Russia records its hottest temperature in history; 97L forms near Puerto Rico
A heat wave of unprecedented intensity has brought the world's largest country its hottest temperature in history. On July 11, the ongoing Russian heat wave sent the mercury to 44.0°C (111.2°F) in Yashkul, Kalmykia Republic, in the European portion of Russia near the Kazakhstan border. The previous hottest temperature in Russia (not including the former Soviet republics) was the 43.8°C (110.8°F) reading measured at Alexander Gaj, Kalmykia Republic, on August 6, 1940. The remarkable heat in Russia this year has not been limited just to the European portion of the country--the Asian portion of Russia also recorded its hottest temperature in history this year, a 42.3°C (108.1°F) reading at Belogorsk, near the Amur River border with China. The previous record for the Asian portion of Russia was 41.7°C (107.1°F) at nearby Aksha on July 21, 2004.
Figure 1. Departure of temperature from average for July 11, 2010 for Russia. Russia's hottest temperature in history was recorded in Yashkul, 44.0°C (111.2°F). This was 9 - 10°C (16 - 18°F) above average. Image credit: NOAA/ESRL.
Moscow on track for its hottest July in history
According to the Russian weather service, the first fourteen days of July in Moscow averaged 6.2°C above average. The record hottest July, in 1938, had temperatures averaging 5.3°C above average, so Moscow is on track to set the record for its warmest July in history. The past four days, Moscow has averaged 8.2°C above average. The heat wave peaked on July 17, when the mercury hit 35.0°C (95°F). Moscow's hottest temperature of all-time is 36.6°C (98.2°F), set in August, 1920. With the wunderground.com forecast for Moscow calling for high temperatures between 31 - 38°C (88 - 100°F) for the coming week, no end to the heat wave is in sight. Weather records for Moscow extend back to 1879.
Russia's remarkable heat wave has led to a state of emergency to be declared for 19 of Russia's 83 provinces, and record number of Russians have been drowning in swimming accidents as they take to the water to escape the heat. Over 1200 Russians drowned in June, with another 233 dying between July 5 and 12. The heat has also created dangerous levels of air pollution in Moscow, and severely impacted agriculture.
Nine new national extreme heat records this year
As I commented in Friday's post, six nations in Asia and Africa set new all-time hottest temperature marks in June. Two nations, Myanmar and Pakistan, set all-time hottest temperature marks in May, including Asia's hottest temperature ever, the astonishing 53.5°C (128.3°F) mark set on May 26 in Pakistan. Last week's record in Russia makes nine countries this year that have recorded their hottest temperature in history, making 2010 the year with the most national extreme heat records. My source for previous all-time records is the book Extreme Weather by Chris Burt. I thank Mr. Burt and weather records researchers Maximiliano Herrera and Howard Rainford for their assistance identifying this year's new extreme temperature records.
Figure 2. Morning satellite image of tropical wave 97L near Puerto Rico, and another tropical wave near Jamaica.
Two tropical waves worth watching
A tropical wave passing over the Virgin Islands this morning will bring heavy rain and possible flooding to Puerto Rico today. This wave was designated Invest 97L by NHC this morning. The wave is under about 20 knots of wind shear, due to strong upper-level westerly winds. The strong upper-level winds are associated with the counter-clockwise flow of air around an upper-level cold-cored low pressure system a few hundred miles north of Puerto Rico. Satellite images of 97L show a moderate area of disorganized thunderstorms to the north of Puerto Rico, but no signs of a surface circulation, low-level spiral banding, or upper-level outflow. There is a large amount of dry air to the north of Puerto Rico that will interfere with development of 97L. As the wave progresses west to west-northwest through Wednesday, thunderstorm activity will increase, due to interaction with the upper low. The rains from these thunderstorms will bring the threat of flooding to the Dominican Republic on Tuesday and Haiti on Wednesday. The upper low will also bring high wind shear of 20 - 30 knots over the the wave through Wednesday. No development of the wave is likely until at least Wednesday, when the SHIPS model predicts shear will fall to the moderate range, 10 - 20 knots. At that time, 97L will be over the eastern Bahamas and eastern Cuba. However, none of the reliable computer models is calling for tropical cyclone development over the next seven days. I expect 97L will enter the Gulf of Mexico early next week. NHC is giving 97L a 20% chance of developing into a tropical depression by Wednesday. The Hurricane Hunters are on call to fly into 97L Tuesday afternoon, if necessary.
A second region of concern is a tropical wave in the Western Caribbean, near Jamaica. This wave is currently producing widely scattered thunderstorms, and shows no signs of organization. However, wind shear is a light 5 - 10 knots over the wave, and we need to keep an eye on this one. The wave will continue to the west at 10 - 15 mph this week, and will bring the threat of heavy rain to Belize and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula late this week. NHC is giving this wave a 20% chance of developing into a tropical depression by Wednesday.
Figure 3. Approximate oil spill location on July 18, 2010, estimated by NOAA using visible satellite imagery from NASA's MODIS instrument and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery from polar-orbiting satellites. Image credit: NOAA Satellite Services Division.
Wind and ocean current forecast for the BP oil disaster
East to southeast winds of 10 - 20 knots will blow in the northern Gulf of Mexico today through Friday, according to the latest marine forecast from NOAA. The resulting ocean currents should push the oil to the west and northwest onto the portions of the Louisiana nearest the Deepwater Horizon blowout location, according to the latest trajectory forecasts from NOAA and the State of Louisiana. The long range outlook is uncertain, and will depend upon what 97L does. It's a pleasant relief to look at the trajectory maps and not see the usual bull's eye of high oil concentrations at the blowout site! However, there is still plenty of oil in the Gulf that will slosh onto shore in the coming weeks and months.
Resources for the BP oil disaster
Map of oil spill location from the NOAA Satellite Services Division
My post, What a hurricane would do the Deepwater Horizon oil spill
My post on the Southwest Florida "Forbidden Zone" where surface oil will rarely go
My post on what oil might do to a hurricane
NOAA's interactive mapping tool to overlay wind and ocean current forecasts, oil locations, etc.
Gulf Oil Blog from the UGA Department of Marine Sciences
Oil Spill Academic Task Force
University of South Florida Ocean Circulation Group oil spill forecasts
ROFFS Deepwater Horizon page
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery from the University of Miami
Next post
I'll have a new post on Tuesday.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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7 days + to make to the GOM?
POSSIBLE LOW LEVEL
INVEST NEAR 21.0N 73.5W AT 21/1800Z.
Looks like they canceled the one for Tuesday and reset it for Wednesday in the SE Bahamas.
WHXX01 KWBC 191407
CHGHUR
TROPICAL CYCLONE GUIDANCE MESSAGE
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL
1407 UTC MON JUL 19 2010
DISCLAIMER...NUMERICAL MODELS ARE SUBJECT TO LARGE ERRORS.
PLEASE REFER TO NHC OFFICIAL FORECASTS FOR TROPICAL CYCLONE
AND SUBTROPICAL CYCLONE INFORMATION.
ATLANTIC OBJECTIVE AIDS FOR
DISTURBANCE INVEST (AL972010) 20100719 1200 UTC
...00 HRS... ...12 HRS... ...24 HRS. .. ...36 HRS...
100719 1200 100720 0000 100720 1200 100721 0000
LAT LON LAT LON LAT LON LAT LON
BAMS 19.2N 65.0W 20.2N 68.6W 21.3N 72.5W 22.4N 75.7W
BAMD 19.2N 65.0W 19.8N 66.8W 20.3N 68.6W 20.7N 70.3W
BAMM 19.2N 65.0W 19.9N 67.4W 20.3N 69.8W 20.7N 72.1W
LBAR 19.2N 65.0W 20.1N 67.7W 20.8N 70.7W 21.5N 73.6W
SHIP 25KTS 30KTS 36KTS 39KTS
DSHP 25KTS 30KTS 36KTS 39KTS
...48 HRS... ...72 HRS... ...96 HRS. .. ..120 HRS...
100721 1200 100722 1200 100723 1200 100724 1200
LAT LON LAT LON LAT LON LAT LON
BAMS 23.0N 78.9W 24.1N 85.4W 25.6N 91.4W 27.7N 96.1W
BAMD 20.8N 71.9W 21.2N 74.9W 21.9N 78.1W 23.0N 81.8W
BAMM 20.6N 74.4W 20.2N 78.8W 20.4N 82.6W 21.2N 85.9W
LBAR 22.1N 76.6W 23.2N 82.8W 24.7N 88.4W .0N .0W
SHIP 42KTS 45KTS 56KTS 66KTS
DSHP 42KTS 45KTS 56KTS 66KTS
...INITIAL CONDITIONS...
LATCUR = 19.2N LONCUR = 65.0W DIRCUR = 285DEG SPDCUR = 16KT
LATM12 = 18.5N LONM12 = 61.4W DIRM12 = 289DEG SPDM12 = 14KT
LATM24 = 17.4N LONM24 = 58.6W
WNDCUR = 25KT RMAXWD = 75NM WNDM12 = 20KT
CENPRS = 1014MB OUTPRS = 1017MB OUTRAD = 175NM SDEPTH = S
RD34NE = 0NM RD34SE = 0NM RD34SW = 0NM RD34NW = 0NM
$$
NNNN
Watching 97L and the Caribbean
Also, the downward pulse prediction has significantly backed off. Was showing yesterday a huge area of dark red in the Atlantic, now it barley shows any downward pulse at all and increased MJO off Africa.
they did not cancel the one for Tuesday or else it would have been noted in the new recon product
213 HurricaneNewbie "...before the ice age, we had a tropical climate for most of the earth..."
aspectre "Nah, we weren't around. And for an even greater percentage of Earth's history, no: an Earth without life couldn't produce a tropical climate. Heck, the Earth wasn't around for most of the Universe's history... So I hafta ask, what's your point?"
346 Floodman "Ummm, we were around before and during the last Ice Age...we were relative newcomers, but we were here (so were Neanderthals and some holdout cousins that hadn't died off yet)"
The current ice age began ~2,580,000years ago. The earliest specimen of H.habilus is ~2,300,000years old. But any classification of a presently known Homo fossil more than ~200,000years old as ancestral to H.sapiens (neanderthalis and sapiens) is speculative.
H.s.neanderthalis and H.s.sapiens shared the P2P"language"gene. So one could say that anatomically modern H.sapiens existed by the beginning of the last glacial period around 115,000years ago.
However, behavioral modernity first appeared ~75,000years ago, and didn't become wide-spread until ~50,000years ago. No arts, almost no crafts, no trade, no cultural exchanges; some vital essence changed between 75thousand and 50thousand years ago. I'm not sure I'd consider those behavioral pre-moderns as any more a part of my we than bonobos, orangutans, chimps, gorillas, or dolphins*. ie If I were somehow stranded amongst them, I very much suspect that I'd be "hankerin' for the company of people" before too much time passed.
Which brings us to the next stage relevant to 'we'ness. Though people of 50,000years ago were undoubtedly as fully human as presentday humans, harsh climate limited their population to less than 0.1% of that of the present. One can infer (from the lack of deliberately set fires to weed out competition to more favored fruit and nut trees) that fierce swings in weather over any given locality made even the most rudimentary agricultural practices less than worthwhile.
In the current interglacial period, comparatively mild and predictable weather has allowed permanent agricultural settlements, which in turn have have allowed the population to expand a thousand-fold or more. So "climate has changed before" is misleading disinformation when applied to a world containing the nearly7billion of us who are dependent on that relatively predictable weather to allow us to feed ourselves.
Yeah, "the grass" might very well be "greener on the other side" once the climate settles down to a new tropical norm. But the unpredictability of the weather between the now and that idyllic then is likely play havoc on our lifestyles; even if it doesn't kill most of us (and we ain't gonna go down without first causing a GreatExtinction tryin' to feed and water ourselves.)
* I do consider those species to be deserving of the human rights protections given to children and other less than fully capable humans.
CARCAH, NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER, MIAMI, FL.
0900 AM EDT MON 19 JULY 2010
SUBJECT: TROPICAL CYCLONE PLAN OF THE DAY (TCPOD)
VALID 20/1100Z TO 21/1100Z JULY 2010
TCPOD NUMBER.....10-049
I. ATLANTIC REQUIREMENTS
1. NEGATIVE RECONNAISSANCE REQUIREMENTS.
2. SUCCEEDING DAY OUTLOOK: POSSIBLE LOW LEVEL
INVEST NEAR 21.0N 73.5W AT 21/1800Z. BEGIN
6-HRLY FIXES AT 22/0600Z IF SYSTEM DEVELOPS.
VALID 20/1100Z TO 21/1100Z JULY 2010
TCPOD NUMBER.....10-049
I. ATLANTIC REQUIREMENTS
1. NEGATIVE RECONNAISSANCE REQUIREMENTS.
Thanks for the update
2. SUCCEEDING DAY OUTLOOK: POSSIBLE LOW LEVEL
INVEST NEAR 21.0N 71.5W AT 20/1800Z. BEGIN
6-HRLY FIXES AT 21/0600Z IF SYSTEM DEVELOPS.
did you miss this part? It is still on there
The one for Tuesday was never "scheduled" only a possible, so no need to cancel.
which means recon could still investigate tomorrow if necessary
Strange to say the least.
2435. BahaHurican 10:47 AM EDT on July 19, 2010
Quoting RitaEvac:
97L is in vicinity of where Rita started her trek westward and scared the BeJesus outta everybody
Looks like (at least for now) a similiar kind of tracking. Haven't looked at WV yet to see how things are progressing along the upside of 30N, though....
Quoting Hardcoreweather2010:
12Z Model runs from the NHC
Geez. I hate the model runs that bring the core of the storm up over New Providence from the South.... about the worst possible approach direction for us...
Quoting Jeff9641:
Shears not that bad and is expected to weaken come Wednesday. I do think Bonnie maybe in the making in the next few days. I did call this one last week when this was a naked swirl at 17N and 33W.
LOL... some of us have been looking at this since when it came off W Africa w/ a low analysed at 20N and vigorous shower activity at 10N... have to admit it was the first one that looked like it had a chance against all the conditions. OTOH, I'm not surprised the one in front of it is kicking up some water, since it was the one that cleared out a lot of the SAL and moisturized a lot of the CATL....
Quoting TampaSpin:
I really don't think both can exist together as they are really to close. One will have to win out. Best guess is usually the system to the farthest West which would be in the Caribbean as Shear from the outflow from the Caribbean will hurt 97L as the TUTT moves out if it does.
I've been thinking about this too. I've also been wondering if a serious strengthening between 75 adn 80 west might not result in a more northerly movement, thereby separating the two systems more.
Quoting CaribbeanIslandStorm:
Storms can form very suddenly, look at the image of hurricane Katrina, in just a few hundred miles it went from a tropical disturbance to a cat 1 hurricane when it struck Florida. invest 97 in worth keeping a close eye on,especially if you live the SE USA.
Yeah, we were talking about that aspect of Katrina's cyclogenesis yesterday or Saturday. Rita is another storm from that year that organized relatively quickly (though not as fast as Katrina IIRC) in a similar location.
Lord, don't show Ike that chart
399
NOUS42 KNHC 191300
WEATHER RECONNAISSANCE FLIGHTS
CARCAH, NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER, MIAMI, FL.
0900 AM EDT MON 19 JULY 2010
SUBJECT: TROPICAL CYCLONE PLAN OF THE DAY (TCPOD)
VALID 20/1100Z TO 21/1100Z JULY 2010
TCPOD NUMBER.....10-049
I. ATLANTIC REQUIREMENTS
1. NEGATIVE RECONNAISSANCE REQUIREMENTS.
2. SUCCEEDING DAY OUTLOOK: POSSIBLE LOW LEVEL
INVEST NEAR 21.0N 73.5W AT 21/1800Z. BEGIN
6-HRLY FIXES AT 22/0600Z IF SYSTEM DEVELOPS.
II. PACIFIC REQUIREMENTS
1. NEGATIVE RECONNAISSANCE REQUIREMENTS.
2. OUTLOOK FOR SUCCEEDING DAY.....NEGATIVE.
JWP
unfortunately, this will be a slow developer too
Though not impossible the chances of that are so tiny that it would be perfectly fine to say that.
Vorticity, though elongated. Very obvious rotation. Convection building around the area of rotation. Sorry, these are signs of organization, imo, but I'm no met. Low shear, too, over warm, deep waters.
CARIBBEAN VISIBLE LOOP (zoom in on the area)
again that does not mean the one for tomorrow is canceled either; both are possible recon flights that will only go if the NHC feels its warranted
well ether way im exspecting rain in florida
That is always a possibility anytime:
National Hurricane Operations Plan
5.5.2.4. Emergency Requirement. If a storm develops unexpectedly and could cause a serious threat to lives and property within a shorter time than provided for in the paragraphs above, CARCAH will contact the reconnaissance units, or higher headquarters, as appropriate, and request assistance in implementing emergency procedures not covered in this plan. The TPC/NHC and CPHC directors have authority to declare an emergency.
I think it's smart to back it to Wednesday, the upper level low won't be gone till about that time. Once this enters favorable shear, things could get interesting, but comparing this to Rita (2005) is not really smart because Rita was already a strong TS in the Bahamas compared to a possible disturbance to TD with 97L.
yes but Knab jinxed us
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