Weather forecasts have come a long way over the past couple of decades. Meteorologists can give you a deadly accurate five-day forecast today, when forecasting the weather beyond a day was a feat 30 years ago. Forecasts today are accurate to a fault: people expect too much, and get angry and disappointed when their friendly local weatherperson can’t deliver.
As temperatures warm up and the school year winds down for kids across the country, people are eager for summer to arrive before spring has a chance to set in. Everyone wants to know what kind of weather we’ll have this summer, but there’s one factor that could have some consequences: El Niño.
So long, summer 2014; we hardly knew you. It looks like tomorrow might be the last day of thermometer summer for much of the eastern United States. A cold front marching eastward will bring with it a line of storms followed by a long stretch of blissful autumnal crispness. Hallelujah.
For those of us who live along the East Coast, this has been a pretty nice summer. With constant shots of cool air and low humidity filtering in from the north (thanks, Canucks!), temperatures are staying right around normal. The West, on the other hand, is baking. How does this summer compare to summers past?
One "polar vortex" after the other, it seems like this summer is really just an extension of spring. The cool temps are causing people who live east of the Rockies to wonder if 2014 will go down as the year without a summer. As we enter the waning days of July, we can look back and see if it's true.
Welcome to meteorological summer. For the next three months, we're going to sweat, run for our lives, and anxiously wait for student loan debt to kick in. It's already off to a rocky start, with a 20% chance of tropical development in the Gulf of Mexico this week and a severe weather outbreak in the midwest.
