For Eastern US, temperatures swing high, then swing low. They’ll soon go back up

After days of blistering heat the nation s sweaty East Coast got to open windows step outside and get temporary relief on Friday as temperatures plummeted as much as degrees and humidity dropped alongside At least record highs were set and more than places logged triple-digit heat from Sunday through Wednesday before a cold front from the north broke a heat dome s grip on the region Friday Boston which hit a record Fahrenheit about Celsius on Tuesday was at about Celsius on Friday That blast of cool comfort brought temperatures as much as to degrees below normal but didn t come close to current cold records explained Frank Pereira a meteorologist at the National Weather Arrangement s Weather Prediction Center About the only place that could break a cool record of any kind Friday is one tiny station in Philadelphia at the Franklin Institute where the lowest recorded high for the day is about Celsius It was expected to get up to only about about Celsius Pereira explained But records don t go back very far at that site and meteorologists in Philadelphia don t consider it representative of the area which is unlikely to get a record for cool declared meteorologist Ray Martin in the local weather forecast office in Mount Holly New Jersey That s what s so telling about this weather whiplash from hot to cool and soon to go back to hot commented Situation Central chief meteorologist Bernadette Woods Placky We ve had so countless record highs not only our daytime maximum temperatures but our overnight low temperatures throughout a widespread region of the country so this massive shift feels great and it s giving everyone a break which is nice Woods Placky mentioned But it s not necessarily coming with record lows on the other side That s a signature of human-caused surroundings change from the burning of fossil fuels she declared We re getting so plenty of record highs any more that it doesn t feel like it s big news because it s happening so often But we just don t get as a large number of record lows as frequently Context Central s record tracker shows high temperature marks set since Sunday and only three low ones Billings Montana Casper Wyoming and Jackson Idaho all recorded on Sunday For the first five months of this year there have been nearly twice as several daily high records set in the United States as low records according to records compiled by meteorologist Guy Walton who tracks NWS records For the s as a whole it s well over double with daily high records set and daily low records set Except for the Dust Bowl era which the ratio of highs to lows still don t come close to doubling the number of record daily highs and lows were within of each other from the s to the s but since then the ratio of record heat to record cold has taken off This Eastern cooling won t last the weather operation s Pereira revealed Soon the heat will be back and temperatures in the East will once again be above normal even for summer But he explained We re not looking at temperatures that are as oppressive as they were earlier in the week Weather whiplash from one extreme to another is often a sign of human-caused atmosphere change because the jet stream the river of air high above us that moves weather systems along generally from west to east is weakening getting wavier and getting stuck more because of global warming Woods Placky and other scientists stated When that happens it means more extremes such as a heat wave or a drought or downpours And then when the stuck jet stream moves on it sometimes results in opposite extreme weather Isabella O Malley contributed from Philadelphia The Associated Press situation and environmental coverage receives financial assistance from multiple private foundations AP is solely responsible for all content Find AP s standards for working with philanthropies a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP org