Cities where the weather changes even faster than Connecticut
If you’ve got spent any time in New England, you’ve got in all probability heard the saying usually (erroneously) attributed to Mark Twain: “If you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes.”
While that may actually really feel true right here in Connecticutthe actuality is there are locations throughout the nation that make our weather look remarkably constant by comparability.
Take Oklahoma City, for instance. Sitting proper in the coronary heart of Tornado Alley, it is uncovered to a continuing tug-of-war between heat, humid air from the Gulf and colder, drier air from the north. That setup can result in dramatic swings in temperature, wind and storm exercise, typically all inside the similar day.
OKC’s sharpest temperature change in a single calendar day occurred on January 24, 1943, when the temperature plummeted from a balmy excessive of 76 levels to a bitter low of 15 levels in a number of hours. That marks a 61 diploma distinction in the matter of some hours.
In truth, the ten largest calendar day temperature variations at Oklahoma City are all bigger than Bridgeport’s sharpest change of 48 levels, which occurred on December 23, 2022. That day, the temperature plummeted from 57 to 9 levels as an Arctic air mass arrived.
It’s not simply Oklahoma experiencing wacky changes in the weather. Out west, Denver is known for its whiplash weather, usually because of downslope winds off the Rockies that may quickly spike temperatures from sub-freezing to summer-like. It’s common to go from snow on the floor to nice heat in much less than 24 hours.
Then there’s Chicago, where the affect of Lake Michigan provides one other layer of complexity. Wind shifts off the lake can rapidly change temperatures and even flip precipitation varieties from rain to snow.
So where does that go away Connecticut?
Our weather can change completely rapidly, particularly in the spring and fall. But the close by Atlantic Ocean and Long Island Sound act like a buffer, serving to to reasonable these extremes. That means fewer dramatic temperature swings and usually slower transitions in comparison with the center of the nation.
That stated, the day-to-day or week-to-week fluctuations are nonetheless spectacular round right here. The similar number of weather that makes it an ideal place to reside can even give us a style of every part, like a pattern platter of weather phenomena. Just in the final ten years, Connecticut has seen blizzards, tropical storms, tornadoes, heat waves, flash flood emergenciesand even wildfires.
In different phrases, whereas New England’s weather could preserve you in your toes, there are locations in the Plains where that “wait five minutes” thought actually involves life.
