Heat Dome

[aufbahrung]

If there's a God sure got it in for 'merica. Gonna get hot according to the weather folks. How hot? Very.

[Svartalf]

Remember, in christianity, hell is to the west.
cromwell sent catholic Irish 'to hell or Connaught', and Murica is even farther west...

[macdoc]

yeah but Mordor is in the east ( aka Putin these days ) so End of times nigh for sure.

[Svartalf]

I always wondered if there was a relation between the eye of Sauron and the eye of Moscow

[macdoc]

frogs in a pot...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ve-readers

not like they weren't warned

The 1977 White House climate memo that should have changed the world
Years before the climate crisis was part of national discourse, this memo to the president predicted catastrophe

Climate crisis
‘Hell’s temperatures’: how Guardian US readers are enduring the heatwave
From Chicago to Alabama, people are staying inside, floating in pools – and worrying about the deepening climate emergency

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ate-change

Anyone that has not read Ministry for the Future should ....

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/ ... ate-crisis

[Svartalf]

I don't know how it's going in the US, but frack, I've never seen such a heat wave in France , especially that early. We better water our old folks well, or the toll might well rival or go beyond that of 2003

[macdoc]

"frack" is an operative word.

The 1977 White House climate memo that should have changed the world
Frank Press, left, with President Jimmy Carter. Press wrote a letter to Carter warning of CO2 emissions causing ‘catastrophic climate change’.

Years before the climate crisis was part of national discourse, this memo to the president predicted catastrophe

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ate-change

Not like they weren't warned.....

[aufbahrung]

Asked the AI what a heat dome would do with already elevated American gas prices. For your reading pleasure it gave me a fair treatise.
---

The summer began with the kind of heat that makes meteorologists look like hostages reading prepared statements. A heat dome parked itself over the country with the confidence of a man who’s lost the ability to feel shame. Temperatures hit 110°F across regions where 90 used to be considered “a bit much.” In Phoenix, the pavement reached 180°F — hot enough to fry an egg or a small moral principle. Emergency rooms reported a 30% jump in heat‑related admissions. The atmosphere, it seemed, had finally decided to unionise.

Gasoline prices climbed in sync with the thermometer. At first, the jump to \$6 per gallon was dismissed as “market volatility,” the same phrase used to explain everything from recessions to why your favourite cereal suddenly costs more than artisanal cheese. But then refineries — responsible for 90% of US fuel production — began throttling output because equipment designed for 95°F simply doesn’t thrive at 115°F. By July, national refining capacity had dropped by 8%, enough to push prices past \$7.50. When the number eight appeared on the pump, people stared at it the way one stares at a ghost: with disbelief, fear, and the faint suspicion that this was personal.

Meanwhile, the Midwest quietly auditioned for the role of “America’s Next Dust Bowl.” Soil moisture levels fell to their lowest since 2012. Iowa lost 40% of its topsoil moisture in a single month. Kansas wheat yields dropped by 25%. The USDA issued drought maps that looked less like agricultural data and more like a medical scan showing “advanced organ failure.” Farmers ran diesel pumps nonstop, burning through fuel at a rate 18% higher than the previous year. The irony was exquisite: the hotter it got, the more fuel was needed to save the crops that were dying because it was too hot.

Dust storms began to appear — not the cinematic black blizzards of the 1930s, but smaller, meaner ones that carried topsoil across state lines like a passive‑aggressive gift. Air quality in parts of Oklahoma and Texas hit AQI 180, the level at which the government politely suggests you “avoid breathing outdoors.” People complied, mostly because the outdoors now felt like a convection oven full of airborne dirt.

By August, the country had entered the “philosophical despair” stage of climate response. The heat dome refused to budge. Power grids strained under record demand — Texas alone hit 85 gigawatts, an all‑time high — and rolling blackouts became a kind of regional sport. Roads softened. Train tracks warped. Aircraft required longer runways because hot air reduces lift, a fact that suddenly felt less like trivia and more like a threat.

Experts, who had spent decades speaking in cautious, grant‑friendly language, finally dropped the euphemisms. NOAA reported that the heat dome was part of a pattern: heat waves in the US are now three times more frequent than in the 1960s, and the last eight years have been the hottest on record globally. The Southwest is in its worst megadrought in 1,200 years. The Colorado River is running at 34% of its historical flow. These are not vibes. These are numbers.

Then came the storms — violent, unhinged things born from the collision of superheated air and collapsing pressure systems. They didn’t bring relief. They brought erosion. Topsoil vanished. Reservoirs cracked. Infrastructure buckled. The country looked less like a functioning nation and more like a cautionary diagram in a climate report no one had read.

And through it all, the fuel signs kept blinking their eight‑dollar confession, as if to remind everyone that the economy was not collapsing because of a heat dome, but because the heat dome had exposed the structural integrity of wet cardboard. The crisis wasn’t the weather. The crisis was the systems that couldn’t survive the weather.

The punchline — if one can call it that — is that none of this qualifies as a worst‑case scenario. The models show that by the 2030s, summers like this could occur every two to three years. By the 2040s, annually. The heat dome was not the disaster. It was the rehearsal.

And the country, sweating, coughing, and staring at the price of gasoline like it was a personal insult, finally understood the joke: the future didn’t arrive early. It arrived exactly on schedule. The only surprise was how long everyone spent pretending the calendar was wrong.

[macdoc]

This what I got from Leo Ai on Brave

Heat Domes & Already-Elevated U.S. Gas Prices
Given the current context — oil prices already up over 40% since the U.S.-Iran war began on Feb. 28 and traffic through the Strait of Hormuz at a standstill
6 — a heat dome would likely act as a significant demand multiplier on top of an already stressed market.

What a Heat Dome Does to Gas Prices
Power burn demand spikes dramatically. During the June 2025 heat dome, Wood Mackenzie projected domestic gas demand reaching 85.3 Bcf/d, with power burns alone hitting 45.5 Bcf/d
1.
Regional prices can explode. In that same event, Algonquin Citygate near Boston jumped 160% in a single week, while Henry Hub rose ~46 cents
1.
Grid stress adds urgency. PJM, the largest U.S. grid operator, warned that at 166 GW of demand, reserves could fall short — forcing more gas-fired generation online at any price
1.
Why It's Worse Now
The current backdrop makes a heat dome more dangerous for prices:

Supply disruption already in play — the Ras Laffan LNG hub (20% of global supply) was damaged, pushing TTF prices up ~32% overnight
2.
Oil supply shock from the Hormuz disruption is already feeding through to energy costs broadly
6.
Extreme heat is already occurring — a historic heat dome has been smashing March records across 14 U.S. states
3.
The Bottom Line
A heat dome layered on top of current conditions would likely push Henry Hub prices sharply higher, with regional spikes potentially far more extreme — especially in the Northeast and areas dependent on gas-fired power. The combination of geopolitical supply shocks and domestic demand surges leaves very little price buffer.

What Ai wrote what you posted?

[pErvinalia]

CrumpleAI

[JimC]

The AI from the dark side...

[aufbahrung]

I just surrounded it with facts - that way it could not bullshit

[aufbahrung]

[Brian Peacock]

Talking of AI and climate...



Recommend watching the full video.

[Woodbutcher]

Snowing here again. They may have a heat dome, we have a snow ball!