>Across North America, the heat was to be found across the southern states to Southwest deserts and all the way to Alaska and Northwest Territories where incredible heat penetrated the Arctic circle with places pushing the 80s and 90s. All this unusual heat was a byproduct to the bowl of unusual cold found across a vast majority of the lower 48 as well as the source region of this cold centered across central and eastern Canada. The heat rimmed the major trough and possibly building heat forced south and around the dominant cold pool. The highly amplified pattern drew heat north whilst across the center and east of the nation northwest flow aloft drew down cold air keeping 90s out of Fargo, Minneapolis, Chicago, Indianapolis, State College to New York City bringing one of the coldest July’s on record, some areas did experience their coldest ever July. International Falls, Minn saw their coldest with an average of 55 degrees and -7 below normal for the month.
The Southwest was hot for sure, but not as bad as it could have been, no all-time records challenged but where the heat was most impressive was the Pacific Northwest where of course Portland topped 106 degrees, 1 degree shy of the record, Seattle broke it’s all-time record with 103 degrees, I said before and will say again, if it were not the the heat and high pressure system not squeezed and forced north by a powerful cold pool and in-between jet to the east of Washington and Oregon, there would have been more area coverage of the heat, therefore destributing the heat outwards and possibly not as much heat would be generated and focused an a smaller area. Compressional heating, powerful high pressure and most importantly, the east downslope flow off the Cascades brought the hottest air mass ever recorded to normally comfortable Seattle. The extreme heat is caused by extreme cold and earth is merely balancing it’s out.
Amazingly, here in Glasgow, Scotland we started very warm and dry then turned dramatically cooler, wetter and unsettled as a trough dropped out of Scandinavia and the Atlantic, forcing the ridge east, The North Africa, Mediterannean high has brought stunning heat to Europe where Spain saw high’s of 45C and with stronger high pressure meant a strong northeast toi southeast flow brought downsloping desert winds over the Atlas Range of Morrocco bringing them 120 degree heat right to the Atlantic coast, very unusual heat has dominated their summer or at least July as coastal Morrocco normally only experiences 80s. This super hot air off the Sahara has also brought a 42 degree tempeature to the normally beautiful comfortable Canary Islands but those same hot, Sahara winds have pushed temps to between 100-109 degrees.
Glasgow, Scotland’s peak high this summer was 79 recorded back in June. Recent days brought highs to 74 in Barrow, Alaska’s Arctic coast, 91 was recorded in the Northwest Territories, 89 in west-central Yukon and indeed 91 in Fairbanks (much warmer than Glasgow), even right on the Arctic coast, many miles north of the Arctic Circle, where snow and frozen ground remain throughout the year sometimes and home to Ice Road Truckers, The town of Tuktoyaktuk topped a stunning 81 sizzling degrees!
Coming up later today I will share my thoughts of August in the Tropical Atlantic and potential threats to the US the remaining months of the 2009 season.

Thanks for reading.
-Mark