Probably one of the weather-folks' cutsie way of saying the heat is stalled in that region. On par with "Storm Watch" for every drizzle.

Now, about your "vast undifferentiated region west "... I sure hope that is just a case of your not traveling west much! lol

I'm acknowledging the ego-geocentric view humans develop about the place they live, such as the inside "the Beltway" mentality (around Washington DC) or a NYC dweller, as illustrated by the famous Steig cartoon and the hundreds of riffs on it Maybe someone can post a link to it.
Ot, I've been to the Canadian rockies, whose beauty made me cry, and besides Santa Fe, San Francisco and Detective Joe Leaphorn, I've not seen the beauty of the West. It is on my short term bucket list. (That's the list that acknowledges accidents happen. The long term bucket list is for old age or extended prognoses.)
I think I'll be careful about "humor" here for awhile.
idabean

It is a valid meteorological term, and I am sick to death of living under one for the last six weeks. We get a meteorology lesson every time we watch the news in KC. The heat dome is the current topic of interest.

Why the settlers decided to park their wagons and stay in Kansas is beyond me. Maybe they thought it could only get worse if they continued moving west. Kansas is hell for much of the year.

Here is a link that might be useful: What is a heat dome?

It refers to a weather pattern of extreme heat and drought that prevents any moisture or cool fronts from entering a large area of the United States. The drought of 2012 has been called "one of the worst natural disasters in US history". Its not something we joke about here. A drought is a slow gradual process taking place over years so it doesn't get the dramatic attention that a hurricane does. A drought is much more destructive. The cost has been estimated at around $12 billion dollars for 2012 alone.

Heat Dome creates drought which creates its own weather pattern that has no moisture to work with perpetuating itself. It is shaped like a dome coming up from the Gulf so it literally is a dome of extremely dangerous temperatures that hover around 110 to 114 degrees for weeks each summer. Weather maps typically indicate the affected area in shades of red, the deepest or brightest being the most intense and affected areas.

You might have noticed a rise in meat, corn and wheat products at your local grocery store since the vast undifferentiated region west has been severely affected for some years now. When the price of corn goes up, everything goes up. There was a severe shortage of feed for cattle and horses.

2012 looked like this and its still ongoing. Some areas got some relief this year and it is hoped the pattern is breaking up. It has been a major player in the destructive fires going on in New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona you might have seen on the news. By the way, the west is not "undifferentiated". It varies widely from one region to the next.

This post was edited by GreatPlains1 on Sat, Sep 7, 13 at 15:50

I prefer the term "heat pentagram".

No just and benevolent deity would every have created such a thing. I think we have one here right now too. I WANT WINTER!

Kevin

feels like this.....

This post was edited by GreatPlains1 on Mon, Sep 9, 13 at 3:36

---idabean---

I wrote: I sure hope that is just a case of your not traveling west much! lol
--That lol at the end of what I wrote means laughing out loud. As in kidding. I was genuinely curious, but was not offended. I thought lol was widely understood on forums. Isn't it? In another thread I added (jk), which has long meant just kidding.

Geez. Now I'm beginning to feel as if I have been set up with a B&C again. :-(

What's a B&C? I kinda figured what a heat dome was, but B&C is new to me. :)

I don't think Idabean was trying to lump all western areas into one with any negative connotations, but perhaps referring to how some of us think of other areas of the world with which we are not familiar. Like perhaps thinking that Iceland is one big sheet of white snow and ice. We probably know it's not, but when we see it in our mind's eye, it's all white! And to us New Englanders, sometimes it's hard to comprehend the concept of space that huge (i.e. the lands in "the west").

When I was in Ireland many years ago, I met a delightful couple who had been saving to come to vacation - for a week - in the US, and they were bringing their kids to Disney World. They then told us they were thinking of "taking a day" to drive to the Grand Canyon to see that as well! We had to explain to them that that would be impossible! But because they came from a country that you can literally drive across in an afternoon, they just didn't comprehend - or had never thought about - the difference in another place.

Kevin, "heat pentagram" sounds so evil, lol!

Dee

MulchMama, I pulled up the article. Its scary stuff. Here is another link in case anyone is interested because this doesn't just affect the weather of people living in our area as your article explains.

Here is a link that might be useful: http://www.livescience.com/21952-record-temperatures-heat.html

This post was edited by GreatPlains1 on Sun, Sep 15, 13 at 14:05

Hi Gyr,
Nope, we're on the same page. I was poking fun, though pretty obliquely, at me as an east coaster understanding hurricanes and rip tides, and to some extent typhoons (thanks to A Perfect Storm and Moby Dick in my backyard of New Bedford) .and being perfectly and fully ignorant of what a "heat dome" is. It may be a full half of the continent does know.
As for lol, fer sure I know what it means.I kinda missed it but it didn't matter cause I knew you were poking back. Maybe not 100%...so I over explained it, just like I am doing now.
In any case, I want to find that great New Yorker cover of a "new Yorker's view of the world". It; s funny enough for us all to forget this folderole (is that the word....something like "fuss over nothing" from Oklahoma (the musical). For all I know it could have been used by someone's great granny in Oklahoma, the state.

In short, I'm smiling.because "Oh what a beautiful morning!"

Something as simple as a metal mailbox surrounded by tall dried grass or a piece of glass in a field can start a fire in that kind of intense heat in a dry area. The mail carriers had to wear padded gloves to deliver the mail to avoid burns last summer.

This post was edited by GreatPlains1 on Mon, Sep 9, 13 at 4:05

Thanks for the links. The information is interesting. I forgot I once was in Dallas at the end of June. That was hot! Literally like an oven. But they did wonderful things with water in the landscape. Big inviting modern 'water features' that invited you to cool your feet. So different from New Orleans, which I've been to over a dozen times in the summer or Baltimore where I grew up. Those are saunas.
I hope y'all don't mind the absence of plants, so far. That's why I started a separate thread, so's not to get off topic. But feel free to introduce a plant. I've got the information I was looking for, and thank everyone kindly for it.

GP, woops, more folderol! (which is a word meaning 'a fuss' or a fussy object. Certainly antiquated not in use except by people who can't get musicals out of their heads)
I was putting "hoist.....petard" into the venacular which looked cruder in print than I realized.. I edited it out of the post, lest others think I was suggesting you do something to yourself that I hadn't even considered.
Perhaps you'd consider taking out the 24 inch font quote from your post, and we'd be even steven?
I was serious when I asked the question about heat domes. The fuss I was referring to was whether Gyr F and I were misunderstanding one another's humor or lack of it. There's all sorts of "serious" weather around the world that affects people's lives and livelihoods and I wouldn't want to give the impression of minimizing that. I'm sorry if that happened.
I've finished explaining,editing and discussing the topic. No more from me about this topic.

This post was edited by idabean on Sat, Sep 7, 13 at 21:57

Vast undifferentiated west- I easily identified that as a joke..... But I shudder to think of how many east-coasters think its true.
The most depressing thing I remember from living in Texas was the one summer when the dry weather (I won't even call it a drought) went on and on and on. Just the dead gray of everything was mind numbing, let alone the relentless three digit heat. When the rain came back I was surprised by how quickly new life jumped in to replace the dead, and how quickly the 'dead' recovered. The sheets of annual wildflowers were as amazing in real life as you would think from seeing pictures.
Still I'm pretty sure I would never move back. I like to lay out in the sun without the fear of death.... and I don't miss heat domes and tornadoes and straight winds and hail attacks and floods and locust plagues and....... Well you get it.
But those wide open spaces, the sunsets, wildlife, gardening in February.... It's all on a whole different amazing scale. So I guess hang in there and don't try to see how far down those cracks in the earth go... The answer is 'yes', you can lose a golf club in the crack that took your ball.

Deleted duplicate -- what's with all the duplicates??

This post was edited by MulchMama on Mon, Sep 9, 13 at 9:25

The really awful thing about the heat dome is that it just sits and stagnates. It eventually bakes all the moisture out of the atmosphere and the ground and when a nice thunderstorm complex wants to approach -- wham. It literally falls apart at the doorstep of the heat dome. I watch this happen on radar and it really breaks my heart. The baking out of the moisture also allows the temperatures to rise, so it's not just a dome; it's a vicious circle or heat and dry conditions. This summer is bad. Last summer was ten times worse.

I can water the garden all day long and we can afforddeal with a high water bill to protect our investment, but we have cabin fever here. It's really depressing, plus our groundwater is a lot more alkaline than that lovely acid rainwater, and the difference in the garden after a sprinkling and after a soaking rain ispretty amazing.

I cry for the farmers. People do not irrigate here. Hell, I don't even know why people LIVE here.

I recognize a baited hook when I see it. While you are talking about me, someone is judging you.

This post was edited by GreatPlains1 on Sun, Sep 15, 13 at 1:36

I'm sure many of us post here before or after using a search engine. I first googled Heat Dome and I got weather reports from Kansas. None of the explanations was as good as yours, GP1 or as personal as your last post about your family. Facts are usually not as much fun as stories. That photo you posted of the animal dead from thirst or heat or both told a story, not just about the animal but the family that raises them, feeds them and cares for them. Even with my very limited exposure, I'm sure having your livestock die in a weather catastrophe, over which one has no control, causes suffering which really can't be separated from the economic impact
Also, would google tell me how Mulchmama feels about the torrid heat or elicit musings about trading a Chicago winter for more benign summer weather?
So when I DON'T want to spend too much time at the computer or don't have time to hear how fellow human beings experience facets of gardening I'd never think of.....that's when I google. Everything else is why I go to Gardenweb.

I'm not clear why you remarked that some one could have googled Heat Dome. Did you mean googling instead of posting here? If that is what you meant, I hope I answered your question. No ulterior motive,whatsoever. My question also gave you, like others, the chance to express your feelings about a number of things. And that couldn't have happened if I'd just hit "Google"!

This post was edited by idabean on Mon, Sep 9, 13 at 0:45

"To be impartial...is indeed to have taken sides already.....with the status quo." Desmond Tutu.

This post was edited by GreatPlains1 on Sun, Sep 15, 13 at 14:06

GP, we moved here because of a terrific job opportunity for my husband. He is from Scotland/Chicago; I'm from Chicago. We both miss forests and water -- big bodies of water like the Great Lakes. Chicago has one of the most extensive forest preserve districts in the US, and we always took advantage of that. And I miss the days when an 85-degree day was considered stinking hot, not a "cool spell".

GP, we moved here because of a terrific job opportunity for my husband. He is from Scotland/Chicago; I'm from Chicago. We both miss forests and water -- big bodies of water like the Great Lakes. Chicago has one of the most extensive forest preserve districts in the US, and we always took advantage of that. And I miss the days when an 85-degree day was considered stinking hot, not a "cool spell".

GP, we moved here because of a terrific job opportunity for my husband. He is from Scotland/Chicago; I'm from Chicago. We both miss forests and water -- big bodies of water like the Great Lakes. Chicago has one of the most extensive forest preserve districts in the US, and we always took advantage of that. And I miss the days when an 85-degree day was considered stinking hot, not a "cool spell".

GP: you bet! Consider the slate clean.

Mulchmama: we're considering moving to Chicago in a decade, when we retire, to be with our daughter. We've been there about 8 times and we've fallen in love with the Botanic Garden. I could go there every week.
Love the people, the food, the neighborhoods. Afraid of missing our mountains, ocean, seafood. Would not miss reserved,Bostonians cost of living.
Went to Beloit, so know the climate. Chicago is not where'd I choose to live out my retirement in wintertime, but maybe I could be a snowbird in Feb. and go to Florida!
But it were winter with family and grandchildren (which I hope I'd have by then) then I'd be warm anyway.
Idabean