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PHENOMENAL RECORD DROUGHT AND HEAT WAVE CONTINUES TO GRIP NORTH TEXAS
"We now have had 66 consecutive days without rain at our official Dallas-Fort Worth measuring site," said Bill Proenza, director of NOAA's National Weather Service Southern Region. "This has never occurred here since we began record-keeping in 1898." North Texas has also experienced 44 days with temperatures of 100 degrees or higher, compared to the norm of 15 days of 100 degree temperatures. The 111 degree temperature on Labor Day also set an all-time record high in Dallas-Fort Worth for the month of September. A significant contributor to this phenomenon is an entrenched high pressure system over the southern central plains—a system that has continued to block a more normal flow of moisture into the area.. "The good news is that some relief is in sight," said Proenza. "The North Texas daytime high is expected to be below the 100 degree mark later this week. The bad news is that no precipitation is expected through the end of the week." The latest outlook was developed through the use of "ensemble" forecasting, a relatively new technique which uses output from several weather models rather than one. NOAA's Climate Prediction Center is testing the ensemble model on a variety of forecasts. In the eastern United States, the current weather pattern has led to cooler and wetter weather in the coastal Atlantic states, significantly easing the drought in the Carolinas and Georgia. NOAA's
National Weather Service
expects the high pressure system to lose its grip in the next
several weeks since La
Niña has weakened. The first sign of this was the
return of wetter and cooler weather to the Pacific Northwest
and to the fire-stricken areas of Montana.
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