The Misadventures of Gobbledegook the Turkey
Dictionary.com defines “Gobbledygook” as:
language that is meaningless or is made unintelligible by excessive use of technical terms.
And it is my belief that the definition of a heatwave from the UK Met Office meets the definition precisely:
A heatwave refers to a prolonged period of hot weather, which may be accompanied by high humidity. The World Meteorological Organization guidance around the definition of a heatwave is “A marked unusual hot weather (Max, Min and daily average) over a region persisting at least two consecutive days during the hot period of the year based on local climatological conditions, with thermal conditions recorded above given thresholds.” They are common in the northern and southern hemisphere during summer, but classification and impacts vary globally.
Over in the US a heat wave is defined by three straight days of excessive heat, usually considered to be 90 F (32 C) or greater. With global warming causing hotter summers the past several years, this threshold had less meaning, and should be extended to 5 straight days, IMHO. In DC, the normal average high in July is now about 89 F, so we can “normally” be in a heat wave almost more often than not. I pull for high temps of 80 F or less, and also cloudy days to help keep the temperature down. Some of the TV forecasters here locally in the DC area are calling for the next 10 days or longer possibly to have max temps of 90 or greater. I sure hope they are wrong. And more often than not, when the temp reaches 90 the dew point temp is often at 70 or more most of the time. We can get nighttime min air temps well up in the 70s (35 C) and occasionally at or a bit above 80 which is totally miserable. Often the dew point can be a good indicator of how low/high the overnight min will be. Ray tells me that the dew point temp at 3 PM can oftentimes help predict what the overnight min temps will be. Fronts, clouds, winds can put the “kabosh” on these predictions, however. Thanks for posting about these fires! We sure have our share of fires over much of the US, and “dry lightning” out west can really cause a major outbreak. Cheerio, Kevin
As I said in my post the current British definition is so complicated it might as well not exist. My personal feelings are that a heatwave should be defined as “at least 48 hours where the maximum temperature is 20% higher than average during the day”. For instance, the average temperature in the UK at this time of year is a maximum of 18°C (64°F) and a minimum of 8°C (48°F). Under my suggestion as soon as the daytime highs reach 22°C (72°F) a sliding scale of heatwave alerts is triggered. Level 1: 22°C – 25°C, Level 2: 25°C – 29°C, Level 3: 29°C – 32°C, Level 4: 32°C or more. Each level has a response based on local circumstances, so for instance a Level 1 alert would see care services speak to older people about how to keep cool where as a Level 4 alert would see that area of the country essentially shut down.