Remarkable Heat Wave, Midwest Through PA

If you saw yesterday's temperature map around this time, it showed something surprising... sure, the Southeast was warm in the 80s but those 80s extended over most of the eastern half of the country, nearly up to the Canadian border! Knowing that it's normally cooler the farther you go north, that was particularly impressive. Today the same thing is happening but the western half of the area is being shaved off by an incoming cold front.

The number of daily record highs and record high lows broken in the Midwest and Northeast yesterday was close to 100, but you'll get few arguments against this end-of-week heat wave in the area. We've just come out of a snowy winter, spring is springing and the air is dry with a nice breeze. But the numbers we meteorologists are seeing are quite impressive. For example, the normal high this time of year is 52 here in State College, Penn., home of AccuWeather HQ [Google Map] but we officially hit 80 yesterday at Penn State - exceeding that normal by 28 degrees, breaking the record high for the day, and setting a very unusual +20 departure for the daily average daily temp. (There has been only one day with a greater departure here since April 27, 2009).

These sorts of staggering numbers start in the Midwest (where Oskaloo, Iowa, was +28 yesterday and Grinnell rose to 88 degrees) and spread eastward through Pennsylvania.