's no way to know how long that might last. The persistent "heat dome" over the United States this summer could always drift toward the west again, re-establishing our nice, cool summer regime. 

Heat Builds In Midwest, Heading This Way

Warming temperatures this week have made the progress
of spring go into overdrive. These were buds on
a sugar maple behind my house in St. Albans, Vermont
on Sunday morning..........

 After a spate of record highs in the southern Plains Sunday and Monday, things cooled off a bit Tuesday.  

But a new surge of record warmth will engulf the Midwest today and especially tomorrow. The possibly record warmth is still due to flood into Vermont over the next few days.

Temperatures at or above 90 degrees are forecast by Thursday as far north as Minneapolis and Sioux Falls, South Dakota. There could be some mid-90s in the southeastern corner of South Dakota by tomorrow.

The warmth has started to gradually build in Vermont.  Some warmer spots, like the Champlain Valley away from the lake could see their first 80 degree reading of the season this afternoon. 

Record highs in Burlington Thursday through Saturday are in the mid-80s, and those record will be challenged all three days. The most likely day to see record heat is on Friday.

I've been speculating about whether or not we'll reach 90 degrees in Burlington during this spell. I'm still listing it as unlikely but possible. The air has been very dry, and if humidity levels don't creep up much by Friday, that could set the stage for a 90 degree temperature.

The air can heat up faster in strong spring sunshine when the air is dry.  Humid air feels more oppressive, but it's harder for temperatures to shoot up when the air is wet.  The fact that it hasn't rained lately is also a factor in favor of a possible temperature over-performance around here. 

The sun's energy won't go as much into evaporation with drier ground, so more energy could into heating the air.  

.........and these are the very same branches on the above
sugar maple just three days, last, photo taken this morning

Another factor might be wildfire smoke. Unseasonably early season fires out west have pumped smoke into the air, and depending on winds, a little bit of that might be high overhead Friday. If the smoke dims the sun slightly, that could help prevent a 90 degree reading. 

In any event, it would be awfully early for a 90 degree temperature, as its happened in April and May only  a handful of times before. So odds are against a 90.  We'll find out in a few days, won't we?

The weather pattern, the rex block I've talked about, depends on strong high pressure to the north and strong low pressure directly to its south.

The strong low pressure earlier this week brought 70 mph gusts to Delaware, coastal flooding and the destruction of at least two houses on Cape Hatteras.  Now the storm is weakening. The balance of power between the high pressure over us and the low pressure to the south is being destroyed.

That will unblock things so that storms and cold fronts will start moving again. 

The heat in the Midwest will be routed by a cold front by Friday or Saturday. That cold front will eventually reach Vermont Sunday night or Monday, ending our expected heat. The cold front should produce some welcome rain in Vermont, but so far I'm not overly impressed by how much rain is in the forecast. 

We'll know more about how much rain we'll get once we get closer to Sunday.