American weather
With the United States of America getting ready to celebrate Independence Day, the pattern is representative of the nature of weather this country has.
We have scorching heat & frigid cold, droughts & floods, blizzards, hurricanes, nor’easters, derechos, dust storms, and everything in between. No wonder so many people like me are weather geeks!
The geography of the 48 contiguous lends itself to such wild weather: the juxtaposition between the Arctic, tropics, Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Ocean including the Gulf of Mexico and Gulf Stream, with topography ranging from broad plains to high mountains.
While other parts of the world have their share of extreme weather including the aforementioned phenomena, nowhere else do all the factors come together quite in this way, including more tornadoes by far than in any other country.
And ingredients are present for a hazardous holiday weekend. This is a time with many people having outdoor plans, and there’ll be dangers, including severe thunderstorms in the Northeast this afternoon ahead of a cold front and others scattered elsewhere, then the stormy weather will be most concentrated during the next few days in a zone along that front separating air to the north that’s quite cool for July from heat and humidity to the south.
Along that, a series of mesoscale convective systems (an MCS is an organized area of thunderstorms) will bring torrential rain and the threat of flash flooding as well as a lot of cloud-to-ground lightning and local strong wind gusts.
Stay attuned to the weather, and have a great — and safe — holiday weekend!
