Death Valley's 113°: hottest April temperature on record in U.S.
An unprecedented April heat wave brought a second day of sizzling temperatures to the Western U.S. yesterday, where temperatures ranging 20 - 30 degrees above normal have toppled numerous all-time April heat records. Nearly every weather station in the Inter-mountain West has broken, tied, or come within 1 - 2 °F of their all-time record April heat record since Sunday. Most notably, the 113°F measured at Furnace Creek in Death Valley, California on Sunday, April 22 was tied for the hottest April temperature ever recorded in the U.S. According to wunderground weather historian Christopher C. Burt, the hottest reliable April temperature ever measured in the U.S. was 113°F in Parker, Arizona in 1898. A 113°F reading was also taken at Catarina, Texas in April 1984, and at Greenland Ranch in Death Valley on April 24, 1946. A hotter 118°F reading measured at Volcano Springs, CA in April 1898 is considered unreliable, since we don't know much about the exposure conditions or if the thermometers were even in shelters at remote California desert stations back in the 1880s and 1890s. The previous hottest April day in Death Valley was 111°F. Yesterday, the high temperature in Death Valley "cooled off" to 110°F, merely the fourth highest April temperature ever measured there. The heat wave peaked Sunday and Monday, and temperatures will be closer to normal for the remainder of the week.
Figure 1. All-time heat records for the month of April were set at 56 stations April 21 - 23, including at seven major cities. Image taken from wunderground's new extremes page.
As is often the case when a major Nor'easter is affecting the Eastern U.S., the record-breaking heat is due to a contortion of the jet stream that has created a strong ridge of high pressure over the Western U.S. Wunderground's extremes page lists 56 stations in the West in the past four days that have tied or broken all-time heat records for the month of April, including:
Phoenix, Arizona: 105°F (previous 105° April temperatures occurred on 4/20/1989 and 4/29/1992)
Las Vegas, Nevada: 99°F (tying old record set 4/30/1981)
Reno, NV: 90° (old record 89° 4/30/1981)
Elko, NV: 87° (old record 86° 4/30/1981). This also beat the previous so-warm-so-early-in-the-season record by 4°
Ely, NV: 84° (old record 82° 4/28/1992)
Winnemucca, NV: 90° (tying old record set 4/30/1981)
Grand Junction, CO: 89° (tying all-time April record also set on 4/29 and 4/30, 1992)
Boise, ID (91°) and Salt Lake City (88°) both came within 1°F of their record April max.
Figure 2. A late-season Nor'easter on April 23, 2012 leaves heavy snow on a farm in Penfield, NY. Image credit: wunderphotographer tvsportsguy.
Late-season Nor'easter winding down
The powerful late-season Nor'easter that brought snow, high winds, and heavy rains to the Northeast yesterday is winding down as it moves northwestwards into Canada. The storm brought an unusual amount of snow for so late in the season to western Pennsylvania, western New York, and the higher elevations in West Virginia. An earlier report posted by the NWS of 23.7” at Laurel Summit, Pennsylvania (elevation 2,770’) has now been scaled back to just 13.7”, according to the latest NWS Storm Summary. Many other higher-elevation locations saw snowfall amounts in the 6 - 12 inch range. Snow amounts were considerably lower in the major cities of the region; Buffalo, New York got 0.9", Rochester, New York, 2.8", and Erie, Pennsylvania, 0.5". The wet, heavy snow fell on regions where trees had already come into leaf, thanks to the surprise "Summer in March" heat wave that brought 80° temperatures to the Northeast over a month ago. High winds that accompanied the heavy snow caused extensive tree damage and power outages to at least 75,000 people in the region. However, the storm may have done more good than harm--widespread rainfall amounts of 2 - 4 inches occurred across Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Southeast New York, which is under moderate to severe drought. Rainfall deficits in the region were generally 5 - 10 inches, so the Nor'easter's rains will make a significant dent in the drought. Wunderground's weather historian Christopher C. Burt has updated his post on Record Late Season Snowfalls with information from this storm.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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No... It would be like saying a certain disease reacted to a drug one way 50 years ago and saying there is no way it has mutated and will react differently. We don't know it wont and the only way we will find out is through observation.
Well, enjoying the record to near-record late April cool temps had of late before warm ridging sets back in... Yep, coolest low temps since March 5th... Probably be October before see similar to this mornings readings, no doubt a slew of low records set across Gulf states - partial list below from New Orleans KLIX NWS.
PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS LA
1054 AM CDT TUE APR 24 2012
...MULTIPLE MINIMUM TEMPERATURE RECORDS BROKEN THIS MORNING...
THERE WERE SEVERAL RECORD LOWS SET AROUND THE AREA THIS MORNING. HERE IS A BREAKDOWN OF THE RECORDS.
BATON ROUGE...
THE LOW TEMPERATURE THIS MORNING OF 44 BROKE THE PREVIOUS RECORD LOW OF 45 WHICH WAS LAST SET IN 2005.
GULFPORT...
THE LOW TEMPERATURE THIS MORNING OF 41 BROKE THE PREVIOUS RECORD OF 43 WHICH WAS SET AT THE AIRPORT IN 2005 AND AT THE GULFPORT NAVAL CENTER IN 1998.
SLIDELL AIRPORT...
THE LOW TEMPERATURE THIS MORNING OF 40 BROKE THE PREVIOUS RECORD OF 42 WHICH WAS SET IN 2005.
SLIDELL CITY...
THE LOW TEMPERATURE THIS MORNING OF 43 SET A NEW RECORD AT THE CO-OPERATIVE OBSERVATION SITE AT THE WASTE WATER TREATMENT PLANT IN THE CITY OF SLIDELL. THE PREVIOUS RECORD WAS 44 WHICH WAS SET IN 2005.
MCCOMB...
THE LOW TEMPERATURE THIS MORNING OF 39 BROKE THE PREVIOUS RECORD OF 40 WHICH WAS SET IN 1984.
PASCAGOULA...
THE LOW TEMPERATURE THIS MORNING OF 41 BROKE THE PREVIOUS RECORD OF 41 WHICH WAS LAST SET IN 2005.
$$
And locally in my Bayou Cane neighborhood of deep SE LA, home thermo fell to 47.3F...
According to Wunderground's Houma records, KHUM airport's listed low of 44F broke the listed record 46F in 1959... However, does not count officially for several reasons -
* Houma KHUM is not NWS or FAA certified weather station...
* Prior to May 11 2010 AWOS upgrade to 24-hour capability, KHUM offered weather data during daytime operations only...
* KHUM continues to have reportage / frequent missing data issues...
* The KHUM thermometer reads only in whole degrees celsius, thus displayed
as 44.6F... should be rounded to 45F not 44F, but with a range jumping by
full 1.8F increments actual fahrenheit value unknown...
* Wunderground uses period of record beginning in 1930, while Houma's historical temp records date back to 1893 (and show a previous 45F on this date)...
* Wunderground, along with the NWS and other agencies have recently been comparing KHUM's questionable present-day data to older officially recognized data formerly provided by USDA station LA-164407 since 1893 (later re-established with LSU's HUML1 station within the USDA facility, closed on June 10 2011 due to LSU AgCenter budget cuts) - and leaving Houma-Thibodaux as the largest metro in Louisiana (5th largest) without a NWS recognized station, inaccurate "weather records" at best!
I would add "LOL" if the truth wasn't such a sad reality in this modern-day period of so-called better detailed, accurate record-keeping... Epic FAIL!
:(
...and that's the point...as for natural observation: I've never seen gravity....yet I have a pretty good idea what it does...
You have seen gravity in action, just like you can not see wind... but you know its real due to natural observation of trees moving, flags waving.
absolutely correct...and I can make accurate inferences from that data...
So what are we arguing? hahaha
I dunno...I thought you knew ;-)
First criminal charges filed in BP oil spill
It's finals crunch time, I feel like I don't know anything. At least that's how textbook review tests make me feel.
He is being cited for destroying evidence for the investigation - not for the spill itself.
The heart is not the same either. We can do things to and for your heart that were not possible 50 years ago. For instance, your heart may not actually be your original heart. At least you admit that the climate ain't what it used to be.
Penalty: 15 yards, piling on.
My argument was the actual heart itself has not changed. The things we can now do medically to fix and save the heart is astounding. I hope we get to the point where we understand the climate as well as we understand our hearts.
That's the whole point of the extreme unease caused by ClimateChange/GlobalWeirding:
We've mutated the environment so much so fast that many species can neither evolve nor migrate fast enough to survive.
We've changed the environment so much that we can no longer count on climate producing the same range of weather as that which produced and has thus far maintained human civilization. ie Civilization is HIGHLY dependent on agriculture. And agriculture is HIGHLY dependent on weather and weather extremes remaining within a usefully predictable narrow band of temperatures and precipitation, both in terms of timing and of duration.
eg Even 1or2degrees of GlobalWarming is likely to substantially increase heat waves that lead to low-yield and increasing price*volatility in agricultural commodities.
* How high or how low the price of any given commodity doesn't matter much. Businesses can adjust to any steady or near-steady price, including fluctuations predictably caused by changing seasons.
What they can't adjust to are wild unpredictably large swings in prices.
It was the worst April storm since 1928.
Only pea-sized hail but...
I have lived here for 12 years and have seen hail 5 times in total. For the past 2 months, it has hailed 3 times!!
The other 2 times ocurred in separate summers. Yea, in the middle of the summer where thunderstorms are frequent and not in spring where it has never happened before this year.
This is just weird, can't get over it...
The heart does change,if we smoke or eat poorly the heart stops functioning properly, which leads to other problems in your body,the climate is the same idea. You mistreat the climate it under goes changes and stops function normally and causes other problems thoughout the planet. Same idea.
Exactly.
One of the arguments is "We don't have enough information to know what is -normal-". Well, by that argument, we should not do anything different for about 100, or even 1000 years.
The climate variations we are experiencing could be completely normal. They could also be completely abnormal and a result of there being massive amounts of solar energy being retained within the global ecosystem. Will we ever know 100% for sure? Probably not. But do we know with enough confidence that we are living unsustainably in order to do something? Absolutely.
For an analogy - assume you are trained in CPR. You're walking in the mall, when a man in front of you falls to the ground, gasping and clutching at his chest. He could be having a heart attack. He could be choking on a grape he was eating. He could also be playing a cruel joke. You don't wait until he can see his doctor for an angiogram to start CPR. You ask him if he is ok (that is really part of CPR training), and if he can't respond... you start CPR.
Should we wait for more data before trying to lessen our footprint on earth? Should we wait for oceans to rise 100 feet, swamping a huge amount of the coast? Or should we start researching and finding out as much as we can? Or should we take action now to lessen our footprint, while capturing as much information as possible?
I'm taking the viewpoint that the actual heart has in fact changed. I suppose that when looking at the heart abstractly you could say it has not changed, but then I could also say equally that climate has not changed either. The physical processes that affect climate are the same as before. So, if climate can be said to change, we are just observing it in a different circumstance: people dumping CO2 into the air in large amounts in a short amount of time. Similarly, we can observe the human heart in a different circumstance and observe that it, too, has changed. For instance, it now can control diet. It can also keep beating in situations where previously it long ago would have stopped.
climate patterns are altered been so for awhile now only just becoming more altered and noticeable as time marches on
I like that analogy! .... I would like to add that when the heart begins to perform poorly, then the other organs begin to suffer as well and begin to complicate the overall health problem. Just as with rising heat, from the increased atmospheric CO2, will begin breaking down the frozen tundras and releasing its stores of methane. Now the overall illness becomes more complex and more difficult to control.
Yeah it looks like most of the country will be below average from the 27th to at least the 30th... April looks to be breaking the streak of really warm months
I never think it would be a bad idea to conserve what we have left of our planet. I just think it is a slippery slope to say that we 100% know what will occur if we do certain things. Back to heart analogy, we know that smoking has the same affect on the heart as it did 100 years ago, it is just the knowledge on the subject has exploded. However we don't know that certain things will affect the climate the same, the climate is a dynamic entity while the heart is a static one.
Yeh,not record breaking warmth,but still going to be above normal,last below normal month for us was last June.
Humans have been studying weather and climate for thousands of years. The trouble has been that western science has not taken the time to listen to that knowledge.
A case in point was a scientist visiting the high plains of South America noticed farmers would on a specific day of the year look to the horizen at a specific time on night to see if a constellation was visible or not to determain exactly when to plant. He laughed at them. It wasafter years later and coming to understand the El Nino and La Nina effects that it came to him that indeed those illiterate farmers knew more then he did. That cycle determained when the rains came to that area and at the same time effected the visibility of that specific constellation at that specific day of the year. And the rains were very preditable.
If western man had taken time to listen to all those stories about weather and climate that different groups around the world has been pasted down generation after generation, most of which has been lost now, I believe we would have not only far better models of the weather, but have a far greater understanding about climate.
As far as where did all that heat go that has been predicted. I think we will all find out sooner then later. Nature has a very bad habit of covering things up until it is too late then things change very fast.
An example of that would be all those animals barried in ice with full stomach of healthy vegetation. Maybe the opposite can also happen and we only find out where that heat went when all the ice in the world disappears all at the same time. Unlikely but could be a possibility.
Weird....
So much for that worst severe season on record everyone was talking about after march 2nd
I mean, I know there are several different definitions, but that word isn't necessarily what pops into my head when I think of slow.
Lol.
so?
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