SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The Washington Post reports that the "lower 48" states of the USA are enjoying spring-like weather. It quotes a meteorologist as saying 1495 record high temperatures have been reached during the month of February (as against 10 record lows); among them:
- Magnum, Okla., hit 99 degrees [Fahrenheit, 37.2° Celsius] on Feb. 11 — tying the state record for hottest winter temperature ever recorded. Yet it occurred two weeks earlier than the record it matched from Feb. 24, 1918, set in the town of Arapaho.
- Denver hit 80 degrees [Fahrenheit, 26.7° Celsius] Feb. 10 — its warmest February temperature on record dating back to 1872.
- Norfolk hit 82 degrees [Fahrenheit, 27.8° Celsius] Feb. 12, tying its warmest February temperature on record dating back to 1874.
[Ed Note: it is actually Mangum, OK, not Magnum. The original WaPo article is incorrect.]
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Springtime for America in February
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 90 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Confess your sins to the Lord and you will be forgiven;
confess them to man and you will be laughed at.
-- Josh Billings
(Score: 4, Informative) by WalksOnDirt on Monday February 20 2017, @05:32PM
I scanned the source article and I saw nothing like that. There was a mention of records going back that far but they didn't say when the matching temperatures occurred.
We passed peak warm-up some 8,000 years ago. It was slowly cooling until we started overloading the atmosphere with CO2. Now it is warming much faster than it cooled, yet it still takes decades to be noticeable.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 20 2017, @07:09PM
Peak warmup, 8000 years ago? Slowly cooling since then? History in Europe demonstrates that the climate hasn't been steadily and slowly cooling for 8000 years. Remember that mini-ice age, that had people fearing that the earth was going to freeze over again? Are you sure you're not making stuff up now?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @08:35PM
Remember that mini-ice age, that had people fearing that the earth was going to freeze over again? Are you sure you're not making stuff up now?
So this is not history repeating itself, it is only Runaway repeating himself. Again. Oh dear.
(Score: 2) by WalksOnDirt on Monday February 20 2017, @09:38PM
It's well known. There was even a comic about it: https://xkcd.com/1732/ [xkcd.com]
I'm sure you've seen this before. Perhaps you dismissed it because it was a comic, but the science [wikipedia.org] was established long before.
Of course, we may have passed that by now. CO2 will do that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21 2017, @12:37AM
But the path being followed is actually the "optimistic scenario": https://www.skepticalscience.com/Hansen-1988-prediction.htm [skepticalscience.com]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday February 21 2017, @02:27AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Informative) by butthurt on Tuesday February 21 2017, @03:14AM
> There was a mention of records going back that far but they didn't say when the matching temperatures occurred.
In the summary I had put:
Denver hit 80 degrees [Fahrenheit, 26.7° Celsius] Feb. 10 — its warmest February temperature on record dating back to 1872.
I can see how it could be read differently, but that does seem to have been the intended meaning.
Record temperatures for Denver, for each day of February, are shown at:
http://www.weather.gov/bou/den_records_feb [weather.gov]
Temperatures of 77 Fahrenheit were reached on 1890-02-04 and 2006-02-28.
I went to
http://w2.weather.gov/climate/getclimate_nonjs.php?wfo=bou [weather.gov]
and after I selected Denver and February 10th, 2017 it told me that the previous record high temperature for that day of February was 71 Fahrenheit, set in 1951:
THE DENVER CO CLIMATE NORMALS FOR TODAY
NORMAL RECORD YEAR
MAXIMUM TEMPERATURE (F) 45 71 1951
MINIMUM TEMPERATURE (F) 18 -14 1933
Tthe 80-degree temperature may be seen by selecting February 11th and looking in the "YESTERDAY" section. Hence the highest temperature previously measured in February was 77 degrees Fahrenheit, in 1890 and 2006.