Cool Stuff, Getting Warmer

Today marks the thirteenth straight day of below normal temperatures. Interestingly, if you're the sort of person that finds these things interesting, high temperatures during this stretch have been much more below normal, by 5.5 degrees, than low temperatures. The reason for the difference has been the clouds and rain, which don't let us warm up during the day, rather than a colder air mass, which would keep us cooler during the day but even more so at night.

Today is also a transition day between yesterday's sogginess and several days of sun and warmth. Most of the moisture has left but there's a slight chance of showers this afternoon and evening. The Weather Service, whose website has mysteriously stopped being updated with the morning forecast, thinks the rain will stay north of the city. Once that minor threat passes Thursday, Friday and Saturday should be mostly sunny and warm, highs around 80.

Gothamist saw the image above on Chris Mooney's blog The Intersection a couple of days ago. Shown in the image are satellite observed sea surface temperatures across the Pacific and the path of Typhoon Ioke. We normally think about how hurricanes, called typhoons in the eastern Pacific, affect us when they strike land but they can also have a big influence on the ocean itself. You can see the cooler surface waters that Ioke caused as its winds pulled cold water at depth up to the surface. By cooling off the surface waters there will be less evaporation, thus less clouds, over the eastern Pacific. Over the next few days and weeks these changes will certainly influence the weather over the Pacific and those changes will eventually get incorporated into the global atmospheric circulation. The butterfly effect in action!