Every kind of weather is about to hit the US

Almost all areas of the United States receive hit by wild weather or about to be.

Days of showers have begun in Hawaii. The Southwest will soon be baking day after day with record heat of over 100 degrees (38 Celsius plus). Two storms will dump snow by the feet on the northern Great Lakes states. And the formidable polar vortex will once again invade the Midwest and East with A heartbreaking arctic cold.

This prediction of extremes comes as weather whiplash has already hit much of the East. Residents in Washington, D.C., walked around in shorts in a record high temperature of 86 degrees Fahrenheit (about 30 C) on Wednesday. Thursday it snowed.

“The whole country, even though you don’t necessarily see extremes, is generally going to go from cold to warm, or from warm to cold to warm,” said meteorologist Marc Chenard of the National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center in Maryland.

Former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief scientist Ryan Maue said he expects severe weather in all 50 states.

Triple-digit heat persists in the Southwest

A heat dome will form early next week and station itself over the Southwest, bringing triple-digit temperatures not seen this early in the year, Maue and Chenard said.

Some forecasts call for 98 F (nearly 37 C) in Phoenix on Tuesday, followed by 103, 105 and two days of 107 (almost 42 C). In 137 years of record-keeping, Phoenix has never reached 100 degrees before March 26 and typically hits its first 100-degree day in early May, according to the weather service, which warned: “As we are not accustomed to this level of heat this early in the year, this will have more impact than usual.” »

This has already started in Los Angeles, with Unusual 90 degree weather in March which had people in shorts and tank tops seeking shade wherever they could find it, even if it was as thin as a light pole.

Shane Dixon, 40, usually runs about 5 miles near his home in Culver City without much effort, he said, his face glistening with sweat and his T-shirt tucked into his shorts. But Thursday was difficult because of the heat and he had to cut it short.

“My neck was melting,” he said. But he preferred it to the cold and snow that would hit elsewhere.

“I could literally get soaked and walk in the sun, and I’d be fine home. If it was freezing cold, I couldn’t do that,” he said.

Single-digit cold invades the North

Around the same time the heat begins to blow through Phoenix, the polar vortex — a system that typically keeps frigid air trapped near the North Pole — is expected to send its cold deep into the Midwest and East, even limiting part of the Southeast, Maue said.

Minneapolis will hover around zero (-18°C) for a low, and Chicago will be in the single digits on Tuesday. The next day saw “temperatures in the range of 10 to 20°C in the Northeast and 20°C in the mid-Atlantic,” Maue said. Even Atlanta could dip into the 20s.

One-two blow of snowstorm

Two back-to-back storm systems — one Friday, then another Sunday through Monday — will occur along the northern part of the country and the Great Lakes and between them could dump 3 to 4 feet (0.91 to 1.22 meters) of snow in places, Maue said.

This second, larger storm system will see its barometric pressure drop so quickly and abruptly – meaning it intensifies and winds strengthen – that it will qualify as a bomb cyclone, which is quite unusual to develop on land. Normally, bombarded cyclones draw their energy from warm ocean waters, but this one will draw from the polar vortex.

Just south of the area of ​​Michigan where heavy snow will fall, there is potential for a significant ice storm, said meteorologist Jeff Masters of Yale Climate Connections.

Strong winds are coming to Texas

An area stretching from Kansas south through Oklahoma and across Texas to the Gulf of Mexico is expected to experience high winds in the 97 mph range with gusts a little higher Sunday evening, Masters said.

San Antonio and Austin are in a high wind zone, and places where there hasn’t been much rain will be at increased risk of wildfires, Masters said.

Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen declared a state of emergency and mobilized the National Guard to help fight two dozen wildfires that have burned more than 550 square miles (about 1,424 square kilometers) of rangelands and grasslands. High winds with gusts up to 60 mph and low humidity have fueled the fires and made them difficult to contain, but no one has been injured so far, the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency said Friday.

Even Alaska and Hawaii aren’t quite right

Maue said Hawaii was receiving an atmospheric river with rain so heavy and persistent that flooding would be a major problem. Oahu is under a flash flood warning.

And Alaska is normally freezing now, but it will be about 30 degrees cooler than usual, he said.

It’s “the time of year when we can see things like this,” Chenard said. “But it still seems abnormal compared to what we usually see. I mean, some of these areas will set records. Record temperatures for March and maybe multiple times.”

Over the past week, tornadoes have killed at least eight people in Oklahoma, Michigan and Indiana. The severe storm forecast doesn’t look as big or widespread for next week, but dangerous thunderstorms could pop up “anywhere from the Mississippi Valley to the East Coast” on Sunday or Monday, Chenard said.

The jet stream is going crazy

At the root of it all is a jet stream gone wild, Maue and Chenard said.

The jet stream is a river of air that moves weather from west to east in a trajectory similar to that of a roller coaster. Usually the dives are as gentle as a children’s roller coaster. But now this jet stream is hurtling down almost vertical, scream-inducing drops, followed by straight ups.

“Which means you get a lot of extremes next to each other,” Maue said. Storm fronts coming from the Pacific hit that high-pressure heat dome in the Southwest and are pushed northward to climb the jet stream’s mountaintop, “access that reservoir of cold air up there” and bring it back south over the other side of the hill, he said.

Many studies have linked unusual jet stream And polar vortex activity related to shrinking Arctic sea ice and human-caused climate change.

But there is hope.

“The first day of spring is (March) 20, and then we get recovery,” Maue said.

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Associated Press writer Dorany Pineda contributed from Los Angeles; Margery Beck contributed from Omaha, Nebraska.

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