>
ABOVE GRAPHIC FROM THE WEATHER CHANNEL (www.weather.com)
ABOVE GRAPHIC FROM ACCUWEATHER PRO SITE
This is from Jesse Ferrell’s blog, check this amazing information out…
Cold Records in Cuba, Bahamas, Central Amer.
UPDATE: Some updates to the Cuba situation have been added below, along with a statement from Mexico about the winter being the worst in 124 years, plus news from the Honduras and El Salvador thanks to an email from Alexandre at the Metsul Blog.
So yesterday morning Key West, Florida got down to 42 degrees. In the over 50,000 days of historical records there since 1873, there had only been two mornings equal to or colder than yesterday morning. 30’s were observed in the Keys and the freezing mark made it down to the southernmost part of Florida. I have annotated the AccuWeather.com graphic below with arrows pointing to the cities quoted (for those of you who don’t know airport codes).
UPDATE: OVER 1,900 LOW TEMP RECORDS AFFECTED IN U.S.
UPDATE: Some updates to the Cuba situation have been added below, along with a statement from Mexico about the winter being the worst in 124 years, plus news from the Honduras and El Salvador thanks to an email from Alexandre at the Metsul Blog.
So yesterday morning Key West, Florida got down to 42 degrees. In the over 50,000 days of historical records there since 1873, there had only been two mornings equal to or colder than yesterday morning. 30’s were observed in the Keys and the freezing mark made it down to the southernmost part of Florida. I have annotated the AccuWeather.com graphic below with arrows pointing to the cities quoted (for those of you who don’t know airport codes).
UPDATE: OVER 1,900 LOW TEMP RECORDS AFFECTED IN U.S.
That made me think: what about the Bahamas, Cuba, and northeast Mexico – how close did they get to their records? The Bahamas Weather Service website says “The lowest recorded temperature was 41.4°F on January 20th, 1981.” (1981 was also the last time that Key West set their record of 41). But yesterday morning Freeport fell to 41 degrees according to AccuWeather’s climate database (available on our Pro Site — the official station has not been transmitting observations very often so we’d need confirmation on that reading from the weather service in the Bahamas, I have sent them an email). If that’s true, then they tied or broke their all-time record low for the country (data has been kept there since 1970). There are some related human interest stories at The Tribune and I have some emails out for further comment on the cold there.
Did it snow in the Bahamas yesterday? You may have noticed the persistent bands of clouds and precipitation on satellite and radar yesterday especially east of Miami (shown above). The clouds in general were formed by the extremely cold water pouring out onto the warm ocean (something that was caught on camera last year in North Carolina – yes I looked at the Gulf Buoy cam (link) hoping to see something interesting but it was too far away). Additional convergence of winds kept the band east of Miami going all night and day yesterday.
Did it snow in the Bahamas yesterday? You may have noticed the persistent bands of clouds and precipitation on satellite and radar yesterday especially east of Miami (shown above). The clouds in general were formed by the extremely cold water pouring out onto the warm ocean (something that was caught on camera last year in North Carolina – yes I looked at the Gulf Buoy cam (link) hoping to see something interesting but it was too far away). Additional convergence of winds kept the band east of Miami going all night and day yesterday.
These types of clouds (essentially causing “ocean-effect” precipitation, formed in the same way as lake-effect clouds) are not unusual on the mid-Atlantic coast but are rarely seen this far south. The band of precipitation never got close enough to Florida for us to see any observations of what was falling from it, and as noted the observations from Freeport were few and far between. But since our Snow/Ice/Rain radar chose to call it rain even during the night when the 41 was achieved at Freeport, I think it unlikely that any of it was snow. That occurrence is not unprecedented; again if we look to the Bahamas website they say “on January 19th, 1977… parts of the northern Bahamas experienced a brief flurry of light snow.”
Now… the cold air didn’t stop at Key West, it flowed on south into the Caribbean. Here is a map showing the lowest temperatures this month:
Now… the cold air didn’t stop at Key West, it flowed on south into the Caribbean. Here is a map showing the lowest temperatures this month:
I figured the next stop was Cuba. The farthest north coastal station is Havana. Records for Cuba are harder to find but this website says that the all-time record low at Havana City was “6.0 (0 at Rancho Boyero)”. That’s in Celsius so that means 42.8 F. (I’ll ignore the 0C/32F since it was at a different station location which was probably higher in elevation). Havana fell to 39 degrees F (4 C) this morning according to official observations (yesterday morning they had too much of an on-shore flow warming the area), so it would appear that all-time record low for that city was also broken. Here is a reprint of additional information translated from the MetSul Blog:
“In Ciego de Avila, with 5.2 º C, recorded the lowest minimum in January to date since the beginning of observations, beating the record of 6.0 C in 1997. The same happened in Falla with 5.4 º C, well below the lowest minimum in January so far of 6.3 º C in 1981. In Caibarie, the minimum was absolute record for the entire series of the season with 10.7 º C, below the previous mark of 10.8 C in 1996. This weekend, a new front in the Arctic comes to Cuba and not only extend the freeze to strengthen it. The record cold for Cuba date of February 18, 1996 with the record of 0.6 ° C at station Bainoa, province of La Habana.”
Some more from Alexandres at Metsul: This article (en Espanol) says that local meteorologists have been having to explain that it will not snow in Cuba, despite the cold temperatures, but says that it was colder in 1970 and 1996 (Google Toolbar is a great way to automatically translate web pages if you have it). Mexico’s NWS is calling this the “coldest winter in 124 years”. In Honduras, one person died from hypothermia and parts of El Salvador are under “yellow alert” due to a cold front with high winds and temperatures between 4 and 8C.
Alexandre also says “according to a bulletin released by the Cuban Weather Service today, the low temperature at the Jose Marti Airport was 3.7C (38.7F) at 3:39 AM., even lower than the 4C indicated in the METAR ob. Today, there was a news piece in the Cuban media quoting a weather research that revelead it snow in the higher parts of Cuba in January 1852.”
Then this morning I got an email from blog reader Luis who said: “Here, in Guatemala, I think we are not setting new low records, but it’s really cold… There is in our country the tallest volcano in Central America, the Tajumulco, and it’s the first time in my 50 years old that I have seen it snowed at the top.” Wikipedia confirms this in December 2009. Looking at the only city that I have climate records for in the country on our Pro site, the Guatemala Airport, the coldest temperature since then was 46 F yesterday morning, which is confirmed with the NOAA obs. According to this website the coldest temperature ever recorded at the airport is 7C or 44.6 F; that city’s all-time record may be safe (pending today’s data), but it was close. As far as the entire country of Guatemala, Chris Burt, Author of “Extreme Weather” says that it has been as cold as 12 degrees in the mountains at Labor Ovalle but we have no way of knowing how cold it was there during this cold outbreak.
I also looked at Cancun, Mexico but it only got down to 55 F there this week (13 C), which is a far cry from the record of 7.2 C. Nearby Merida was 12C vs. 5C. The map above says Chetumal made it down to 50 F but I can’t find records for that city.
So to summarize, this is what I would have appeared to uncover (assuming no errors, and pursuant to the records being made official from the respective governments and assuming this website is correct with it’s records):
– The Bahamas broke their all-time country record low temperature- Havana Cuba broke their all-time city record low temperature- Guatemala City came within 1.4 degrees of breaking their all-time city record low temperature.
“In Ciego de Avila, with 5.2 º C, recorded the lowest minimum in January to date since the beginning of observations, beating the record of 6.0 C in 1997. The same happened in Falla with 5.4 º C, well below the lowest minimum in January so far of 6.3 º C in 1981. In Caibarie, the minimum was absolute record for the entire series of the season with 10.7 º C, below the previous mark of 10.8 C in 1996. This weekend, a new front in the Arctic comes to Cuba and not only extend the freeze to strengthen it. The record cold for Cuba date of February 18, 1996 with the record of 0.6 ° C at station Bainoa, province of La Habana.”
Some more from Alexandres at Metsul: This article (en Espanol) says that local meteorologists have been having to explain that it will not snow in Cuba, despite the cold temperatures, but says that it was colder in 1970 and 1996 (Google Toolbar is a great way to automatically translate web pages if you have it). Mexico’s NWS is calling this the “coldest winter in 124 years”. In Honduras, one person died from hypothermia and parts of El Salvador are under “yellow alert” due to a cold front with high winds and temperatures between 4 and 8C.
Alexandre also says “according to a bulletin released by the Cuban Weather Service today, the low temperature at the Jose Marti Airport was 3.7C (38.7F) at 3:39 AM., even lower than the 4C indicated in the METAR ob. Today, there was a news piece in the Cuban media quoting a weather research that revelead it snow in the higher parts of Cuba in January 1852.”
Then this morning I got an email from blog reader Luis who said: “Here, in Guatemala, I think we are not setting new low records, but it’s really cold… There is in our country the tallest volcano in Central America, the Tajumulco, and it’s the first time in my 50 years old that I have seen it snowed at the top.” Wikipedia confirms this in December 2009. Looking at the only city that I have climate records for in the country on our Pro site, the Guatemala Airport, the coldest temperature since then was 46 F yesterday morning, which is confirmed with the NOAA obs. According to this website the coldest temperature ever recorded at the airport is 7C or 44.6 F; that city’s all-time record may be safe (pending today’s data), but it was close. As far as the entire country of Guatemala, Chris Burt, Author of “Extreme Weather” says that it has been as cold as 12 degrees in the mountains at Labor Ovalle but we have no way of knowing how cold it was there during this cold outbreak.
I also looked at Cancun, Mexico but it only got down to 55 F there this week (13 C), which is a far cry from the record of 7.2 C. Nearby Merida was 12C vs. 5C. The map above says Chetumal made it down to 50 F but I can’t find records for that city.
So to summarize, this is what I would have appeared to uncover (assuming no errors, and pursuant to the records being made official from the respective governments and assuming this website is correct with it’s records):
– The Bahamas broke their all-time country record low temperature- Havana Cuba broke their all-time city record low temperature- Guatemala City came within 1.4 degrees of breaking their all-time city record low temperature.
Link to this blog post.
Thanks for reading.
-Mark
Email me at superior37@hotmail.com
>I love you articles, he has deeply attracted me. I believe you will be published out more and more excellent works, I'm looking forward to it! Hope you can live a happy life!
>I agree, the weather is so warm here in Northern Canada.
>Thankfully, summer is just around the corner. Here in Fife we are seeing warm temperatures once more. The snow has melted. I've been slapping on the factor 50 today to protect myself from the global warming.