Ben's Weather Blog

[Posted Aug 1, 2024]

Any of you remember the El Niño season of 2022 – 2023? Specifically August to February? Well, if you can remember the weather way back then, then you’re in for some Déjà vu this season! The big temperature pattern was:

Cold wave for 2-14 days, then a temperature rise of ~20 degrees, then a heat wave for 2-14 days, then a temperature drop of ~20 degrees, repeat.

We had a grueling 7 months of this in the El Niño season of 2022 – 2023, and it looks like it’s happening again. I first started this long-range forecast-venture around the start of July, where I actually figured out that we’re getting this pattern until January or February. All it took was a peek at the ENSO forecast and some past ocean temperature data, plus some climate averages.

It took all the way until yesterday evening while making the forecast to discover something very special about the temperature in July: The pattern has already started. Here’s a layout of the temperature:

Cold wave 1st – 6th – Lowest temperature 13, on the 4th.

Warmup 7th – 8th – Temperatures rise by 20 degrees over 12 hours.

Heat wave 7th – 11th – Highest temperature 36, on the 10th.

Cooldown 10th – 12th – Temperatures drop by 21 degrees over 60 hours.

Cold wave 12th – 14th – Lowest temperature 14, on the 13th.

Warmup 15th – 17th – Temperatures rise by 19 degrees over 36 hours.

Heat wave 15th – 23rd – Highest temperature 35, on the 18th.

Cooldown 23rd – 25th – Temperatures drop by 18 degrees over 60 hours.

Cold wave 14th – 27th – Lowest temperature 11, on the 15th and 16th.

Warmup 26th – 28th – Temperatures rise by 17 degrees over 36 hours.

Heat wave 28th – 31st – Highest temperature 30, on the 31st.

A full month of ups and downs! It seems a little one-sided though, since the highest temperature almost broke the all-time record, while the lowest was only 11. The thing is, that was just from the way the dice rolled! (Also maybe a little El Niño and climate change played a role) We could have easily had 30 and 5.

Now for the forecast. Overall, this pattern will continue until about January or February next year. In July, we had the temperature overall above average. In August, it looks like near average, and as we head into Fall, we should see that change into below average, and that trend is expected to stay for the rest of the year.

[0 views as of Sep 16, 2024]

[Posted Jul 24, 2024]

The title never lies, we’re finally getting a break! Well, the title might lie sometimes, just a little, but not today!

The AQI will be improving over the next few days, and, I’ve noticed a little oscillation in the AQI, where it is the best from 3 pm to 3 am, and then worse otherwise. I would guess this has something to do with the BC wildfires and the day/night cycle.

Today the worst was at about 6 am, with 80, and the best is at 6 pm, with 22.

Tomorrow they are at 9 am and 9 pm, with 75 and 8.

On Friday they are at 9 am and 12 am, with 47 and 6.

Finally, on Saturday they are at 9 am and 6 pm, with 42 and 3.

The reason for this smoke improvement is hard to tell, but I’m pretty sure it’s the precipitation and wind.

[1 view as of Sep 16, 2024]

[Posted Jul 24, 2024]

The heat waves, now over, were record-setting in many ways, with 18 daily records related to heat so far. This sounds like a table!

*DP = Dew point

Here’s another table! This one for monthly records. I’ll send an updated one of these the day after our first high below 25 in August.

*MDA = Most days above

*MCDA = Most consecutive days above

Note: MCDA days can be heat waves with only a portion of the days inside July.

[3 views as of Sep 16, 2024]

[Posted Jul 23, 2024]

How was that title? I’ve been practicing for AccuWeather-level post titles and I’m pretty sure this title was worthy of that title. Okay, too many titles. Since this is probably going to be my longest post yet, I’m going to divide it up into four sections, plus an introduction and a conclusion; so I’m basically making an essay.

Our heat wave is coming to an end with some cool temperatures and a little precipitation. Here’s the forecast:

PART 1 – What is causing the temperature drop?

To see the beginning of this cooldown, we have to look at now. Opening good ol’ trusty Windy.com, we can see the rarely-seen-here work of the northern equatorial jet stream. The current layout is so hard to explain I’m just going to enter in an edited screenshot to help me and you out.

A. The two jet streams break apart around central Siberia.

B. The isolines are hard to see, but there is an “indent primarily upper-level low” there. That low is pushing the equatorial jet stream to the east, instead of just straight northeast.

C. The equatorial jet stream zooms back to the west, and then heads north to connect with the main jet stream before going back south to the Great Lakes, making a heat dome over areas of Yukon, Northwest Territories, Alberta, and Saskatchewan.

Our cooldown happens when the upper-level low heads over to Alberta, and then once it’s over the mountains, it transitions into a more lower-level low, and becomes very strong. It will break off from the equatorial jet stream around Thursday night, transforming it into a solitary low. The pressure then will be around 990 hPa. It will move off once we start the weekend, so we will see the end of the cold wave around Saturday or Sunday.

PART 2 – What is the temperature forecast?

It’s table time!

PART 3 – What is causing the precipitation?

The low of course, that’s how lows work. The main three models that are here and are long term – GFS, ICON, and ECMWF all say pretty much the same thing, except for GFS of course. It’s trash at forecasting clouds and precipitation. They both say that we will be getting the edge of a system expected to move through to the northwest of us, and they both say we’ll be getting the most precipitation on Friday. This really only lines up with AccuWeather’s forecast, because TWN is very generous for Tomorrow, and EC is generous for Tomorrow and Thursday, while not giving much for Friday. More in part 4!

PART 4 – What is the precipitation forecast?

It’s table time again! This forecast will probably not be the most accurate thing in the world, because my forecasts are going all over the place. I’ll probably send a more accurate forecast in a post tomorrow, with more certain expected conditions for Wednesday night, all of Thursday, and Friday night.

Final forecast

Today: High of 30, maybe 31. No precipitation in the day, but we might get something overnight tonight. Low near 17.

Tomorrow: The high will probably land in the mid 20s, but it might end up being in the low 20s. The low will be 16 or 17. There will also be some showers and thundershowers at times in the day and night.

Thursday: High near 20, and low 13. Possible showers, but not thunderstorms throughout the day and night.

Friday: Another high around 20, and a low near 14. There will be a couple of showers at times, most likely in the afternoon and evening.

Weekend: No precipitation, temperatures warming.

[6 views, 1 comment as of Sep 16, 2024]

[Posted Jul 19, 2024]

I’m pretty sure everyone has noticed the smoke by now. It’s not actually that bad near the surface, but once you get higher, sort of mid to upper troposphere higher, there is a think shroud of smoke. Once again, it’s not that bad, I can still see blue sky until about 35 degrees off the horizon, so it’s actually more like a haze. If the smoke was the same density all the way through the atmosphere, I could use a little math to figure out how far up it goes.

I did. It took a whole hour. I started at 10 and now it’s 11. The result was ~9.5 km, which would take us to almost the tropopause.

This smoke was un expected because I thought a forming high in southern Alberta would keep it all to the north. The thing is, a mini-high decided to also form, this time in northern Alberta. This one was just in the right position to push enough air down to give us some smoke. I’m still waiting for the latest maps, but at the moment it looks like the smoke came in at about 5 am, followed by low levels of smoke until about 8 am, before moving off to the east. The stuff that we can see right now is just the non-lower-troposphere smoke, and a little leftover haze.

[7 views, 1 comment as of Sep 16, 2024]

[Posted Jul 18, 2024]

You’ve probably seen somewhere just how bad the wildfires are right now; either from the news, my forecasts, (37 active fires in Alberta yesterday as of 4:00 pm!) or of course, The Weather Network. Their forecast center videos have been screaming at me for the past few days about the smoke, even though the air is crisp and clean.

Taking a look back, in 2023 around this time of year we had a similar amount of fires to now, though maybe we have a few less this year. The fire count was fantastically low before July. The smoke situation however, is astronomically better, with the smoke so far around 10 times lower than last year. In 2023 from January 1 – July 18 there were 29 days with the AQI averaging above 100. This year, only 3 days.

This year

Last year

If you have a burning hatred inside for smoke, thank two very surprising things: 2023 and the heat.

2023 was great for the fires because scientists could do mega-research whenever and wherever they want, because massive fires were literally everywhere for about 5 months. Then there was a conveniently placed winter where a ton of solutions could be developed from the winter, and then tested on those fires that just really didn’t want to hibernate. All these solutions could be easily done when there are not many fires, also known as this year before July.

The heat is more specifically the heat dome. You see, the heat dome is being very heat-domey right now, with very stable air, pressure and temperature. That is at least for the lower troposphere, since anything above that has a ton of convection, enough for me to see a thunderstorm go from Cumulus mediocris to Cumulonimbus capillatus incus in just 20 minutes yesterday! That wind could mean that if the smoke reaches even the middle troposphere, it could collect right over us, partially blocking out the sun. Anyways, the point is, since things are really stable, there just isn’t enough wind for any smoke to come over here.

To answer the question that is the title of this post, the smoke should hold off for at least another week. Once the heat dome breaks down, I’ll be checking those wind maps every day to see when we might finally have some more smoke.

[4 views as of Sep 16, 2024]

[Posted Jul 17, 2024]

Get ready for some records! I’ll start you off with another table:

After taking a look at the table, it seems that our most likely days to break a record are Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday.

These is one more record that looks like it has a very good chance of being broken! This one is the longest amount of consecutive days where the temperature reaches 30. The longest on record happened in 2021 (Leo you already know what I’m referring to) with an entire week, which happened in late June – early July. This heat wave looks like it will rack up 8 or 9 days, starting yesterday and ending mid to late next week.

[2 views as of Sep 16, 2024]

[Posted Jul 16, 2024]

It’s time for some ketchup-catchup! Firsts and lasts have been something I’ve been doing since either August or September (probably September) last year, and I noticed recently that I haven’t done them in a while! Here they are:

June 18 was the last day of the first half of 2024 where the temperature never reaches to 15 or above.

June 19 was the last day of the first half of 2024 where the temperature reaches to 5 or below.

June 27 was the last day of the first half of 2024 where the temperature never reaches to 20 or above.

June 28 was the last day of the first half of 2024 where the temperature reaches to 10 or below.

July 3 was the first day of the second half of 2024 where the temperature never reaches above 20.

[9 views, 1 comment as of Sep 16, 2024]

[Posted Jul 15, 2024]

Some long-term heat will be in effect for about the next two weeks, with a heat warning already sent by Environment Canada.

Of course, any good weather shenanigan like this is the work of the jet stream, who is going to be kind of just staying still, making a strong heat dome right over us for a long time. I really tried to find the culprit pressure system, but I just couldn’t. This one looks like a solely-upper-level low, which might not be a thing. This could be some other rare tactic I don’t know about.

Here’s a table for you to lay out some forecasted temperatures:

When you’re out in the heat, make sure to stay in shade as much as possible, and if you start to overheat, get to someplace cool as fast as possible.

[10 views, 1 comment as of Sep 16, 2024]