Historic Pacific Northwest Heatwave of 2021

[donsutherland1]

1 hour ago, bdgwx said:

 

Canadian news outlets are reporting that 90% of Lytton was destroyed. It’s an awful tragedy.

[psv88]

Awful 

[raindancewx]

I probably come off as an asshole in a lot of these threads, but I am wealthy and I did buy and donate some air conditioning units to some friends who own hardware stores in the Northwest and Canada once this heat wave started to show up in the 5-7 day. 

I work with par sheets, math and statistics in a casino a lot for my job, including forecasting. So even if the odds for this event are 1 in 1,000 or 1 in 1,000,000 in a natural climate, the truth is I've seen award pays listed at 1 in 350,000 or lower odds happen on back to back pulls. The reason it happens in the casino is probably similar to why it happens in the climate. The odds may be super low for an event to happen, but even a place like SW Canada or the Northwest US is only a small portion of the Earth and so those odds are for each square mile of the Earth for each day of the year. The odds are not 1 in 1,000 for the entire Earth to be +50 on a given day. The odds are for one particular spot on the Earth. So the same thing happens with the games, with 1,000+ machines and several featuring multiple denominations, or multiple play options or multiple games within the game (Poker, Blackjack etc) the real world effect is we've given two $500,000+ awards (from the vendor fortunately, not the tribe) in just the past year, even though the machines are setup to pay that much - correctly - at extremely low odds comparable to the odds you see the scientists throw around.

[bluewave]

 

[donsutherland1]

7 hours ago, skierinvermont said:

This was a 1 in a 200,000 year event at Portland on a 1950-1981 century baseline if Don's numbers are right (z=4.37). On a 1991-2000 baseline it was a 1 in 50,000 year event. It's likely a 1 in 15,000 year event on a current baseline. By the time I die (~2080 life exp) I'd expect it to be roughly a 1 in 50 year event, with temperatures slightly below these values occurring every few years.

I'd agree it's very unlikely to recur in the next 10 years. I'd say 50/50 Portland exceeds in my lifetime. Don correct me if I have misunderstood your sigma values.

Here’s a great calculator for converting z-scores into probabilities: https://www.fourmilab.ch/rpkp/experiments/analysis/zCalc.html

Like you, I fully expect the odds of these events to increase as the global climate continues to warm. It’s possible that the extent of extremes is not linear to the extent of warming e.g., each degree rise will result in an increase in both the magnitude of extremes and reduction in return time that is larger than the overall change in temperature (probably now a power relationship but something greater than a linear one).

[donsutherland1]

Weather summary
for British Columbia
issued by Environment Canada
at 5:27 p.m. PDT Thursday 1 July 2021.

Discussion.

The following areas will have set a daily maximum temperature record 
on July 1, 2021: 

Blue River Area (Blue River CS) 
Preliminary new record of 36.9 
Old record of 34.3 set in 2013 
Records in this area have been kept since 1946 

Creston Area (Creston Campbell Scientific) 
Preliminary new record of 38.8 
Old record of 35.5 set in 2013 
Records in this area have been kept since 1912 

Golden Area (Golden Airport) 
Preliminary new record of 37.5 
Old record of 35.6 set in 1940 
Records in this area have been kept since 1902 

Kelowna Area (Kelowna UBCO) 
Preliminary new record of 38.8 
Old record of 36.9 set in 1987 
Records in this area have been kept since 1899 

Nakusp Area (Nakusp CS) 
Preliminary new record of 39.4 
Old record of 34.1 set in 2006 
Records in this area have been kept since 1966 

Nelson Area (Nelson CS) 
Preliminary new record of 39.3 
Old record of 35.0 set in 1924 
Records in this area have been kept since 1904 

Osoyoos Area (Osoyoos CS) 
Preliminary new record of 37.6 
Old record of 36.6 set in 2008 
Records in this area have been kept since 1954 

Penticton Area (Penticton A) 
Preliminary new record of 38.0 
Old record of 36.6 set in 1987 
Records in this area have been kept since 1907 

Sparwood Area (Sparwood CS) 
Preliminary new record of 35.0 
Old record of 32.3 set in 2013 
Records in this area have been kept since 1969 

Summerland Area (Summerland CS) 
Preliminary new record of 39.3 
Old record of 36.5 set in 1987 
Records in this area have been kept since 1907 

Trail Area (Warfield RCS) 
Preliminary new record of 40.0 
Old record of 35.6 set in 1942 
Records in this area have been kept since 1928 

Yoho (National Park) Area (Yoho Park) 
Preliminary new record of 35.0 
Old record of 31.7 set in 1924 
Records in this area have been kept since 1923 

Note: the temperature records reported here have been derived from a 
selection of historical stations in each geographic area that were 
active during the period of record.

Please note that this summary may contain preliminary or unofficial 
information and does not constitute a complete or final report.

End/PSPC

[sojitodd]

7 hours ago, donsutherland1 said:

Canadian news outlets are reporting that 90% of Lytton was destroyed. It’s an awful tragedy.

I saw an overhead pic taken from a helicopter and it is true that 90 percent plus of the town is gone. The main area is just ashes and rubble.  Just really completely burned out and to the ground.

The only good thing is that I have heard nothing about any human fatalities.  I do not know anything about any of the surrounding areas outside of the town itself regarding the fire damage/destruction/extent. But that little town in and of itself is gone.

 

[LibertyBell]

3 hours ago, sojitodd said:

I saw an overhead pic taken from a helicopter and it is true that 90 percent plus of the town is gone. The main area is just ashes and rubble.  Just really completely burned out and to the ground.

The only good thing is that I have heard nothing about any human fatalities.  I do not know anything about any of the surrounding areas outside of the town itself regarding the fire damage/destruction/extent. But that little town in and of itself is gone.

 

a million lightning strikes from pyrocumulus clouds created by the intense fires in 15 hours, local meteorologists saying that this is the worst firestorm they've ever seen wow

 

[LibertyBell]

6 hours ago, donsutherland1 said:

Here’s a great calculator for converting z-scores into probabilities: https://www.fourmilab.ch/rpkp/experiments/analysis/zCalc.html

Like you, I fully expect the odds of these events to increase as the global climate continues to warm. It’s possible that the extent of extremes is not linear to the extent of warming e.g., each degree rise will result in an increase in both the magnitude of extremes and reduction in return time that is larger than the overall change in temperature (probably now a power relationship but something greater than a linear one).

Sad to say this but like I said to you in the other thread, we need more events like these and a full on planetary catastrophe to topple the current unsustainable system and to actually get these corrupt politicians to act.

[LibertyBell]

9 hours ago, raindancewx said:

I probably come off as an asshole in a lot of these threads, but I am wealthy and I did buy and donate some air conditioning units to some friends who own hardware stores in the Northwest and Canada once this heat wave started to show up in the 5-7 day. 

I work with par sheets, math and statistics in a casino a lot for my job, including forecasting. So even if the odds for this event are 1 in 1,000 or 1 in 1,000,000 in a natural climate, the truth is I've seen award pays listed at 1 in 350,000 or lower odds happen on back to back pulls. The reason it happens in the casino is probably similar to why it happens in the climate. The odds may be super low for an event to happen, but even a place like SW Canada or the Northwest US is only a small portion of the Earth and so those odds are for each square mile of the Earth for each day of the year. The odds are not 1 in 1,000 for the entire Earth to be +50 on a given day. The odds are for one particular spot on the Earth. So the same thing happens with the games, with 1,000+ machines and several featuring multiple denominations, or multiple play options or multiple games within the game (Poker, Blackjack etc) the real world effect is we've given two $500,000+ awards (from the vendor fortunately, not the tribe) in just the past year, even though the machines are setup to pay that much - correctly - at extremely low odds comparable to the odds you see the scientists throw around.

If you're going to defend Exxon's behavior you're dumber than I thought.

Greenpeace are planetary heroes and Exxon is as bad as any terrorist organization that has ever existed.

 

[LibertyBell]

11 hours ago, skierinvermont said:

As bad as the air gets with the CA OR ID fires... my fear is it will only get worse when WA and BC really start burning 20 or 30 years from now. At a certain point the trees up there which are adapted for cooler weather are just going to die enmasse.

Nate would've hated to see this, I know he was passionate about climate change and politics.

 

[TimB]

12 hours ago, raindancewx said:

I probably come off as an asshole in a lot of these threads, but I am wealthy and I did buy and donate some air conditioning units to some friends who own hardware stores in the Northwest and Canada once this heat wave started to show up in the 5-7 day. 

I work with par sheets, math and statistics in a casino a lot for my job, including forecasting. So even if the odds for this event are 1 in 1,000 or 1 in 1,000,000 in a natural climate, the truth is I've seen award pays listed at 1 in 350,000 or lower odds happen on back to back pulls. The reason it happens in the casino is probably similar to why it happens in the climate. The odds may be super low for an event to happen, but even a place like SW Canada or the Northwest US is only a small portion of the Earth and so those odds are for each square mile of the Earth for each day of the year. The odds are not 1 in 1,000 for the entire Earth to be +50 on a given day. The odds are for one particular spot on the Earth. So the same thing happens with the games, with 1,000+ machines and several featuring multiple denominations, or multiple play options or multiple games within the game (Poker, Blackjack etc) the real world effect is we've given two $500,000+ awards (from the vendor fortunately, not the tribe) in just the past year, even though the machines are setup to pay that much - correctly - at extremely low odds comparable to the odds you see the scientists throw around.

Here’s the thing. The area affected by this heatwave is about 1/360 of the earth’s land area (I used the area of Washington and Oregon as an estimate - I know there were parts of Canada affected too, so that’s probably a lowball estimate). But for the sake of argument, let’s say this was a 50,000 year event on average. If you divide the earth into 360 equal parcels of land and OR/WA is one of them, you would expect one of these parcels to experience a 1-in-50,000 year event about once every 50,000/360 = 140 years. But I feel like I’ve read in this thread that the Siberia event last year was also of similar magnitude (and did someone say the March 2012 event in the Midwest?). So instead of once every 140 years, we’ve now had it happen to 3 of these 360 parcels of land in 9 years. That’s statistically significant and a strong indicator that the dice are loaded.

[donsutherland1]

2 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

Sad to say this but like I said to you in the other thread, we need more events like these and a full on planetary catastrophe to topple the current unsustainable system and to actually get these corrupt politicians to act.

No disaster will be large enough to break through the denier crowd. Their denial of climate change is an article of faith. What’s needed is a critical mass of political leaders who have the courage to do what’s needed and the foresight to distinguish the big long-term issues from short-term considerations that divert them from addressing the latter. 

[LibertyBell]

6 minutes ago, donsutherland1 said:

No disaster will be large enough to break through the denier crowd. Their denial of climate change is an article of faith. What’s needed is a critical mass of political leaders who have the courage to do what’s needed and the foresight to distinguish the big long-term issues from short-term considerations that divert them from addressing the latter. 

The thing is I dont think the politicians and corporate type are deniers, they simply do not care.  Which is worse.  They will start to care when their homes start to burn down and their businesses go bye bye.  Which is what needs to happen.

I've been heavily influenced by Isaac Asimov who was talking about these things back in the 80s (see some old people are smart   and he stated that real progress needs something horrible to happen first, and progress is predictable in this way when it comes after a catastrophe (I think this was one of the tenets of psychohistory....a way to predict the future..... and at least partially based on punctuated equilibrium.....which is a modification of evolution, which states that much higher rates of evolution happen after huge mass extinction events, and if it wasn't for these catastrophes evolution would be much slower.))

 

[LibertyBell]

8 minutes ago, TimB84 said:

Here’s the thing. The area affected by this heatwave is about 1/360 of the earth’s land area (I used the area of Washington and Oregon as an estimate - I know there were parts of Canada affected too, so that’s probably a lowball estimate). But for the sake of argument, let’s say this was a 50,000 year event on average. If you divide the earth into 360 equal parcels of land and OR/WA is one of them, you would expect one of these parcels to experience a 1-in-50,000 year event about once every 50,000/360 = 140 years. But I feel like I’ve read in this thread that the Siberia event last year was also of similar magnitude (and did someone say the March 2012 event in the Midwest?). So instead of once every 140 years, we’ve now had it happen to 3 of these 360 parcels of land in 9 years. That’s statistically significant and a strong indicator that the dice are loaded.

People are thinking this is some isolated event....did they conveniently forget it hit 100 in Siberia just last year and they had a 6 month AVERAGE of 20 F above normal?

 

[LibertyBell]

13 minutes ago, TimB84 said:

Here’s the thing. The area affected by this heatwave is about 1/360 of the earth’s land area (I used the area of Washington and Oregon as an estimate - I know there were parts of Canada affected too, so that’s probably a lowball estimate). But for the sake of argument, let’s say this was a 50,000 year event on average. If you divide the earth into 360 equal parcels of land and OR/WA is one of them, you would expect one of these parcels to experience a 1-in-50,000 year event about once every 50,000/360 = 140 years. But I feel like I’ve read in this thread that the Siberia event last year was also of similar magnitude (and did someone say the March 2012 event in the Midwest?). So instead of once every 140 years, we’ve now had it happen to 3 of these 360 parcels of land in 9 years. That’s statistically significant and a strong indicator that the dice are loaded.

Yeah I mentioned Siberia several times in multiple threads lol.  The March 2012 heatwave and what we had in the east in December 2015 are two more good cases in point.  Talking about +10 F departures in those two.  Skiier may be correct in saying he has a 50/50 chance of experiencing something of a similar magnitude over the same region in his lifetime, but over the entire globe it has to be 50/50 per decade to experience it somewhere on the planet....or maybe even higher?  Maybe 50/50 to have it happen somewhere on the globe every 5 years since it happened twice in the 2010s and twice already in the 2020s?  Meh, it should be even higher if it's already happened twice in the 2020s....on a global level it might be something more like 50/50 to get it every other year.  I think Australia had similar hot and dry conditions before their expansive forest fires....so maybe it's even higher than that, maybe 50/50 to get it every year?

 

 

[LibertyBell]

So by my recollection, at least since 2010.... we have Midwest March 2012, Northeast December 2015, Australia 2019, Siberia 2020, and now Pac NW 2021?

 

[TimB]

3 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

Yeah I mentioned Siberia several times in multiple threads lol.  The March 2012 heatwave and what we had in the east in December 2015 are two more good cases in point.  Talking about +10 F departures in those two.

 

I forgot about the December 2015 event. I’d be surprised if it would be considered as anomalous as the others, but it speaks volumes that we now have the bar set at a level where that event can be forgotten when thinking about ridiculous warmth. I think we were +12 at my location for the month. The thing that stood out about the March 2012 event was that locations were breaking high temperature records at midnight, and I believe even once or twice there was a location whose low temperature for a day broke the previous record high.

[LibertyBell]

Just now, TimB84 said:

I forgot about the December 2015 event. I’d be surprised if it would be considered as anomalous as the others, but it speaks volumes that we now have the bar set at a level where that event can be forgotten when thinking about ridiculous warmth. I think we were +12 at my location for the month. The thing that stood out about the March 2012 event was that locations were breaking high temperature records at midnight, and I believe even once or twice there was a location whose low temperature for a day broke the previous record high.

Also added in Australia 2019 when those horrible wildfires happened and record heat and drought.

 

[TimB]

2 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

So by my recollection, at least since 2010.... we have Midwest March 2012, Northeast December 2015, Australia 2019, Siberia 2020, and now Pac NW 2021?

 

Not quite as anomalous on a day to day level, but I think you have to give a nod to Phoenix’s 2020 summer.

[LibertyBell]

We really do need to start naming these high magnitude events.....I would call this event  Diablo.  Use local language and folklore to name them.

Or just go by corporate names to shame fossil fuel companies and force them to pay for the damage caused and lives lost with lawsuits....Exxon, Chevron, BP, etc. lol

[LibertyBell]

1 minute ago, TimB84 said:

Not quite as anomalous on a day to day level, but I think you have to give a nod to Phoenix’s 2020 summer.

Yes, the heat and drought there looks like the area is going to be in need for new sources of water.

 

[donsutherland1]

4 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

So by my recollection, at least since 2010.... we have Midwest March 2012, Northeast December 2015, Australia 2019, Siberia 2020, and now Pac NW 2021?

 

Some other recent notable heat events:

June 2019: Europe

July 2019: Europe (Paris hit 108 during this event)

Summer 2019 in Alaska

Summer 2020 in the Southwest (Death Valley hit 130 and Phoenix had its most 100-degree, 105-degree, 110-degree, and 115-degree temperatures on record)

[TimB]

1 minute ago, donsutherland1 said:

Some other recent notable heat events:

June 2019: Europe

July 2019: Europe (Paris hit 108 during this event)

Summer 2019 in Alaska

Summer 2020 in the Southwest (Death Valley hit 130 and Phoenix had its most 100-degree, 105-degree, 110-degree, and 115-degree temperatures on record)

I would guess that the Europe event was fairly similar in magnitude/return interval to this one in the Northwest, but I haven’t looked at the data.

[rclab]

18 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

The thing is I dont think the politicians and corporate type are deniers, they simply do not care.  Which is worse.  They will start to care when their homes start to burn down and their businesses go bye bye.  Which is what needs to happen.

I've been heavily influenced by Isaac Asimov who was talking about these things back in the 80s (see some old people are smart   and he stated that real progress needs something horrible to happen first, and progress is predictable in this way when it comes after a catastrophe (I think this was one of the tenets of psychohistory....a way to predict the future..... and at least partially based on punctuated equilibrium.....which is a modification of evolution, which states that much higher rates of evolution happen after huge mass extinction events, and if it wasn't for these catastrophes evolution would be much slower.))

 

Good morning, Liberty. Once the reality of climate change is shown to be a money maker, the cause and treatment will be embraced whole heartedly by the corporate world and their client politicians. Perhaps the $ clean up from a catastrophic event may be what it takes. As always ….

[LibertyBell]

8 minutes ago, donsutherland1 said:

Some other recent notable heat events:

June 2019: Europe

July 2019: Europe (Paris hit 108 during this event)

Summer 2019 in Alaska

Summer 2020 in the Southwest (Death Valley hit 130 and Phoenix had its most 100-degree, 105-degree, 110-degree, and 115-degree temperatures on record)

yes I remember the Europe event!  London hit 100!

Alaska now too that you mentioned it, like 5 straight days of 85+?

and that historic 130 at Death Valley, probably the highest temp ever recorded reliably and the first 130 on the globe!

 

[LibertyBell]

Okay so this is a lot more than just 50/50 to experience it globally once a year lol.

 

[LibertyBell]

7 minutes ago, rclab said:

Good morning, Liberty. Once the reality of climate change is shown to be a money maker, the cause and treatment will be embraced whole heartedly by the corporate world and their client politicians. Perhaps the $ clean up from a catastrophic event may be what it takes. As always ….

The exxon thing really got to me, they actually think they can keep using this stuff indefinitely?

They need to be taxed into oblivion.

And everyone should buy electric cars.

 

[LibertyBell]

And we should follow the example of the French and dust off the old guillotine....

 

[LibertyBell]

6 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

And we should follow the example of the French and dust off the old guillotine....

 

and this isn't just about the fossil fuel cartels, it also applies to Dow Chemical and DuPont  and Monsanto/Bayer and all other conglomerates that do evil things and cover them up.