1,100 Records Broken During East Heat Wave

Here's a look back at the stats from the Eastern U.S. Heat Wave of late April 2009. First, recall that April started out unusually cold in much of the mid-Atlantic and Northeast's populated area, but this heat wave was more than enough to reset that deficit and most areas in the mid-Atlantic are ending up slightly above normal for the month. On April 13th, Joe Bastardi said "Next week at this time, the blocking pattern will be finally finishing up, but it may do so with a bang." And he was right.

Over 1,100 daily high temperatures (or high minimum temperatures) were broken (and another 600 tied) between April 24th and 29th.* Incredibly, 31 locations broke their all-time April records for high temperatures (and 23 broke high minimum temperatures)! That means it had never been warmer in the month of April at those stations for their period of record. As you can see from the graph above, April 26th was the center of the heat wave, with over 500 records tied or broken.

Strictly looking at the number of records broken or tied, this 6-day heat wave might look even more powerful than the famous August 2007 Heat Wave in the East, but over time more records are reported to the NCDC so those stats have increased considerably since then. It turns out that if you add it all up, this is how they compare:

But it's really hard to quantify. If you look beyond August 11, the number of records per day continues to be in the hundreds, but you get a lot of pollution with Central and U.S. records beyond that. Still, I think August 2007 wins.

April 24-29, 2008: 805 Records Tied or BrokenAugust 6-11, 2007: 1,827 Records Tied or Broken

Some of the most impressive records from this heat wave come from the state of Maine. Steve04074 left a Comment on my blog earlier this week telling of this impressive statement (archived) from the NWS in Portland, ME:

Heck, they almost set their May record too!

They also had an extreme temperature range like I had blogged about.

ALSO...THE DAILY RANGE FOR TODAY WAS 47 DEGREES...THAT IS, THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE LOW AND HIGH TEMPERATURES. IF THE LOW FOR THE DAY REMAINS AT 45 DEGREES THEN THIS WOULD SET A RECORD FOR THE GREATEST DAILY RANGE OF TEMPERATURE FOR APRIL 28TH. THE OLD RECORD WAS A RANGE OF 37 DEGREES SET IN 1990. THIS WOULD BE THE SECOND BIGGEST DAILY RANGE IN TEMPERATURE FOR ANY DAY IN THE MONTH OF APRIL...

*This data is for the entire U.S. but during this period most of the records broken were east of the Mississippi.

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