Extreme 111° heat hits Texas; floods kill 9 in Haiti
Another round of unprecedented April heat hit the U.S. yesterday, and this time it was Texas' turn to see large sections of the state with the hottest April temperatures in over a century of record keeping. Seven major airports in Texas set all-time April high temperatures yesterday:
Amarillo, TX: 99° (old April record 98° on 4/22/1989 and 4/22/1965)
Lubbock, TX: 101° (old April record 100° on 4/16/1925 and /22/1989)
Dalhart, TX: 96° (old April record 94° on 4/22/1989)
Borger, TX: 99° (tied April record set on 4/22/1965)
Midland, TX: 104° (old April record 101° on 4/21/1989)
Abilene, TX: 104° (old April record 102° on 4/16/1925)
Childress, TX: 106° (old April record 102° on three occasions, most recently on 4/3/2011)
According to wunderground's weather historian Christopher C. Burt, both Texas and Oklahoma came within 2°F of their all-time April state high temperature record yesterday. Altus, Oklahoma hit 104°, falling 2° short of the April state record of 106° set at the Magnum Research Station in 1972. In the Texas Mesonet, it hit 111° at Knox City 3NW, which is just 2° short of the Texas April state record of 113° set at Catarina in 1984. According to Mr. Burt, What is amazing is that Knox City is in the north-central part of the state, not down in the Rio Grande region like Catarina. The 111° would probably be pretty close to whatever the all-time hottest temp for ANY month might be in that location (probably around 115°). On Sunday this week, Nevada just missed setting their April state high temperature record, when the mercury hit 105° in Laughlin (April state record: 106° in 1989.)
Figure 1. At least 36 of the roughly 400 major U.S. cities that maintain automated weather sensors at their local airports (8%) have set or tied all-time April high temperature records so far this month. The records set yesterday in Texas are not yet in the database, and are not included on this map. Image taken from our new Record Extremes page.
Earlier this week, all-time record April heat hit large portions of Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming. At least 36 of the roughly 400 major U.S. cities that maintain automated weather sensors at their local airports (8%) have set or tied all-time April high temperature records so far this month; no all-time April cold records have been set. The U.S. has been on an extraordinary pace of setting high temperature records so far in 2012. During March 2012, an astonishing 32% of all the major airports in the U.S. set all-time March high temperature records. For the year-to-date, there have been 184 new all-time monthly high temperature records set at the major airports, and 6 all-time monthly low temperature records. Not surprisingly, the period January - March this year has been the warmest such period in the U.S. since record keeping began in 1895.
Figure 2. Total precipitable water (in mm) for this morning shows a surge of moisture moving westwards though the Caribbean. Precipitable water values in excess of 51 mm (2 inches, orange colors) are capable of generating heavy flooding rains. Image credit: University of Wisconsin CIMSS.
Heavy rains kill nine in Haiti
The rainy season has begun on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, where heavy rains that began on Monday have triggered mudslides and floods that killed nine people. Nearly 500,000 people are still homeless in Haiti from the January 2010 earthquake, making the country highly vulnerable to flooding disasters. Heavy flooding was also a problem this week in the neighboring Dominican Republic, where 11,000 people were evacuated; no deaths were reported there, however. Precipitation forecasts from the GFS model suggest that the worst is over for Hispaniola, with the axis of greatest moisture expected to move west of the island today. This surge of moisture will bring heavy rains to Jamaica, Cuba, the Bahamas, Cayman Islands, and South Florida during the remainder of the week.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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Yes I do, most of the the island above 200m, but we have many rivers which is the source of most of the flooding here....sorry you didn't get much rain
Well that was exciting. Too bad it's NOGAPS. That thing cries wolf far too often for my taste.
By George, I think you got it.
Hurricane Georges as a borderline Category 4 hurricane on September 20 at 1847 UTC. This image was produced from data from NOAA-14, provided by NOAA. Maximum sustained winds were 135 mph.
Hurricane Georges was a powerful and long-lived Cape Verde-type Category 4 hurricane which caused severe destruction as it traversed the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico in September 1998, making seven landfalls along its path. Georges was the seventh tropical storm, fourth hurricane, and second major hurricane of the 1998 Atlantic hurricane season. It became the second most destructive storm of the season after Hurricane Mitch and the costliest Atlantic hurricane since Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
Georges killed 604 people, mainly on the island of Hispaniola, and caused extensive damage resulting at nearly $6 billion (1998 US dollars, $8.56 billion 2012 USD) in damages mostly in St. Kitts and Nevis, Puerto Rico and Hispaniola.
The hurricane made landfall in at least seven different countries (Antigua and Barbuda, St. Kitts and Nevis, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba and the United States) and Puerto Rico, a Commonwealth of the United States — more than any other hurricane since Hurricane Inez of the 1966 season.
Nice map,Nigel. Where did you find it?
Wow. I love how b&w makes the structure of the storms pop. Simply stunning.
Hadn't noticed the cloud top pressure images before. Looked it up here.
"Cloud-top pressure and cloud-top height are derived [from] the cloudtop temperature product and the atmospheric temperature profile provided by Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) data."
Tropical Cyclone Formation Probability Guidance Product page
Link
Neither would I
Thanks Nigel, another Toy.....
Fear the bomb.
Here's the link if you want to see the original image:
Link
Site has some mature content, PG13
No problem
Link to article and individual tornado survey reports
Something about that map just doesn't seem accurate to me. I would use NOAA's Sea Surface Temperature anomaly map...but that's just me.
Definitely would use this one though.
Click on the image to be directed to the website.
We were swimming in the Atlantic last Tuesday in RI. :)
COLD!!
Link to full story and individual tornado survey reports
What's the pressure from the pacific high
What's with everything, especially the Gulf, getting colder in the last couple frames?
Yeah, it's a bit off...this is the one I use on my blog
video with music
Do you have the Pacific loop to see how it cools a little bit?
I must admit, I'm hoping this happens and it has a fair shot as the possible upward MJO phase comes through the basin. However, it will be very short lived. We need consistency, as from what I see no other models are predicting anything to form in 8 days other than the GFS. If this where to happen though, however unlikely, it would be remarkable to see, as it could be easily a 65 mph cyclone according to the GFS and it is defiantly a purely tropical system. However, the natural climatological norms are against it, such as the 100 knot shear values over Cuba that would have to die down to around 20, which to me is improbable. It would have to get lucky with an anticyclone.
I am highly skeptical, but it would be interesting to be proved wrong in this case.
There's been a lot of wind across the Gulf of Mexico lately with that last low pressure area. That probably cooled it off.
Honestly, I have no clue.
Just a second..
strange to see this in late April.
Hi there
Some great rain this evening and a surface low to the South stirring things up. Last year was very dry all the way into the mid part of the year as I recall, quite unlike this year which has been wet early.Whether this means anything in terms of how different this season may be from the last remains to be seen.
Looks like the MJO could kick start something in the not too distant future if upper level conditions cooperate.
"Though total lightning flash rates are expected to increase as storm updrafts intensify, in this case a short-lived decrease in total lightning flash rate (upper-left) was observed during the simultaneous development of an updraft surge."
Yea it is...maybe we'll have an early storm
Hi, my wife and I just got a good soaking trying to get our groceries in the car at Fosters, no use waiting for this rain to hold up a bit. The only thing I see holding back potential development in the SW caribbean is 40-60 knots of shear!
Le hour 204 GFS... Weak TS in the Bahamas...
Agreed, though shear has slackened a bit in the central Caribbean of late. May will be here on Monday so after that anything could happen.
"Generally known as hail spikes, these are the result of energy from the radar hitting hail, or very heavy rain, and being deflected to the ground, where they deflect back to the hail and then to the radar as in the image on the left."
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