- With a record breaking heat wave descending on the West, there are several other major weather systems hitting North America this week.
- Blizzards, tornadoes, thunderstorms, and extreme winds, among others.
- The last time it reached 80 degrees in Salt Lake City in March was 13 years ago — but that was 12 days later in the month.
For the last official week of winter, there’s a broad range of weather showing up across the North American continent.
Parts of the West are experiencing the start of a record-breaking heatwave. And yet the Midwest, particularly around the Great Lakes, was hit with a major blizzard over the weekend.
Last Thursday, historic winds blew across Wyoming and ripped trees out of the ground in Cheyenne. Some gusts exceeded 90 mph.
Then the Mid-Atlantic region experienced several storms that culminated with tornado warnings that extended from South Carolina, over Washington D.C. and up into Maryland on Monday.
Meanwhile, the Northeast was hit with large thunderstorms at the start of the week. Parts of New England have the potential to receive more snow yet with the arrival of a fresh cold front over the weekend.
And if that snow arrives, it will be flurrying at roughly the same time that things really start to heat up in California, Arizona and Nevada with temperatures expected to reach above 100 degrees.
Climate chaos
“It’s very chaotic,” said Allan Smith, the North American meteorologist for OpenSnow. “Like your classic March pattern with extremes all across North America.”
Smith reiterated, however, that the real story this week is the heat wave extending throughout the Southwest. Even though some of the other weather patterns are extreme, he said that the expectations for such high temperatures really stands out amid this week’s weather patterns.
Daniel Swain, a weather and climate scientist at the University of California, shared that sentiment.
“What’s remarkable is this isn’t just going to affect one or two cities, but it’s going to affect essentially all of California, all of Nevada, all of Utah, all of Arizona, and then much of Oregon, Idaho, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and adjacent states at various points during this event as well,” Swain said during a digital office hours last week.
“Some places will probably see temperatures that might exceed the typical hottest temperature in a moderately cool summer over the next couple of weeks ... places that don’t even see 100-degree temperatures every year might experience them in the next 10 days.”
Has Salt Lake City ever been hotter in March?
According to forecasts, it is going to reach 80 degrees in Salt Lake City on Thursday. Temps like that are normal later in the calendar year, but it’s unusual for March where the average normal high is 55 degrees.
“I’d say the pattern next week would be the nail in the coffin of a very unforgettable winter season,” Jon Meyer, assistant Utah state climatologist, told the Washington Post last week. Regarding the state’s drought and water supply, the Post reported that Meyer was “quite pessimistic.”
There is some range on what temperature is being forecasted depending on which organization is reporting, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts it will get into the lower 70s on Tuesday, the upper 70s on Wednesday and then it will reach 81 degrees on Thursday in Salt Lake City.
Swain and at least one other meteorologist do not suggest using phone apps to get reliable weather information.
“I would strongly recommend not using any weather app,“ Swain said. ”So definitely not Apple weather.“
He suggests instead going directly to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has the best, most comprehensive information.
NOAA has maintained weather histories going back to 1874, and its reports that the last time it reached 80 degrees in Salt Lake City during March was in 2012. It was later in the month, however, with thermometers exceeding 80 on March 31st.
Swain said it’s easier for monthly records to be broken at the end of the month when it’s closer to spring. These temps, however, are arriving closer to the middle of the month. According to his calculations, it won’t just be Salt Lake City feeling the heat.
“A lot of places will probably see their hottest temperature that’s been experienced that early in any calendar year,” Swain said. “So, earliest 100-degree, earliest 90-degree, earliest 80-degree, depending on how high up the mountain slope you go and what your averages are.”
Are these extremes normal?
Snowstorms and heavy precipitation in March in the Midwest and Northeast is not abnormal, but it might seem so when it’s happening at the same time as a heat wave in the West.
“We often see, when we get one of these — I don’t know if I want to call it a heat wave since it’s March — but if we get an extreme warm spot like this, usually if that’s going up in one part of the continent, that means we’re getting colder air dipping down from the north in a different part of the continent,“ Smith from OpenSnow said. ”It’s just common with the back and forth in the differences in the jet stream at this time of year."
Smith summarized all the fairly wild weather events in terms of various cold and warm fronts moving across the continent.
There’s a strong cold front moving across the East that’s meeting some warm air settled over the coast. Those two fronts meeting is causing all the thunderstorms, Smith said.
Behind that cold front, however, there’s a much colder front dropping down into the Great Lakes and eastern U.S., which is what’s bringing the blizzards to the Upper Midwest.
But outside of the heat in the Southwest, Smith is not too surprised by the hodge-podge of extreme weather and says that “this confluence of extremities” is pretty typical.
“You can get lots of extremes in March, lots of back and forth extremes, especially when you factor in the continental coast to coast weather pattern,” Smith said. “The other takeaway would be just how unusual this upcoming warmth for the West is.”