While the weather here in the Valley of the Sun has given us a bit of a break for the last few days — don’t be fooled!
We’re looking at temperatures in the 100s this weekend. And that won’t even be the first time we break 100 degrees this year. We broke yet another heat record this year on March 18, when temperatures at Sky Harbor International Airport hit 102 degrees. It was the earliest we’ve ever hit 100 here — and the hottest temperature ever recorded in March.
It came after we had the hottest winter ever in Phoenix and a record hot spring. So, are we in for another record scorching summer? There just might be hope on the horizon in the form of a so-called “super El Niño” heading our way.
Randy Cerveny, professor of geographical sciences at Arizona State University and extreme weather expert, joined The Show to talk more.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Randy, thanks for coming in.
RANDY CERVENY: Hey, my pleasure.
LAUREN GILGER: OK, so 100 already this weekend; this feels early, is it actually early?
RANDY CERVENY: A little bit early. We're going to get to 105 and that usually happens a week or so later in the year. But as you mentioned, we've already been up above 100 in March.
What of course a lot of people don't realize is we need that heat. It may not seem pretty, but in order to generate the thunderstorms that we're going to get later on in the summer, we need to have the deserts heat up because hot air rises and it draws in the moisture from the Gulf of California and from the Pacific Ocean.
LAUREN GILGER: OK, so in order to get those monsoons, we do have to kind of pay for it with these record, these really hot days, OK.
But what is it looking like in terms of a preview of this summer's weather? We've had these record hot summers many, many of the last couple of summers here in the Valley. Are we looking at that again?
RANDY CERVENY: Yeah, we are, unfortunately. It is going to be hot. But, to add to that, instead of using the normal word dry, we're going to put the word moist because it's probably going to be humid as well.
We're going to have a lot of moisture coming up from the Gulf of California and the Pacific Ocean. As you mentioned, we've got this thing called a super El Niño that's building out in the Pacific Ocean. And what that means is the center part of the Pacific Ocean is becoming really hot. Hot water is pouring over from Australia and from Asia and being pumped over to our side of the Pacific Ocean.
When that happens, it really messes up all of the weather patterns not only just for the Pacific Ocean, but the entire world.
LAUREN GILGER: Wow, the entire world?
RANDY CERVENY: Yeah. Basically, I mean there's good and bad things, it all depends on where you're living. The good thing I guess for the people on the East Coast is it means likely less hurricanes this year along the Atlantic seaboard.
For us, the opposite holds true, that in the Pacific we're going to have a whole bunch more hurricanes. Now, normally hurricanes don't cause us any problem, they die out before they get here. But if we have a lot of Pacific hurricanes that are off the coast of Mexico, the moisture from those hurricanes will be funneled up into Arizona and they are what trigger our Arizona monsoon.
LAUREN GILGER: So we could have a very wet monsoon season, which is coupled with that very hot weather that you're talking about we need ahead of time.
RANDY CERVENY: Right, so instead of hot and dry, try hot and moist.
LAUREN GILGER: Hot and moist, that'll be a weird summer for us but not bad, we need the rain, we'll take it, right? This is an interesting one because is the monsoon a different weather pattern, a different kind of system in terms of the meteorological language when it comes to, you know, the El Niño versus monsoons?
RANDY CERVENY: Well, in the past El Niño doesn't have a super big impact on us. The only thing that's probably helping us out that it will have this summer is that it's so strong. That because of that incredibly warm water that's going to be in the Pacific Ocean, it will charge up more Pacific hurricanes.
Those hurricanes drop a huge amount of moisture and it's that moisture that we have to watch. Now in normal El Niño years the number of hurricanes isn't enough to really impact us, but we're anticipating a really active summer here.
It may be more into New Mexico than Arizona; right now the long-term forecast for the summertime looks to have a lot of the moisture being funneled into New Mexico given the upper air patterns, the storm track.
LAUREN GILGER: Skipping us a little bit, yeah. So, I mean when we say a lot of rain, like what does that look like and is this something we can prepare for?
RANDY CERVENY: Well, that's the tricky thing about the monsoon is that it's always a localized situation. That as you know when we have thunderstorms here in the Valley, one part of the Valley can get dumped on with an inch and a half of rain and another part of the Valley gets absolutely nothing. So it's very localized.
But what it will probably mean is that there's going to be more chances for those heavy rains, that we'll have more storms and if you have more storms the likelihood of you getting hit by a particular storm is going to increase.
LAUREN GILGER: OK. There is a fire burning near Buckeye, Randy, I want to talk to you about it. It's grown to more than 1,100 acres just as of this morning. It's not far from where a lot of people are living, it's not far outside the city at this point because so much has been built out there. This is an air quality issue.
RANDY CERVENY: Absolutely. And it's one of the things that the National Weather Service and other organizations like the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality do, is that they have the ability with computer models to track the plumes, to track those smoke from those wildfires and actually see which parts of the Valley in this case are going to be impacted. So it's, our technology has greatly improved just over the last 20, 30 years.
LAUREN GILGER: What does that kind of fire smoke kind of effect have on air quality and on people's health as opposed to like smog?
RANDY CERVENY: Oh, it's very dangerous actually and it's one of the reasons why Arizona Department of Environmental Quality keeps such big controls about that. It's equivalent of the kind of situation that you might see during really bad dust storms.
In fact, one of the things that we're going to be doing this summer is coming up with a ranking system now for dust storms. We're going to try to show people how bad in terms of the air quality it gets based off of some of these dust storms that we're going to have this summer.
LAUREN GILGER: OK. So, just the beginning of wildfire season; what should folks know when it comes to air quality and smoke?
RANDY CERVENY: Just pay attention to the news, find out which areas are going to be most impacted and if you are in an impacted area, stay inside because the air quality within your house is going to be much better than what it would be outside.
Think about the times across the Valley on the Fourth of July or New Year's Day when all the fireworks are let off, that's kind of the sense that you can have with some of the smoke that's associated with these wildfires.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, OK, we'll leave it there. Randy Cerveny, professor of geographical sciences at ASU. Randy, thank you so much.
RANDY CERVENY: My pleasure.
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