5 May 2014
Wichita Kansas Reaches 102 degrees Sunday. Earliest 100+ in 126 years of Records.
Posted by Dan Satterfield
The high made it to 102 today in Wichita.
From NWS Wichita:
125 km to the south, a massive wildfire is underway this Sunday evening in Guthrie,OK. Pictures from local TV show the extent.
From KWTV in OKC.
The area of EXCEPTIONAL DROUGHT continues to grow.
From NOAA/USDA
In the Great Plains, all heat and drought are compared to the height of the dust bowl in 1936. A dry spring means a hotter ground, and this can lead to a feedback that causes more drought and heat. The new U.S. Climate Assessment (which will be released this week) has a couple of things to say about the future of the Southern Plains. Not that any of the U.S. Senators from this region publicly accept the science underpinning the big bang, climate change, or evolution (to be fair to them, they would certainly find themselves out of office if they were to say otherwise). For those that prefer scientific method, some snippets from the Draft Assessment are below:
From draft U.S. Climate Assessment that will be released this week.
Precipitation changes by season, from the latest U.S. Climate Assessment (based on the newer more sophisticated modelling).
You can read the Great Plains section of the Draft Assessment here. Archeological evidence from the past 10 centuries shows periods of epic drought lasting decades in this region, and combining one of those with anthropogenic climate changes later this century, you could easily see an end to agriculture in large swaths of the region.
Dan Satterfield has worked as an on air meteorologist for 32 years in Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama. Forecasting weather is Dan's job, but all of Earth Science is his passion. This journal is where Dan writes about things he has too little time for on air. Dan blogs about peer-reviewed Earth science for Junior High level audiences and up.