Monday, November 23, 2009 East Central Illinois
The Answer Book 2005
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Weathering the changes: Why the Midwest's climate is so fickle BY CHRISTINE DES GARENNES © 2009 THE NEWS-GAZETTE You can sum up East Central Illinois weather in one word: "varied." You don't have to search far back into the history books for examples. Consider this past May. On May 3 and 4, it dropped to 31 degrees in Champaign-Urbana. A few days later, on May 10, it climbed to 87 degrees.
"Just think of those poor people in San Diego where it's 75 and sunny all the time. We have a lot more interesting weather in the Midwest," joked Jim Angel, Illinois state climatologist with the Illinois State Water Survey. Thunderstorms, snowstorms, tornadoes, high winds, ice, floods. Yup. It all happens here. Varied weather is common throughout the Midwest. And we can all thank the state's location for the variety of weather we experience. To the east are the Appalachian Mountains. To the west are the Rocky Mountains. To the south is the Gulf of Mexico. And to the north is chilly Canada. Because there are no mountain ranges north or south of us, it's as though we're in a tunnel. Cold, dry air from Canada can swoop down on us pretty quickly. Same thing with warm, moist air from the south. Another reason for Illinois' temperature swings is that, for the most part (outside of Chicago and the northern suburbs) the state is landlocked. "We don't have large bodies of water to moderate the temperatures," said Angel, adding that coastal states don't have such swings in temperatures compared with Illinois. "Water heats up much more slowly than land surfaces, so in the summer the water is acting to cool the surrounding land surface. In the winter, the opposite happens. In winter the water remains warmer than the surrounding land," Angel said. Summer weather is largely influenced by weather patterns from the Gulf of Mexico, he said. Although tornadoes can occur any time of year, the peak season is spring through early summer. Every year central Illinois receives tornadoes. "The central U.S. gets more tornadoes than anywhere else in the world," said Ed Kieser, WILL's chief meteorologist. Fortunately, an F5 tornado, in which wind speeds can reach over 300 miles per hour, is rare in East Central Illinois, Kieser said. The fuel for these storms is the moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and the cold air from the north. As for the winters in East Central Illinois, they've been fairly mild compared with the 1970s, when the region was often socked with big snows, Angel said. Angel attributes the recent mild winters to a series of El Ninos, when the Pacific Ocean warms; however, "if you look at the bigger picture that trend to mild winters has been going on for about 20 to 25 years," he said. |
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