Historical Colorado Flooding Continues

The amount of rain across north central Colorado has exceeded 12 inches over the last 7 days in many areas.

Boulder has beared the brunt of the massive rainfall. The Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network in Colorado had this to say about the historic rainfall for Boulder:

"Boulder's annual precipitation averages 20.68 inches, with an average of 1.68 inches in September. For September 1-13, the U.S. Cooperative Weather Station in Boulder has received 14.74 inches of rain. This nearly three times the previous monthly September record of 5.50 inches in 1940! This is also the wettest month ever on record for Boulder. The previous record was 9.59 inches in July 1995."

The CoCoRaHS cooperative network reported 24 location with more than a foot of rain from the 9th through the 14th.

Chart courtesy: http://www.cocorahs.org/Maps

 What's interesting about this flooding event is that a masive hail storm preceded it on the 9th

Photo Courtesy: Thedenverchannel.com

The river levels are not forecasted to fall below current levels for days. Moderate to extreme flooding will continue through the middle of the week. Below are the gauge reports from the Colorado Division of Water Resources.

Luckily, the 5 day rainfall forecast will give Colorado a significant break this week.

A Look back at 9/11 in 2013

The power of the images and videos from 9/11 can still be felt. We relived that day last year at the 10 year mark.  Last year at year 11 post 9/11 I edited my ten year retrospective. This year, I added some observations that I missed in the years since. YouTube is filled with graphic videos of that morning.

I would imagine at 20 years (2021), the day will still bring up the same emotions.  But like other traumatic events of the past like Pearl Harbor, the raw 9/11 memories are gradually fading--though never completely--into the background of our national consciousness.  Its takes time. I commented to my wife that most freshman in college really don't have solid memories of the events of that day in 2001 because they were 6 and 7 years old. They have grown up in a post 9/11 world. They know nothing else.

Below is my post from last year which recounts my 9/11 experience in the newsroom as the events unfolded.  I'll never forget it.

=======================================================================

My memory of 9/11 actually begins the night before. My wife and I were--let the cold shivers begin--planning a trip to visit her friend in New York City. We were on the web looking at maps of the city familiarizing ourselves with the locations of the tourist attractions in relation to where my wife's friend lived in Queens. At that time, never having traveled to New York City, the NYC street grid was as foreign to me as a city grid of Moscow.

I distinctly remember pointing to several spots on the map of Manhattan and Long Island that I wanted to check out on our trip. Queens, the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, Yankee Stadium, Greenwich Village and the World Trade Center. As we studied the map, I made mental snapshots of the region remembering how far Yankee Stadium was from the subway stop, etc. It was getting late that night. I had to get up to go to work at the local NBC affiliate the next day. I was the morning meteorologist at WSAZ in Huntington, West Virginia back then so I needed to get up at 3AM.

The morning of 9/11 started out as normal as any other day. Our morning show started at 5AM. The news was fairly typically. No outlandish stories. The weather was quiet. I remember a powerful hurricane off of the New England coast named Erin but that was heading away from land. This monster hurricane would be lost in the events of the day.

We had just finished our 8:35AM news cut-in before we sent our morning news to The Today Show. Around 8:40AM, The Today Show interrupted their segment to show one of the The World Trade Center Towers on fire. The in-studio monitors all showed the fire engulfing multiple floors. The fire was big. It captured our attention. But at the time, not one of us watching EVER thought this was linked to something bigger, more global and temporally far-reaching.

One of our camera operators and I commented that it looked like someone hit the building with a missile from a nearby rooftop. Our conversation was purely speculative, half contrived for the sake of conversation and at the time not a bit realistic. We went back and forth, as news people do, debating how a missile blast into the 100th floor of a skyscraper could be more of a subplot for a movie than a plausible real-life event. How could someone get a weapon through a building undetected we both said almost simultaneously? In the span of 15 seconds, we quickly dismissed it.

Our eyes were affixed to the monitors at 8:45AM. I was tense, rigid and more alert. So was my co-anchor.  I sat in the weather chair on the right side of the set, he sat to my left. The minutes ticked by with no new information on the fire. Nothing was said but we knew that something was terribly wrong. We all quietly attempted to persuade ourselves that this was an accident. Some electrical fire. Some gas line rupture. Our hapless speculation of just 7 or 8 minutes seemed inappropriate. No one was speculating out loud.  Everyone was speculating to themselves.  The silence was speaking volumes in the tense air of the studio. Keep in mind at this time, we had no official word it was a jet airliner that hit The World Trade Towers.

A few minutes later, Matt Lauer and Katie Couric were scrambling to inform us that a plane just hit the second tower. This was LIVE TV! Eye-witness accounts were all they had. We all said a "few colorful words" filled with anger, frustration and horror. We were all stunned. We just listened. Total silence in the studio. No one said anything. No speculation.  No talk of Iraq. No commentary on military retaliation. No link to Al-Qaeda. No comparisons to Pearl Harbor. No War in Afghanistan. No WMDs.  Nothing prophetic. We sat and stood and watched as the events--whether we wanted them or not--became etched in our permanent memories.  One must remember that the afterglow of the dot.com boom years was still fresh in our minds...but fading as Y2K was the big buzzword at that time. In no way did I think these series of events would pervade our collective national consciousness for a YEAR or a decade or longer. At the time, no one did.

In breaking news situations in television, your body language changes from one of relaxation to one that conveys rigidity and alertness. Your adrenaline surges in controlled doses. Your ability to disseminate massive amounts of information increases while simultaneously conveying the basics of a story in an intelligible way on camera as if scripted. Time doesn't go by slow or fast. It becomes frozen. There is no "did I do this right?" or "Will the segment look okay?". You perform in the present ONLY. Your instincts take over. Only in hindsight do you fully grasp the story and its complexity.  Your experience becomes the foundation of your on-air instincts. That morning, all of our collective television experience and instinct served us perfectly. The morning of 9-11 was the same as another other 5AM show. Yet the tone of our broadcasts soon became dreadfully different than anything we had done before.

The newsroom was scrambling to record the national NBC feed along with all other news feeds from other sources that captured the newest video of what was happening. The news alert beeps were non-ending as more video was ready to be recorded. Remember that this was before non-linar computer editing so everything was recorded VCR style. You pushed a new tape in and hit the record button. The clanking of tapes into tape decks was deafening.   No real-time Youtube clips. No cell-phone video. No text messages. No real-time tweets. No Facebook updates. You waited at a tape deck rack for the satellite to "beam" you latest reel. Yet no one said "Al-Qaeda". No one said "Bin Laden". No one said "middle east terrorists".  No one had any opinion on the events unfolding before their eyes. That would change as I went into my boss's office for my 6 month review.

My boss--now a General Manager at another station--sat down with me shortly after 9AM.  We said a few things about my past 6 months work but he was only half paying attention. Ken, my boss--the best multi-tasker I've ever known--was attempting to carry on a meaningful conversation while flipping pages of my file on top of jotting down notes of the coverage on a yellow legal pad balanced on his knee. The ring of his phone every 20 seconds interrupted the chaotic convergence of his tasks. I sat patiently waiting for the whirl of papers above his desk to settle. The phone stopped ringing. His note pad resting on his desk at arm's reach. He paused for a moment, looked out his window into the newsroom then to the bank of TVs on his wall and said, "Its Bin Laden. Its Bin Laden." I said, "Who?". He repeated, "Bin Laden!" In 2001, the name "Osama Bin Laden" for most was unknown. Maybe a few remember him as architect of the USS Cole bombing in 2000. He was certainly not a household name.

My boss had the uncanny ability of having 20/20 hindsight vision...IN THE PRESENT. He could see events happen before they happened then project into the future what the effects the event would cause. This is what made him an innovative news director. Either you accepted his unearthly ability or you let it consume you personally.  After all, who is comfortable with their boss knowing what you would do before you would do it. So you believed in his vision. In the weeks ahead, my boss's prophetic realization became the most pivotal, surreal memory of that morning.

As the next plane hit the Pentagon followed by Flight 93 nose first into the field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, my review faded into the chaos of the morning. The rest of the day was a blur.  Normally I take a nap in the afternoon. I don't think I slept for more than 2 hours at a time for a week. National coverage continued as it would for a week uninterrupted even for commercials. The morning show was all 9/11. A few basic weather segments of 45 seconds or so but nothing more  No television shows. No entertainment. The focus was covering the aftermath of 9-11. Somehow at the time, it didn't seem enough.

By noon that day, most of the pieces began to fall into place. The two attacks in New York City at the World Trade Center; the collapse of both Trade Center towers. Another plane attack, this time into the Pentagon and the other foiled attack on The White House resulting in the crash in Shanksville, PA. All were connected.  Everyone knew life would be different from this point forward.

90 Degrees in September? A Brief History in Cleveland

I'll admit it. A few weeks back, I said we were pretty much done with the 90 degree temperatures. Here we are on September 10th and our 7th day above 90 is about to occur. Our forecast high of 92 would be the warmest September high temperature since September 10, 1983...exactly 30 years ago!

Our recent very warm summers have skewed our perceptions of what is considered an average summer. I've written about this multiple times this summer (check my posts from July and August on the Recency Effect).


Some statistical bullet points on September 90 degree temperatures:

*  This year would be the 4th in a row. 


*  Most of the time, 90 degree temperatures in September occur in the first two weeks of the     month. 

*  Only twice in the last 50 years has 90 occurred after September 20th. Once in 1998 and again in 2010.

50 YEAR HISTORY OF 90 DEGREE HEAT IN SEPTEMBER

90 degree heat AFTER September 10th is even more rare...

September heat occurred more frequently in the 1940s and 1950s.

So as you head to high school football games later this week, you can be assured that the 90 degree heat is probably history as we replace the 90s with 60s and 70s on a more frequent basis.

Near Record Low Hurricane Activity

 

As of this writing (September 5th) not one hurricane has developed in the Atlantic Ocean. Only 7 Tropical Storms as of September 5th.

Since 1960, there have only been 5 years with no Atlantic hurricanes before September 1st.  This season now makes only the 6th year in which no hurricanes have formed up till now. Interestingly, each of those years which include 1967, 1984, 1988, 2001 and 2002 all eventually became very active.  Prior to satellites, the latest first hurricane on record occurred in 1941. During that year, the first detected tropical storm formed on Sept. 11th.  It was not until a second tropical storm strengthened, on Sept. 18 to a hurricane. Several other reports have sited September 16th as the latest date in 1941.  The National Hurricane Center database shows development on the 18th in this graphic.  Either way, we are heading into uncharted territory should we make it through the end of next week without a hurricane.

Storm #2 - 9-18-1941 - Cat 1 - winds 80

The dates of the latest first hurricanes and the final hurricane numbers:

Gustav 9-11-2002 - Cat 2 - winds 85 - 3 Hurricanes - One hit US/Louisiana
Erin  9-8-2001 - Cat3 - winds 105 - 8 Hurricanes - None hit US
Debby 9-2-1988 - Cat1 - winds 65 - 5 Hurricanes - None hit US
Diana 9-10-1984 - Cat4 - winds 115 - 4 Hurricanes - Diana hit Carolina coast
Arlene 9-2-1967 - Cat1 - winds 75 - 6 Hurricanes - one hit US/southern Texas
Storm #2 - 9-18-1941 - Cat 1 - winds 80 - 4 Hurricanes - two hit US/Florida and Texas


Gustav 9-11-2002 - Cat 2 - winds 85 mph

Erin  9-8-2001 - Cat3 - winds 105 mph

 

Debby 9-2-1988 - Cat1 - winds 65 mph

 

Diana 9-10-1984 - Cat4 - winds 115 mph

 

Arlene 9-2-1967 - Cat1 - winds 75 mph

Storm #2 - 9-18-1941 - Cat 1 - winds 80 mph

A few tropical waves could develop in the next week but nothing significant as of right now.

Could we go the entire season WITHOUT a hurricane? Highly unlikely.  Its only happened twice,  1907 and 1914. The data from the early part of the century is a bit suspect so its possible that one  developed in the open ocean without being noticed.

Syria Chess Game: The US and its Intervention History

What always strikes me after reading many books (Games Nations Play is a start) on the US entanglements since WWII is that geopolitical events ALWAYS involve a complicated, intricate chess game between more than two countries. Since WWII, the US has been the de facto peace maker because no other country was in a position to do it after Europe and Asia was decimated.  The US was in a great position to accept this role economically and militarily. However, in retrospect, our attitude was strongly adolescent. To illustrate this, let's compare the geopolitical landscape from World War II to the present to a hornet's nest: 

One or two hornet's nests are easier to manage. The US saw the Soviet Union as that ONE nest along with maybe China.  (Remember that Europe was not a player post World War II although we rebuilt that "nest" via the Marshall Plan)  The zero sum game of the Cold War prevented the US and Russia from shaking their proverbial nests.  The status quo was better than all out Nuclear War.

Korea and Vietnam showed that there were other nests out there worth watching except that we shook those nests thinking that we could squash the hornets.  We grossly underestimated the consequences of those actions.  Korean War lasted only a few years but the Vietnam War last almost 15 years if you count our military advisor presence starting in the late 50s/early 60s prior to the late 60s escalation.  A little over a month after the end of the Korean War, the CIA and MI6 (United Kingdom) overthrew Iranian government after they nationalized their oil industry in an operation called AJAX. It wasn't until 2000 and 2001 in a New York times article that this operation finally came to light.  Last month, the remaining CIA documents were finally made public. Yet another nest with communist infiltration was in Afghanistan. In the late 70s and 80s we funded Afghanistan rebels (Mujahideen) called Operation Cyclone in response to the Soviet-backed Afghan government.  When the Soviets retreated, our financial support stopped.  The consequences lead directly to a more heavily concentrated Anti-American movement which gave rise to Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.  Our covert actions in Afghanistan in the late 70s and early 80s (unbeknownst to us at the time) influenced the Middle East landscape in a non-favorable way for the US decades later. 

I mentioned these specific events not to criticize the decision making of that era.  Hindsight is always 20/20.  Reality is that these policing actions rarely tempers one or two nests. If anything, it creates more smaller nest that grow that grow over time.  Any attempt to quiet one nest increases the probability of aggravating the others. Once that happens, you have a much bigger problem as is the case today.

2013 is not a world featuring Russia and the US from the cold war days. This is a multi-polar world in which ALL of the moving parts must be sized up BEFORE any action is taken. In the case of Syria, the players are RUSSIA, EUROPE and the entire MIDDLE EAST especially IRAN and ISRAEL and NORTH AFRICA from the Suez Canal to Morocco not to mention NORTH KOREA. The unintended consequences of a Syrian intervention could cascade into other regions creating further destabilization. Long term, this might remove any trump card we have with Russia, Iran and North Korea should another situation arise..

All of that said, the US cannot look weak. If any bluff is called, it will strengthen the positions of NORTH KOREA, IRAN and SYRIA among others. They will test the US again and again pushing the envelop further. The chess game is a power play for which the US is a major player.  The difference over the years has been the number of players.  Now, China, Russia, Iran, multiple Middle East counties, Great Britain, Israel, Germany, France, the EU and the US are the biggest players.  Add the newer nuclear powers of North Korea, India and Pakistan and your task of balancing out the needs of one with the needs of many becomes herculean.  I don't envy an President Democrat or Republican who has to make this decision.

Early this morning, we heard from many people who wish that the US become an isolationist country. "Let the rest of the world solve their own problems!"  These cries are thunderous. But remember that we have never been a strictly isolationist county. In the late 1800s and early 1900s we had multiple interventions in Central America along with a short-lived occupation of the Philippines.  Many will argue that our influence in these counties didn't have the far reaching aftershocks vis-a-vis today's extremist ideals and terrorism both domestically and abroad.  Make no mistake, our presence ultimately shaped our relationship with these Latin American countries years later.  Some for the better, others not so much.

2013 is a multi-polar world with emerging powers both militarily and economically.  Unlike the late 1800s and early 1900s where an ocean provided a huge geographic obstacle in exercising influence, today we have no such restrictions. The advent of satellite communications, super-sonic flight, Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, Nuclear Powered Battleships and Submarines in conjunction with high speed computing and virtually instantaneous remote operations bridge any geographic gap.   Technology has dramatically altered the foreign policy landscape for everyone.  Everywhere is in the present and is fair game. 

As much as we want the US to return to our quasi-isolationist days  that we enjoyed from the earliest days of the republic through the early 20th century up until World War II (not counting the Spanish American War), a world with the United States in total isolation free from using foreign military interference both directly and indirectly no matter how benign is next to impossible. Our problem is that we continue to try to over and over again to tame the worst hornets nest while ignoring the others.  We claim to have a big picture mentality yet we start a methodical inward push away from the periphery. Our surgical policing actions ultimately operate in a vacuum. Its never worked.  It always has unintended consequences in the short and long term.  Politics aside, whether its chemical weapons, nuclear warheads or extremists, we need to learn from our mistakes and utilize our power with more caution.

I remember this part of Thomas Jefferson's inauguration speech in 1801 said. He said, "...peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none." I wonder how the Founding Fathers would look upon our tumultuous history of "entangled alliances".

Where Does this Summer's Temperatures/Rainfall Rank? Final Summer Numbers

We had a lot of afternoons like this in northern Ohio this summer!

I still can't believe most of summer is behind us.  What a summer it was....or wasn't. Daytime temps were much "cooler" than in recent summers.  We only had two distinct bouts of heat. The first was in mid-July, the second was in late August.

Was this summer as "cool" as what we believe? Let's look at the chart comparing this summer's average high temperature to the summers of the recent and distant past. The first chart shows each summer since 1871. This summer is circled in BLUE.  Bear with me here. I have a lot to cover so take your time.

Let's clean up the chart a bit by only showing the last 50 summers (since 1963) helping this summer stand out a bit more. It clearly shows that this summer was "cooler" than recent summers (2012, 11, 10).

Surprisingly, 18 SUMMERS HAVE HAD HIGH TEMPERATURES "COOLER" THAN 2013!

 When we average in the overnight lows AND the high temperatures, we get a more complete picture of the summer temps as a whole (day and night). First, we start with each summer since record keeping began in 1871. This shows a warming trend since the late 1950s...

Shrinking the graph inside 50 years reveals a slight increase in overall temperature in Cleveland with plenty of "cooler" summers versus this summer.

In fact, 35 of the last 50 summers were COOLER OVERALL than 2013!

What about 90 degree days? We only had 6 days above 90 this year.

What years had equal or less 90 degree days in recent memory?  How about 2009, 2008, 2006, 2004 and 2000 (no 90 degree days that year)

This next chart really tells the story of this summer.  I added up the days we had high temperatures below 75. While not a record, this summer was comparable to 2009 with 26 days with highs at or below 75. 

Notice some of the years in the not-so-distant past:  2004, 2000, 1997, 1992, 1990 & 1985. These summers had far more "cooler" days than 2013

Were the nights abnormally warmer this summer?   

It looks like it. Over the last 40 years, only 10 summers had WARMER OVERNIGHTS. 

The other huge element to the summer was the abundant rainfall not only in Cleveland but across all of northern Ohio.   

Only 7 summers in the last 143 years of record keeping had more rain than this summer!

Akron and Mansfield also ranked very high...

Forget the Old Farmers' Almanac. Stick with the Meteorologist!

It never ceases to amaze me how people latch onto weather forecasts that attempt to nail down the exact temperature and condition for individual days months out!  There is a market for "predictions" like this.  Here we are a week before Labor Day and the Old farmers' Almanac is touting their prediction for a winter storm during the Superbowl in LATE JANUARY OF NEXT YEAR!  

Let’s call it like it is. The Old Farmers' Almanac is trying to sell books. And yes, I buy one each year because it is chalked full of great articles which I reference on occasion. 

Secondly, bad weather is big business.  When the weather gets rough (severe storms, blizzards, high winds, floods, hurricanes, etc) public interest goes through the roof! TV ratings skyrocket. !  Social Network traffic increases exponentially.  I'm not just talking about northern Ohio where I live and work as a television meteorologist but everywhere. The Old Farmers' Almanac is capitalizing on this by highlighting there Superbowl Winter Storm Forecast.  Can you say “Cha-ching”.

(Note: My station WJW FOX 8 does not over hype the weather. We are very conscious of this. We only break into programming during tornado warnings or extreme, large scale snowstorms.)

Weather affects everyone and everything; all aspects of our lives. Everything!  So it stands to reason that we might get revved up about the possibility of knowing the unknowable.  A weather forecast for the Superbowl?  I can hear it now, “Forget  those TV weather people, I’ll go with the Almanac. They are more accurate anyway!”  In truth, there accuracy is much lower than their claim. 

A few years ago, Dr. Jeff Master, Meteorologist over at the Weather Underground wrote this article on the Almanac’s accuracy. 

Here is the main paragraph: 

  

"...for the winter of 2004-2005 (Figure 1 is below), the November 2004 version of the Old Farmer's Almanac made a simple prediction of "cold" or "mild" for sixteen separate regions of the U.S. The original forecast map they presented only labels the U.S. in fourteen places, and I've overlaid these predictions on a temperature anomaly map showing what actually happened during the winter of 2004-2005. If we assume that "mild" refers to an above average temperature forecast and "cold" refers to a below average temperature forecast, then the Almanac got four regions correct, eight wrong, with two too close to call. Admittedly, I've "eyeballed" this, and it is a subjective verification. Still, I don't see any way that this forecast could approach even 50% (chance) accuracy. Their precipitation forecast fared better, with seven correct regions, five incorrect, and two too close to call. I also looked at the Farmer's Almanac forecasts for the winter of 2006-2007. They did much worse that winter, with only three of sixteen temperature forecasts verifying, and five out of twelve precipitation forecasts verifying (four were too close to call). For these two winters, the Old Farmer's Almanac made a successful forecast just 37% of the time."

Actual day to day weather forecasts are developed with analyzing current conditions, radar, satellite and other parameters to make a forecast for a short period of time in the future. 12 Hours, 24 hours, 36 hours, 48 hours. We utilize computer model projections as guidance. Yes, these projections are getting better as more data is utilized and plugged into faster and faster computers with more sophisticated equations.

Seasonal long range outlooks (winter weather forecast, etc) are created by looking at the ocean sea surface temperature patterns (El Nino, etc), pressure patterns over the Arctic and North Atlantic among some others. Some scientists use solar output and other variables. The elements just mentioned are matched up with other years of occurrence.  A best possible fit is created. Sometimes this works out well.  Sometimes it doesn’t.  Again, this is a trend outlook not a specific forecast for a specific day. Individual storms cannot be forecasted this far out. But by looking at parameters that existed in the past during other storm events, we can say that the chance of say a hurricane making landfall is greater this year than in years past.  

For the lay person, all of these forecasts and trend outlooks are lumped into one group. Yet each are derived using entirely different information.  Its human nature to generalize and simplify complicated subjects like the science of weather prediction.  I've written about this in other posts.   I also write how the Recency Effect (in this case, a weather forecast that doesn't pan out) shapes our view. Sophisticated computer model simulations resulting from complex equations which describe the motions and other atmospheric behavior makes people uneasy and conflicted.  Most of us don’t want to learn about Vilhelm Bjerknes, a Norwegian physicist who has been called the father of modern meteorology.  We could care less about Lewis Richardson who developed the early equations in the battlefield during World War I with no modern day calculator. No one wants to hear that the super computer simulations used in predicting Hurricane Sandy and other monster storms are responsible for saving thousands of lives. To most, this is just an excuse for some other forecast error. 

So as a result, we formulate a concrete, black and white, overly scaled down version of the weather.  Whether its a long range winter outlook, a climate average for a wedding day or the thunderstorm chances for later this afternoon or a hurricane forecast track. Its all the same animal to most! We subconsciously eliminate the nebulous science, weird looking equations, fancy computer stuff in favor of a narrative that tells a better story.  In short, The Old Farmers’ Almanac fits with how our brains are wired.  Its simple. Its folksy with just enough science to make it credible.  Why do we continue believing the Old Farmers’ Almanac?  The simple answer is it makes us feel good!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking the Almanac.  I love the articles. I love the astronomical charts.  I know my analysis will not sway people from believing the Almanac’s prognostications.  I am a fool to believe that I can counteract human nature.  But meteorology is science and its getting better and better!  If I had to choose between the computer model projections, live radar and satellite data and 20 years of experience to make a storm forecast versus the Almanac, I’m not choosing the latter… But I’ll still keep the Almanac handy....you know, for the articles.

Philosophy Friday: Everything NOW!

My definition of Presentism is this: 

The idea that we want results now--we live in the now--sometimes seeing results before the present has played itself out. Society has evolved into a reality where we want//need results now. In many instances, before the present has drifted into the past. So much information coming at us that we fail to process it all--we have no point of reference anymore. 

 A great quote from Douglas Rushkoff's book "Present Shock" which talks about "Presentism".

"When there is no linear time, how is a person supposed to figure out what is going on. there's no story, no narrative to explain why things are the way they are. Previously distinct causes and effects collapse into one another. No time between doing something and seeing the result. Instead the results begin accumulating and influencing us before we've even completed an action. There is so much information coming in at once from so many different sources, there is simply no way to trace the plot over time."

A little philosophy on this Friday---Thoughts?

Kids Are Back At School...A Look Back At Summer

There's a lot of talk about how cool this summer has been so far in northern Ohio. Many people have commented about how they haven't had a "pool-less" summer like this in a long time. I do my best not to respond with weather records showing the contrary. Numbers can get quiet boring.

The truth is, as I wrote last week, we've had plenty of summers similar to this one in Cleveland. Because of the Recency Effect, we tend to forget those years unless we experienced some big event (wedding, great vacation, etc) during that time that helps solidify the memory.

Here is how this summer has stacked up versus the summers of the past:

The average high temperatures since June 1st since the 1870s for Cleveland seem to follow discernible patterns.  Look at the trend over the last 140 years:  Much cooler average high temperatures from 1870 through the 1920s, a sharp spike in the 1930s through the mid 1950s. Since the late 1950s, the high temperatures have averaged 80.3 over the 3 month period (JUNE, JULY and AUGUST).  Note that the year-to-year variation has increased (graph becomes more jagged) since the early 1980s.

So what about this summer?   The AVERAGE HIGH TEMPERATURE WAS 79.0

 1.3 degrees BELOW AVERAGE since 1956

Using 1956 as the cut-off eliminates the 1800s (temperature station changed several times), the spike in the dust bowl days and the scorcher summer of the early 1950s, this summer ranks as the 14th coolest! In other words, Over the same period, 13 summers have had COOLER HIGH TEMPERATURES.

The most recent summers were 2009, 2004 and 2000

What about overnight lows? The trend since 1956 has shown an increase. This summer, the nights have been running warmer than average but cooler than the last 3 summers.

How about rainfall?

This summer ranks 6th WETTEST since 1956 well above the average of 9.03".  The summers that were COOLER than 2013 (circled in green) match up well to summers with above average rainfall.

In summary, this summer was cooler than past summers but not unprecedented. Rainfall was indeed well above average but not as wet as the summer of 2011.

Will Below Normal Temps Continue into September?

 

My projection for August given the "cooler than normal" July and comparing it to the July summers similar to 2013 yielded this:

TEMPERATURES AVERAGED SLIGHTLY BELOW AVERAGE

So far through the 10th, this is what has ACTUALLY HAPPENED...not a bad match. Red dot is over Ohio.

The years that featured summers with "cooler" high temperatures than this summer through August 10th are:  2009, 2004, 2003, 2000, 1997, 1996, 1992, 1990, 1985, 1972, 1969, 1965, 1960, 1958, 1940, 1938, 1937, 1936, 1935.

I charted the summer average daytime high temperatures since 1933 (81 summers). The summers that were "cooler" than this summer are circled in blue  (20 of the last 31 years). The red line is the average over the 81 summers.This summer is indicated with the red arrow on the right.

How about September?

The most recent "cooler" summers since 2000 don't necessarily mean that September will always be cool.  In fact, September of 2009 was near normal while 2004 (a summer markedly cooler than 2013) was above normal.

Since daytime highs above 80 are considered "above normal" in September (daytime highs start to drop significantly), I plotted the number of days at or above 80 in each September from each year (listed earlier). What does this show?

 Overall, we average about a weeks worth of days above 80 in Septembers that follow cool summers similar or cooler than 2013

Here is what the temperatures looked like for each day in September of 2009. I circled the 80 degree days AND the 60 degree days. Notice how they become more numerous later in the month.

I believe that this September will look something like 2009. A handful of 80 degree days, a handful of 60 degree days toward the end with the rest feeling similar to this week!