Lots of extreme weather news in North America these days. I’m sure the weather maps will have some things of interest, so let’s open a bunch of them, starting with temperature anomalies:
We’ll want to investigate the cause of the long warm streak that runs from Texas past the North Pole, but first my attention is drawn to the small “hot spot” north of Lake Superior, which has a reading of at least +18C. By contrast, straight to the east and straight to the west, at the same latitude, we see a pair of anomalies at -9 or 10C. Each combination adds up to an extraordinary difference of 28C, or 50 degrees if viewed on the Fahrenheit scale, so let’s see how this strange picture looks on the temperature chart:
I see a daily average of -1C in the hot spot and close to -28C in both cold spots. (They all have snow on the ground, which I won’t show.) Note the way the regional warm area in the interior of the continent stands out on the map in the form of a hump. Next, we need to see if the distribution of total precipitable water (PW) in the atmosphere has something to do with the cause of this peculiar arrangement:
The brightly shaded central hump lines up perfectly with the temperature hump, and the really bright spot in its center matches the anomaly hot spot just as well. It has a PW reading of no less than 9kg on the scale. The two cold spots to either side, described above, are both in the PW bracket that runs from 1 to 2kg. The difference in these kg values is clearly greater than two doubles, plus up to a half of a third double, which relates well to the temperature differential which came to about 27C for both of the anomaly comparisons. (Each double in kg is worth about 10C in added heat from the greenhouse effect.)
High PW content in the atmosphere is always more likely to produce precipitation than low content. Here we see heavy snowfall matched up with the warm weather and many clear skies in place where it’s coldest:
I’m still wondering how all that PW found its way so far north from a collection area consisting of waters in and around the Gulf of Mexico. The jetstream wind map does not offer much help in that respect. On this day it looks more like it would block any passage by a normal atmospheric river (AR) trying to move northward at a jet-high altitude:
There is one possible alternative—strong winds, of a type that can carry a high load of moisture and can hold a steady course for a long distance at a low to moderately high altitude. That’s a pretty good summary of what I see on this map, moving straight north from the Gulf, gaining a patch of reinforcement north of Lake Superior, and continuing beyond:
The following map of sea level pressure should help you understand how this situation was set up, supporting such an extra-long pathway:
Carl