WEATHERAmerica Newsletter, Sunday, August 18, 2024; NEXT TEN DAYS

[Larry Cosgrove]

Heat And Dryness May Have Found A Home In The South Central States

METEOBLUE 

HPRCC/University Of Nebraska (2)

TrueWx.Com (3)

ECMWF

A constant pattern so far in August has been the repetitious heat, appearing across much of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, with alternating expansions into the Desert Regions and Deep South. Some penetrations of polar air from Canada have made it into the north central states and Great Lakes, and it appears that some of the cP regime will make it into the New England and Mid-Atlantic states for the remainder of the month. Heat has proven variable in the West, with cold frontal passages and the Gulf of Alaska being an influence on the Pacific shoreline, while monsoonal moisture from Mexico has tended to run up the left side of the Rocky Mountains. The model guidance strongly favors the near term to hold on to extreme heat in the south central states, with cold fronts reaching only rarely as far south as Interstate 40 (Oklahoma City OK to Wilmington DE).

Will The Gulf Of Alaska Low And La Nina Be The Main Influences On National Weather Into September?

METEOBLUE

ECMWF (4)

PivotalWeather.Com (4)

College Of DuPage Weather Laboratory

I have heard my fair share of remarks about La Nina not verifying and that the Gulf of Alaska Low, long a staple of -ENSO environments, will not show up this year. Neither of these remarks are true, as the global sea surface temperatures are slowly dropping (and should bottom out around -1.1 deg C below normal in sector 3.4). The Gulf of Alaska Low has popped up quite a bit, that is if you make it a habit of looking at water vapor imagery. Those images show cold impulses riding across the northern Pacific Basin, repeatedly creating a trough along the entire West Coast. In this scenario, the Great Plains/Texas to the Mississippi Valley tends to be hot and dry. Disturbances that are embedded in the westerlies will occasionally take moisture from the monsoonal fetch, thus giving rain and thunderstorm chances to the Prairie Provinces and Great Lakes Intense heat at surface will control parts of the Southwest, Texas, Great Plains and more than a few times, Dixie.