Honestly, this historic heat dome across the West is really hard to put into words for me. Temperatures over 110°F (43°C) in March, shattering all-time monthly records on multiple consecutive days, and not just by a little.
➡️ I can confirm this is human-caused climate change.
Graphic by https://polarwx.com/models/.
Don't worry, conservatives will just call it early Summer!
It's all fine.
Let's do more coal!
I'm pretty depressed about the summer.
I really wish our the wealthy in our world weren't choosing mass death
@cutesobri @alienghic @ZLabe Most people, of any class, don't really think that much about the future.
But many of the wealthiest are well aware of possible cataclysms, and are devoting energy to gathering power (even via fossil fuels) and preparing for collapse. Sometimes without even pretending to join in efforts to, y'know, actually head off the worst.
(Rushkoff turned this into a whole book:) https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff
@cutesobri @alienghic @ZLabe They are making a ton of choices, and some of them make different choices. Like MacKenzie Scott.
I think I get what you're saying though, maybe? There's all kinds of systemic pressures on anyone who has gathered power, that make it less likely that they will make wise choices. So, often, it's less about convincing them to change, or replacing them with wiser people, than it is about shifting systems, for example such that there are no such concentrations of power?
@cutesobri @alienghic @ZLabe And instead live a system bringing together everything we know (and keep learning) about interdependence - our dependencies on, and support of, not only each other but the rest of life!
Collective celebration & mourning. In-person and distributed collaboration, connection, rhythms, flow, the power of weak links, rough consensus & running code, appropriate technology, clarity & honesty, empathy, subsidiarity, transparency & accountability, sortiition & mini-publics…
Yeah I've read both the article and the book.
And now both of us OOW with no A/C for the third year and definitely-counting. Sweet. 😐
Radiant heat is the bastard of it all. Can feel the heat pulse from the walls into the rooms, pushing from all sides.
I'm turning the room furthest from any direct sun into a compartmentalized cool room for the pets and us.
@ZLabe
I was born and raised in Tempe, Arizona. My family is still in that valley, and has been for four generations. Though some of us have escaped, they seem trapped. Towns on the Mogollon Rim are deserted due to a lack of well water, Summers are starting earlier, lasting later, and experiencing higher temperatures than ever. Each year gets worse, and people are still moving in!
I'm grateful that I escaped to the Pacific Northwest in 2009, and only hope that more family does the same.
What has me worried is that these sorts of heat domes will show up in the summer months.. along with deadly heat index.
People seem to forget that plant life also has to transpire water in order to keep their leaves from cooking in the sun.
He’s stressed greenery may not have enough moisture to keep themselves from frying. Oh, was that the 7% more water vapor capacity, sucking all the moisture out of the ground?
This is global
Do the two innermost circles have higher air pressure than the outer rings spreading across the continents?
@Freedom2B @ZLabe
In the top right corner it says "contour lines are 500hPa Geopotential height"
Had to read up what that meant:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geopotential_height
As I understand it:
500hPa is the "normal" pressure level at 5570m or 18200ft above sea level.
The map shows how high that pressure level is in that weather situation.
The inner pink, red, orange circles are much higher than that, up to 5940m in the center. (I guess the numbers are in 10s of meters, the first line in the white zone says 558)
I think one can visualize that literally like a dome, like the air supported domes used as sports halls.
Instead of a compressor, that meteorological dome is "supported" or fueled by the heat at ground level, which heats up air, which rises up into higher atmospheric levels, like a hot air ballon.
The hotter the ground, the more and hotter air mass is genererated, the further that air rises up until it reaches the 500hPa pressure level.
I imagine it like the hot air and combustion gases that are funneled up above a campfire, as can be seen by the stream of embers floating up into the sky, and, if there's a lot or long living embers, one can see that the hot gas mass eventually does not rise up any more, the embers move I'm an arc, then horizontally, and eventually sink down towards the ground, some distance away from the campfire itself.
That way, there's a mini heat dome above the fire.
Despite this scientific consensus, the fossil fuel industry continues to sue for the ability to keep frying the planet with their toxic products.
It keeps public corruption & buying politicians.
It keeps fomenting 'divide & conquer' wars.
It keeps evading taxation & accountability for cleanups.
It fosters energy wasting tech like cryptocurrency & AI.
https://thetyee.ca/News/2026/03/20/Australian-Mining-Billionaire-Sues-Canada/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/15/billionaire-curb-power-movement
@ZLabe Your president says there is no such thing as climate change. 😂
Science should come up with a way to make Trump disappear.
Not our usual Mid March and Vernal Equinox Weather.
In the low to mid 90s most of this week in coastal San Diego.
Historically this time is 60-70 F highs each day
@ZLabe i'm sorry did you say 43? 43 sounds like a typo, an error, a completely incomprehensible level of heat. I heat things to 50 some times to guarantee any bugs are dead. But 43 is just outside... In MARCH??? I'm quite happy I live in Canada right now.
We broke the weather and it's not OK.
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