Dog-Days Danger
As high summer settles in over North America, we often have to deal with the weather extremes of heat waves and droughts. Although these are distinct events, heat waves do tend to occur when conditions are dry, and drought in summer is associated with high temperatures.
Heat waves and droughts also have the same meteorological parentage, an upper-level ridge of high pressure thousands of feet above the Earth’s surface. A ridge is a huge mound of warm air that effectively blocks storm systems from bringing precipitation. The air sinks, warming and drying as it descends to the ground, and few clouds block the sun’s hot rays. For heat waves, the ridge moves out in a matter of days. For droughts, the pattern is
