Sissy stuff to keep warm with during the "VORTEX"?

[andyg0404]

Hi Betty,

All I can say is, good grief! But I see tomorrow will be better for you.This is the forecast on Google. "A nice, sunny day is in store for Saturday, still pretty cool with temperatures in the forties,' Ansuini said. "By the time we get to Sunday, we will see temperatures get into the low to mid-sixties." Hope that's accurate.

Andy G.

[Betty]

Breathing a little better today as the dampness, high humidity, & low air pressure is gone. All that damp & humid weather combined with low air pressure almost every day for weeks made breathing rough, & really slowed me down a lot.

They say 30F tonight. Not that cold at all for winter, but frigid for April. 61F expected Sunday. That's a 31 degree jump in just 1 1/2 days. 69F for Monday -- 39 degree jump in 2 1/2 days.

I find I can breathe a little better if I have a little time to adjust & adapt to the weather changes. But it seems just about the time I'm starting to get used to it, it changes. If it changes too fast -- even for the better, breathing is rough until I get used to the change.

The wildlife & plants can't take these dramatic weather swings well. There were buds popping out of the trees in Feb. But they're gone now. Birds outside my windows are rarer than they were in Feb. Less birds than usual in my area all year for years now. Less squirrels too.

The first couple years after I moved to this smaller place, the trees would have a lot of leaves & be bushy by now. That past few years they're as bare as Jan. in April.

Recent years have shown milder winters & warmer springs in most of Alaska than in Buffalo. Currently it's 8 degrees warmer in Anchorage than here. The polar bears are sweating their butts off. But this last winter was very strange. In Jan & Feb we experienced lots 30-40 degree temperature swings in just 24-48 hours with quite a few unusually warm days in a row for the middle of winter. 50F one day, & 4-10F that night or the next day.

Our warmest visitor so far today was in Phoenix at 90F & our coldest visitor was in Stockholm at 34F... just 2 degrees colder than Buffalo. If you live in the most northern parts of Canada & Russia, they're experiencing near or below zero F temperatures, but we haven't got any visitors from around there today yet. The hottest areas today are just south of Mexico at around 95F. Mexico is at 92F.

[samantha1]

we had 2 days of high sunny weather and now it has got cold again

[Betty]

Mon. it got up to a nice & toasty 72F (22C). Tue. got up to 60F (16C). Wed. night through Thur. morning it'll get down to 34F (1C). But finally it's looking like no more snow for the next 5-6 months. Rain expected for the holiday weekend. If the humidity is high at the same time, I probably won't breathe well through that.

[Betty]

Our hottest visitors are from Phoenix Arizona. We have several visitors from around there. It's currently 119F(48C) there & expected to remain in the 100s in the daytime for the next 2 weeks. That makes it the second hottest city in the world today & yesterday. It's so hot there planes are grounded during the hottest part of the day. Because hot air is thinner, the planes can't get enough lift to fly. Good golly, I hope you kids down there got AC, or can keep cool by keeping wet, or at least have a really good fan.

The hottest city in the world is Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico at 121F(49C). But I'm not aware of any regular visitors from around there.

Las Vegas-106F(41C), Sacramento-103F(39C), Albuquerque & Salt Lake City-101F(38C).

Up north here, I'll melt at about 80F(27C), but don't bother putting on a coat at 40F(4C) & can deal with -10F(-23C) better than 90F. The hottest whole day I ever experienced was 98F(37C) outside of Warsaw NY in about 1963. However there was a shadeless commercial patio where I was building a project for a few hours where it got up to 105F (41C) on the patio about 10 years ago. I remember leaving a garden hose connected to constantly soak myself down to get the job done.

Before AC, I used to fill a spray bottle with water, & regularly mist myself down to keep cool. It works very well. Not too pretty being all wet & soggy, but it felt good.

Our coldest visitor is from Cape town S. Africa at 41F(5C). It's the beginning of winter there just like Australia, because it's in the southern hemisphere. You'll be surprised how many dumb shyts don't know that.

[samantha1]

hi betty,in uk the temperature today  peaked at 34.4c and even now coming toward 11pm it is still 28c

[Betty]

Yikes, that's 94F! That may not sound too hot for many southerners, but you're surrounded by the ocean, so imagine just like me downwind from most of the Great Lakes, & right in between 2 of them, it's a very damp, swampy, sticky, sweaty, humid heat. In Phoenix, & Las Vegas, it's dry dessert. It's easier to keep a little cooler because perspiration evaporates faster in the dry air. In humid air it just lays on you getting sticky, smelly, & attracting bugs. Dry air is like air coming from a hair drier. Humid are is like air coming off a boiling pot or steam room. Your perspiration doesn't evaporate to keep you cool.

Air conditioning works on the same principle. The refrigerant evaporates inside of the cool side, taking the heat with it, then under pressure, it re-condenses on the hot outside part of it to release the heat. Then it's pumped back to the cool side to evaporate again.

That's why most weather peeps include things like heat index, wind chill, or "feels like" temperatures in their reports. Humidity slows evaporation off the body so it feels hotter. Wind & dry air remove heat off the body more. An 85F(29C) day at humidity of 75% or higher can feel as hot a 100F(38C) or more, & be just as dangerous to some people... especially those who aren't used to higher temperatures.

According to my weather feeds it got up 91F(33C) near you, but I guess it can get a little hotter a few miles further inland away from cooler water. I'm seeing 68F(20C) around you now, but most of the rest of the UK is 57-62F (14-17C) this morning (pre-dawn UK time). Cooling down there for the next 2 weeks. Today it will only get up to 78F(26C) there, & a high of 75F(24C) for Friday. Then highs down to around 70F(21C) until Mon when they say it will go up to 76F(24.4C). But those long range forecasts tend to be way off. Looks like rain for you Sun, Tue, & maybe Wed.

[Betty]

Most people who don't live around here don't realize how massive the Great Lakes are. They're so big they create their own weather fronts, storm systems, & lots of humidity. Been lucky here the past couple days though. It cooled down significantly again. We didn't get as many of those northern arctic vortexes moving in this winter like we have in previous recent winters. But most recently it's been considerable cooler than normal because we were getting a lot of those vortexes in May & June instead.

Give you an idea of how massive the Great Lakes are here's the UK superimposed onto the USA in the same scale of size. USA-3,000 miles across. NY state is 330 miles long, but wouldn't even cover half the Great Lakes. Except for NYC, Buffalo, Albany, Syracuse, & Rochester, the rest of the state is just small towns, farmland, & wilderness... lots of woodlands & forests. Buffalo is second largest city in the state, both in size & population. The largest is NYC.

[Betty]

39F (3.8C). Hard to believe it was 90F (32C) about a week ago... 51F (28C) degree difference!

[samantha1]

that is cold