Temperatures have been topsy-turvy this summer: NASA photos

Land surface temperatures in Canada from July 27 to August 3, 2014, as analyzed by NASA Photo: Courtesy NASA

Canadians coast-to-coast may have noticed something strange this summer, and now NASA has the pictures to prove it.

Typically blistering hot locations like Southern Ontario have been comparatively cool, with temperatures resting in the comfortable mid-20s, while coastal B.C. has been blistering hot. The highest temperature recorded in the country in July was 41.7 Celsius in Ashcroft B.C., according to Environment Canada data.

By contrast, Ontario’s hottest day was recorded in the province’s far northwest at Mine Centre Southwest — a small community southeast of Kenora.

And it’s not just Pacific Canucks looking to cool off. Florida and Georgia have been quite cool this summer and the mountains of Tennessee have “dropped to the winter-like levels.”

Check out NASA Earth Observatory’s map of North America below, where the darker the red, the hotter the day.

Land surface temperatures from July 27 to August 3, 2014, as analyzed by NASA. (image courtesy NASA)

“In places where it should be seasonably hot—the eastern and southern United States and western Europe—it’s just been warm. In places where weather is usually mild in the summer—northern Europe, the Pacific coast of North America—it has been ridiculously hot,” NASA states. The space agency analyzed land surface temperatures from July 27 through August 3 and shed some light on what’s behind these changing temperatures. Essentially, jet streams and other global air flows moved as though it’s winter, not summer.

“High pressure systems over Scandinavia and northern Russia, as well as over the Pacific Northwest of North America, allowed stable air masses to build up heat domes and ‘block’ incoming fronts that could bring changes in winds, precipitation, and temperatures,” NASA wrote. Those patterns caused the jet stream to see-saw north and south and carry warm air over the Pacific to Canada’s northwest and the U.S. Pacific coast — in California, that’s prompted crop-killing droughts and, in B.C., massive wildfires.

But that same change also sent cooler air into central Canada and the eastern U.S. and warm Atlantic air into Europe, where even mountainous Switzerland has been suffering from the heat, drought and subsequent forest fires. Italy, on the other hand, has been quite cool — a relief for tourists trying to navigate Rome but a bain on coastal resorts throughout southern Europe.

Land surface temperatures in Europe from July 27 to August 3, 2014, as analyzed by NASA (courtesy NASA).

“This pattern is more common in winter than in summer,” NASA notes.

Take a look a the global temperature flows below.

Land surface temperatures from July 27 to August 3, 2014, as analyzed by NASA. (courtesy NASA)