Every Summer Is Hot Now in Vermont, Pretty Much

A refreshing, cool summer day on Lake Champlain in
Shelburne a few years ago. Such nice weather
is geting rare in our increasingly hot
Vermont summers

It looks like we're experiencing another hot summer here in Vermont.

After a big heat wave in late June, followed by not as hot, but still muggy weather in the past week, foreasts call for another long hot spell in the upcoming week. We're in for more 90 degree weather, folks.

I guess we should be used to it now.   I checked records from the National Weather Service office in South Burlington this morning. Turns out, the last cooler than average summer in Burlington was way back in 2009 - eleven years ago. That summer wasn't all that cool, either: It was just 0.9 degrees south of the average

In those eleven years since 2009, some summers were only a little warmer than average while others were much  hotter. Four of the top ten hottest summers in Burlington have happened since 2005.

Two years ago, 2018, we had our second hottest summer with a mean temperature of 72.1 degrees. That's just 0.1 degrees off the all time record set in 1949.

We're talking climatological summer, by the way. That's the period from June 1 through August 31.

The last time we had a cooler than average summer month was in June, 2015, which was close to one degree cooler than average. The rest of that summer was definitely on the warm side, so that kept the hot summer streak going.

There is a caveat here.  I didn't get a chance to take a look at some other towns and cities in Vermont. Burlington seems to run  hotter than other towns.  Summers that were only slightly warm in Burlington, like 2017, might actually have been marginally cooler than average in places like Montpelier and St. Johnsbury.  I'll have to check.

The number of 90-degree days in Burlington seems to be on the upswing, too. So far this year, we've had ten such days, double the average for an entire year.

There were eight such days in 2019; sixteen of them in 2018;  eight in 2017 and twelve of them in 2016, for instance.

For those of you wondering if this increased Vermont heat is caused by climate change, I would say global warming has a hand in it.  It's possible natural cycles were involved too, but in all likelihood climate change gave this increased tendency toward heat an extra boost.

The bottom line here is that Vermont's reputation as a nice cool summertime retreat has taken a bit of a hit.  It's still a lot more refreshing here, than say, Miami. However, the Green Mountain State is not quite as naturally air conditioned as it once was.

Good Weather News: Recent Nationwide Tornado Shortage

Shelf cloud from a severe thunderstorm over Colchester, Vermont
in June, 2017. There are some occasional storm chances
in Vermont over the next week or two, starting this evening. 

Back in April, amid some deadly tornado outbreaks in the United States, I was warning that perhaps the worst was yet to come, given that May and June are the peak tornado months in the nation.

Turns out any forecast of a bunch of tornadoes was a thankful bust. Tornado activity in the U.S. in May and June was at or near record lows.

The National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center tweeted that so far, they've only counted 50 tornadoes in June, the lowest number since 1952.

A few more tornadoes might be confirmed from June after more investigations, but the number will almost certainly be at a record low.

Only six tornado watches were issued in the U.S. during June, the least on record,  besting eight watches, the previous record low set just last year.  For May and June combined, there were only 16 tornado watches, easily breaking the record for least number of such alerts during the two months. The old record was 28 such watches in 2018.

Interestingly, one of tornado watches in May included parts of Vermont, an area we all know is decidedly not tornado alley. No tornado is known to have touched down in Vermont so far this year.

Overall, there were 4,044 reports of severe weather - thunderstorm winds, hail and tornadoes - in June, which is somewhat below the average of 4,940 for the month, according to the Storm Prediction Center.

We're past the peak of tornado season for sure, but of course tornadoes and severe weather can and do still occur in July and beyond.

If you for some reason you are a Vermonter who like severe thunderstorms, there's a very slight chance you'll be in luck later today.

A squirt of rather hot, humid air is making its way into the state today, which should prompt high temperatures in the 80s to locally around 90 degrees.

Meanwhile, a weak cold front is pressing south and southeastward from Quebec and there's a relatively fast flow of air developing overhead, coming down from the northwest.  This has the potential to help produce scattered thunderstorms, a couple of which might have strong to damaging gusty winds.

This is most likely in northern Vermont, but even there, the chances of any one place being hit by such a severe storm is on the low side. The Storm Prediction Center has northern New England and northern New York in a marginal risk zone for severe storms later today.

Marginal risk is the lowest of five alert levels for severe storms and means that there's a chance of isolated, localized severe weather.

We are getting into an interesting weather pattern that could bring us more rounds of scattered, gusty thunderstorms over the next week or more.

A dome of very hot air is setting up over the central United States and south-central Canada.

We here in Vermont will be on the eastern edge of this hot dome, which means we'll get periods of very warm, humid air.  At the same time, with the center of this "heat dome" to our west, the overall air flow will come from the northwest, riding down the front side of this high pressure ridge.

Such a northwest flow on the edge of a hot air mass, is a recipe for scattered, sometimes severe storms as little disturbances move southeastward in this airflow toward us.

It's hard to predict when or if any of these thunderstorms will develop any more than a day or two in advance. The storms also won't necessarily happen every day, and won't necessarily be all that widespread.

But while you're enjoying, or not enjoying the rather warm and sticky weather in the forecast for the next week or two, keep an eye out for thunderstorms, especially during afternoons and evenings

In Exception, Record Lows Outpaced Record Highs In January, But That Will Change In February

Ice jam and flooding on Boston Post Road in Enosburg,
Vermont on a rainy, record warm January 12. The warmth
came just five days after record cold. 

Starting in December, 2014, the number of record highs across the United States outpaced the number of record lows in each month. At least through December, 2017.

That long streak was broken in January, when that brutal cold wave in the eastern two thirds of the nation created more record lows than record highs.

According to the Guy On Climate blog, using information from the National Climate Data Center, said there were 1,918 daily record highs in January and 2,750 daily record lows. (Burlington, Vermont had one of those record highs and one of those record lows in January.)

Thus, January ended a remarkable streak of 37 consecutive months where United States record highs outpaced record lows.

It's just one indication, though I admit not proof, that the climate is off the rails. You should have roughly an even number of record lows and record highs. Some months would  have more record highs, others would have more record lows, depending on the weather pattern during that period. But long term, it should even out.

You'll notice the record lows in January did not outpace record highs by all that much. Some months during the three year streak of warmth were particularly lopsided. For instance, one standout, February, 2017 had 7,180 record highs and just 178 record lows.

So far in February, as of Tuesday, there had been 962 daily record high maximum temperatures across the country and 69 record lows.

Most of those record highs were in the western part of the nation. Over the next several days, record and near record highs are likely on various days over the next week or so in the eastern and southern third of the country.

Meanwhile, cold air will be mostly confined to the northwestern third of the nation, That chilly air isn't exceptional, so there won't be very many record lows to report in the coming days.

Winter In Vermont: Now A Lot Warmer, And Oddly, A Lot Snowier

Who knows what this winter will bring, but in general,
Vermont winters  have gotten much warmer and snowier
in recent decades. Here's a street scene in Burlington
Vermont after a two-foot snowstorm in March, 2011.

As we prepare to go into winter, with a series of cold fronts due starting now and going into next week to bring us to near normal December temperatures and weather, here's some contradictory long term trends in Vermont winters:  

We are much warmer than we used to be decades ago. But also snowier.

According to Climate Central, Burlington, Vermont is the American city with the fastest warming winter, up about 7 degrees since 1970.

Though most of this is definitely real warming, a bit of it might be a function of the start date of this study, which is 1970.

That year was unusually cold here in Vermont. In fact, we had the coldest January on record that year.

Still, all data points to the fact that winters are warmer than they used to be in the northern tier of states, including Vermont as global warming has taken hold.

As always, the trend is uneven, with cold winters interspersed with warm ones. It's just the warm ones have gotten more frequent. And the winter heat waves have gotten more intense. Witness the unprecedented near 70 degree warmth on Christmas Eve 2015 and the previously unheard of 70 degree weather in late February this year.

There's no telling whether this winter will be cold or warm or all over the place. Stay tuned on that one.

It seems odd, but as Vermont has warmed, it has gotten snowier. Too bad the warmth does not allow the snow to accumulate all that much, or stay around for all that long.

The snow stats are striking. Five of the top 10 snowiest years in Burlington have occured since 1992. Seven of the top 10 occured since 1970.  Fourteen of the past 17 winters have had more than the average annual snowfall for Burlington.  Snowfall so far in this young winter is running a little behind normal, but the season is still extremely young, and that could change.

The big snows seem in large part to come from bigger individual snowstorms. Records in Burlington go back to the 1880s. But four of the top five biggest snowstorms have occured since 2007. Of the 20 biggest snowstorms on record, 13 of them have happened since 1993.

This all makes sense in a strange sort of way. Storms in a warmer atmosphere can draw in more moisture, and drop heavier precipitation that they could in a cooler world. If the temperature remains below freezing, storms in general now have the power to drop more snow than they could in the past.

As far as this winter goes, we'll just have to wait and see.

Scientists Fear Climate Data Blackout Under Trump

A famous tweet by Donald Trump shows
 his "knowledge" of climate science. 

Climate science, despite the hysterical objections of climate denialists. is based on data.

The more data we get, the more we understand how climate change will affect us,  how bad it will get, what we need to do to mitigate it, and how we go about trying to erase the worst effects of it.  

Just in the past week, we've gotten big dumps on informatio from the Arctic, and how it's had a rough climate year, and what that means for us.

For instance, the data shows, according to an "Arctic Report Card" from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) the following, as reported by The Verge:

"The so-called Arctic Report Card showed a few new records this year: the minimum extent of Arctic sea ice from mid-October to late November was the lowest since satellite observations began in 1979.

In the North American Arctic, spring snow cover in May fell to the lowest levels since satellite observations begin in 1967. And the average air temperature over land this year was also the highest on record, representing a 6.3 degree Fahrenheit increase since 1900."

Then there's Greenland. We learned this week that two new studies published in Nature indicate the Greenland ice sheet is less stable than may scientists thought. Everybody knew there was a melting trend in Greenland, contributing to global sea level rise, but the new studies said what was thought to be a fairly stable ice sheet could melt down almost completely, at least eventually.

That would create a lot more sea level rise than many scientist originally thought.

All this is to say we need a lot more data and a lot more science to fully understand the complexity and implications of climate change.

But we're entering a period under the Trump administration that is hostile to climate science.

Trump has been notoriously dismissive and ignorant about climate change. As an example, a couple of winters ago, he tweeted that since there was a nasty January cold wave going on in New York City, that must mean climate change is a hoax.

He's stocking his cabinet and staff with climate change deniers and people from the oil industry, who have a vested interested in denying climate change.

Worse, Trump is not officially in office and he appears to be already on a witch hunt to scrub the federal government of climate scientists.

The Trump transition team had asked for a list of people in the Department of Energy who are working on climate science.

The Energy Department declined to give those names, and the Trump transition team is disavowing the request for the list as a mistake by a Trump employee who was not authorized to make that request.

Still, you can understand why people are nervous.  

Advocates say climate scientists should get more
ito the forefront of climate activism and social media.

That's why there's a big social media push to collect data pertaining to climate change and storing it on the cloud or scattering it across the world to make it harder for someone who might want to maliciously destroy the data, to keep it from seeing the light of day.

A lack of data, the logic goes, would stymie the work of climate scientists and activists in the age of Trump.

Eric Holthaus, a meteorologist, journalist and climate activist is a ringleader in this effort.

Holthaus told NPR:

"There are ways of keeping this data open and publicly available and uninterrupted during any sort of era of our government that might be hostile to climate science. 

And it definitely feels like we are entering a time when climate scientists feel the need to sort of hunker down and preserve wat they've done so far. This project is helping them to continue their work uninterrupted

And again, the goal in this project is not out of some paranoia of a conspiracy to erase knowledge from humanity. It's to make sure that we are advocating for climate science in the sense that these scientists ave devoted their lives, and they are now going to be operating under a government that is hostile to climate science."

Holthaus went on with NPR:

 "I wouldn't expect the Trump team to come and say, you know, by the way, we're going to just delete all the work that you guys have done for the last decades. I think the most likely scenario is that there will be across-the-board budget cuts in the realm of climate science across multiple parts of the government."

Collecting science data is all wonderful if you have scientific data with you or your scientific organization has collected it. But is there anything we can do to help?  I reached out to Holthaus and others via Twitter. His and other suggestions are to donate to university science departments and other scientists and become a citizen scientist yourself. 

To be a citizen scientist, you don't have to learn how to take ice cores on an Arctic glacier, then live there on a pile of ice for a year.

There are programs to hook up with in which you can observe changes in your local environment. These small scale projects are a great ingredient, believe it or not, to understand climate change.

Meanwhile, there is a movement to convince climate scientists to do more outreach, more activism to get the word out and combat anything Trump might do.

Some scientists already do this, perhaps most notably Michael Mann, the Penn State Atmospheric Science professor and director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State who has actually gotten death threats because of his science and was sued by climate denialists who questioned the integrity of his work. (Several independent reviews concluded Mann's science was sound.)

The lawsuit experience has turned him into an activist, and he's all over social media and the media in general to spread his science, and yes, his opinions.

Other climate scientists should follow suit, at least to an extent, says people like current Obama administration U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell reently told a meeting of the American Geophysical Union that to fight Trump's Tweets, scientists have to counter-Tweet, and more.

According to The Verge:

"She name checked Snapchat and Twitter, and pointed out that one of the most popular tweets from the U.S. Geological Survey reached a lot of people because Leonardo DiCaprio retweeted. it. DiCaprio hs re than 16 million followers. 'You guys are all rock stars to me,' Jewell told the crowd. 'But I don't think any of you have 16 million followers."

There might even be an assist or two from politicians.

According to the Sacramento Bee, at the same American Geophysical Union meeting where Jewell spoke, California Gov. Jerry Brown said if Trump turns off climate monitoring satellites, "California will launch its own damn satellite....Were going to collect that data." 

"We've got the scientists, we've got the lawyers and we're readh to fight. We're read to defend," Brown said.

It will be an interesting, rough four to eight years in the climate science wars. The good news is forces are mobilizing to attempt to keep the Trumpsters in check.

The bad news is I doubt we can totally keep scientific integrity going in the next few years.

Meanwhile, I'm sure the climate-related disaster and humanitarian crises will keep piling up.

It's a wonderful world.
 

Sixteen Month Stretch Of Record Global Heat Ends, Sort Of

By one measure at least, September, 2016 was not the hottest month on record for the entire earth.

September, 2016 was either the hottest or second hottest
month on record for the globe, depending on who's measuring.

If that's the case, September ended an incredible streak of 16 consecutive months that the world has seen record high temperatures.    

According to NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, September, 2016 was "only" the second warmest on record, just a few hundreds of a degree cooler than September, 2015.

Data from NASA, however, says September, 2016 was barely the warmest on record, just a smidge warmer than last year. Basically, it's a tie between the two Septembers. 

The end of the incredible worldwide record hot streak has long been expected, because global temperatures tend to peak during an El Nino and several months after an El Nino ends. 

There was a strong El Nino earlier this year, which has since faded away. El Nino, an unusual patch of very warm water that sometimes forms in the eastern Pacific, boosts worldwide temperature.

The recent El Nino, combined with global warming caused by greenhouse gases, created the record hot streak.

October, November and December, 2015 were off the charts hot worldwide, so the rest of this year probably won't see record high temperatures.

But given the super heated first eight months of 2016, this year will likely be the hottest on record.

Also, most scientists expect that, though the coming months are unlikely to be record hot, they will almost certainly much warmer than the long term average from the 20th century.

Global warming is here to stay, with or without El Ninos.  

Global Heat Records, Data Coming Fast And Furious

NOAA says the globe had its warmest
March in modern record this year. The only
major cold spot was the northeast U.S. and
eastern Canada.  

While I continued to shiver in winter cold up here in northern New England during March, the world as a whole had yet another record warm month, according to NOAA's National Climatic Data Center. 

On a global basis, March averaged 0.85 degrees above the 20th century average for the month. But if you take the whole world into account, it's impossible to get a month that is several degrees warmer or colder than normal.

That 0.85 degree departure from normal in March is the third greatest of any month since the NCDC has kept track of such things.

The only notable cold area on Earth in March was the northeastern United States and eastern Canada.

This is the latest in what has seemingly become a constant string of new heat records across the globe.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center said Arctic sea ice reached its lowest extent on record for the month of March.

As Dr. Jeff Masters noted in a recent blog post, five nations or territories have already recorded their hottest temperatures on record so far in 2015, and the year is still young. The year with the most nations or territories with new all time heat records was 2010 with 21 such records, but two of those records have since been broken.

The fingerprints of human-induced global warming are all over this latest barrage of hot climate data,   but it's not the only hand in the mix.

A developing El Nino is very likely helping to boost the nearly worldwide heat.  When this periodic warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean hits, global temperatures tend to spike upward, no matter what humans might be doing to the planet.

The combination of global warming and El Nino means there's a good chance 2015 will be the hottest year in modern records for the Earth as a whole. Right now, 2014 stands as the hottest times man has experienced since well before the 1880s, when record keeping got a whole lot more detailed.

Very likely, there might be some years, maybe 2017, or 2018, that are "cooler" than 2014 or 2015, because El Nino, if it develops, will have probably ended by then. This could bring on a very subtle, very temporary global cooling for a couple years, maybe.

When we get a year or two that's not a new worldwide heat record, we'll hear the inevitable, "See, the world is cooling." from those who would oppose any efforts to combat global warming.

But those are just political talking points. Because of the myriad factors and cycles that affect climate, some years will be warmer than others, even as the general trend line goes up and up and up.

That's what you need to follow, the general trend line. And certainly not a random cold spell in which some U.S. Senator can declare global warming a non-issue because he went outside and made a snowball during the winter.

Bill Maher, that very blunt political comedian, had a blistering segment on climate change during his show this week. You might agree with the guy, you might not on all kinds of subjects he touches upon, but you have to admit, Maher cuts to the chase.  

Bill Maher mocking Ted Cruz for when Cruz
compared himself to Galileo while saying
he doubted climate change exists.  

Like him or not, Maher goes for the kill.

In his climate rant, he mocked politicians who continue to say they don't know enough about global warming because they're not scientists.

Kind of like saying legislators can't appropriate funding for a new road because they are not dump trucks.

Maher said many GOPers' public stance on climate denial isn't for the general population. He says it's for the corporate donors who keep them in office..

Or as Mahar crudely put it: "It's not why politicians suck more than ever, it's who they're sucking more than ever.

The whole video is worth watching, if only for the bitter laughs. So go ahead:

National Climate Data Dump: 2014 Hot AND Cold, Lots of Extremes In U.S.

The latest data shows the southwestern United
States has the hottest year on record in 2014, while the
center part of the nation was chilly.  

At first glance, the climate data for the United States released today by the National Climatic Data Center seems almost like a yawner.  

The year 2014 was the 34th warmest and 40th wettest year out of the past 120 years for the United States.

But that middling climate data was the result of huge, sometimes unprecedented regional extremes of heat, cold, abrupt weather changes, big giant storms and unrelenting drought.

Look at the details and you get things like this:

--- Three states, California, Nevada and Arizona, had their hottest year on record. That the nation had a warmer than normal year means 2014 was the 18th consecutive warmer than normal year in the United States.

-- The middle of the country, from the Great Lakes down to Louisiana, had a very cold 2014. Seven states were in the Top 10 list of coldest years, but none made it into the Top 5. A warm December nationwide prevented any state from having a Top 5 coldest year.  Most of the eastern half of the nation was a little on the cool side, except for New England, which was just a touch on the warm side.

-- The Climatic Data Center has something called the U.S. Climate Extreme Index. It's a pretty complicated formula that measures how often and what percent of the nation has much above or below normal temperatures and precipitation, and how may other extremes there were.

A graph showing the the yearly percentage of extreme
weather events has shown an upward trend since the 1960s.  

In 2014, the Climate Extreme Index registered at 31 percent. There has been a trend upward since the 1960s on the extreme index.

The year 2014 turned out to be more "extreme" than 2013, but not as "extreme" as 2012, which was by far the most wild year in modern U.S. weather history.

-- There were eight weather disasters each costing at least $1 billion dollars in damage. These eight disasters claimed 53 lives.

More detailed information, and an analysis of 2014 global temperatures, will be released around mid-month.

The National Climatic Data Center information is expected to show that 2014, on a global basis, was the hottest on record. The Japan Meteorological Agency has already declared the past year as the hottest on record.

It's FREEZING At My House, But At Least 2014 Was Hottest Ever, Globally

A definite upward trend in temperatures on Earth since about 1900.  

I've been awaiting the major players who track global climate, from NASA,   National Climatic Data Center, the UK Met Office in Britain and the Japan Meteorological Agency.  

Each one measures things a bit differently. During the month of January, each would come out with their assessment of the year just past.

Turned out Japan Meteorological Agency was the first to weigh in and they confirm 2014 was the hottest year on record since people really, really got into measuring these things about 120 years ago.

The JMA says 2014 was just shy of a half degree Farhenheit above the average for 1981 to 2010. That doesn't sound like much, but a half degree above average on a global basis is actually HUGE.

It's not even close to the previous hot years of 2010, 2005 or 1998, says JMA. (The three years were pretty much tied; which one got the edge depended upon which agency was doing the measuring.)

The other major climate tracking agencies have all said 2014 will very likely be the hottest year on record.  NASA, The Climate Data Center and the UK Met Office will release their official assessments later this month.

The UK Met Office doesn't have the official word for the global yet, but the agency says 2014 was Britain's hottest year on record.  Eight of the UK's top 10 warmest years have occured since 2002.

Yes, it's cold in part of the United States today, but it appears global warming continues on and on.

It will be interesting to see how 2015 does on a global basis.

Why It's Hard To Plan How To Dress For The Weather In Rapid City

The front entrance of the National Weather Service office
in Rapid City, South Dakota during an extreme
blizzard in October, 2013. An analysis shows the city
has the most extreme weather of any in the U.S.  n

Where I live here in Vermont, there's the old saying, "If you don't like the weather in Vermont, wait a minute and it will change."

I believe they use that phrase in many other parts of the country, too.

But where that cliche fits best is in Rapid City, South Dakota, it turns out.

At  fivethirtyeight.com, they've done an analysis ranking the relative unpredictability of the weather.

The word they should have used is volatility of the weather, but we'll get to that in a bit.

The analysis by fivethirtyeight compares weather patterns in every part of the country against long term averages. The more the weather typically deviates from the "normal" the more "unpredictable" the weather is, in the eyes of Nate Silver and Reuben Fischer-Baum, who wrote the article.

The pair looked at 120 American cities, each representative of the 120 National Weather Service forecast offices in the United States.

Silver and Fischer-Baum looked at temperature, precipitation, snowfall, wind, severe weather and other phenomenon to determine their scale of unpredictable, or predictable weather.

Rapid City turned out to have the most unpredictable, or volatile weather. Honolulu, Hawaii had the most predictable weather.

The cities with the most volatile weather were mostly in the upper Great Plains. Cities with the most settled weather tended to be near coastlines.

That makes sense. Oceans tend to have a modifying influence on local climates, tamping down on extreme high and low temperatures and often discouraging severe thunderstorms. Yes, coastlines tend to have storms, but they're not as frequent as day to day variations in temperatures and conditions as inland.

The Pacific Coast has more predictable weather than the East Coast. Weather systems tend to come from the west, so the Pacific Coast gets a lot of influence from the ocean.

Weather systems from inland, the west, tend to affect the East Coast often, so the weather there is more volatile than the other side of the country.

The cities with the most volatile weather tend not to be very big. The fivethirtyeight analysis says the top 23 most volatile weather cities are not within the metropolitan areas of the nation's 50 biggest cities.

Of the top 50 biggest metro areas of the United States, Kansas City is the most "unpredictable," according to the fivethirtyeight analysis.

I'm a little disappointed my region is not the most volatile. (Weather geeks like me like extremes, I guess.)

Burlington, Vermont, the city closest to my home, ranks as the 38th most unpredictable weather city out of the 120 listed.

I've been batting around the words "unpredictable" and "volatile" in this post to describe what's going on with this analysis.

I agree with the Capital Weather Gang that maybe Silver and Fischer-Baum are mistaken in calling cities with more extreme weather "unpredictable."

To rank the predictability, they should have analyzed National Weather Service forecasts, or those from other forecasting firms, to compare how many of the forecasts turned out to be correct in each city.

So the term we should use in the fivethirtyeight analysis is a ranking of how variable a city's weather is, not its unpredictability.

Here's how the Capital Weather Gang put it:

"...volatility isn't always the best indicator of unpredictability. Big fronts which cause big swings in the weather are actually pretty easy to forecast, whereas more subtle variations can be much more difficult to detect."

For instance, a cold front a couple weeks ago caused temperatures to drop by some 60 degrees overnight in the Great Plains. That's highly variable weather, but the temperature change was very accurately forecast ahead of time.

A couple days later a storm on the East Coast produced rain and snow. Some cities had much more snow than forecast, others had less. Only a subtle change in temperature by one or two degrees from say, 32 to 34, made all the difference.

Not a big change in temperature, but the subtle change made it super hard to forecast the effect of teh storm in any given area.

Speaking of extremes, another interesting statistic came out this week. In November, the United States had, technically, the most extreme weather on earth, based on temperature.

The analysis looked at how far above and below normal temperatures for the month of November were everywhere.

A spot near Cable, Wisconsin had temperatures the most below normal for November, about six degrees lower than average.

Meanwhile, a spot just off the northern Alaska coast in the Beaufort Sea had the biggest warm departure from normal in November, more than nine degrees.

Once again, I missed out in the extremes. Temperatures in Burlington, Vermont in November, 2014 turned out to be exactly normal.

Oh well, better than freezing or roasting, I guess.

October Was Warm In U.S. We're Still Waiting On Global Data

Most of the nation had a warm October. That's cold
comfort to us shivering through a November cold snap.  n

In the next week or so, we'll get data from such agencies as NOAA and the National Climate Data globe continued a record-setting trend in hot temperatures in October.
Center to see whether the

2014 might end up being the hottest year on record.

While we wait for that, and most of the nation shivers through an early season cold snap, we can at least look at the NCDC's review of October for the United States.

It turns out most of us enjoyed a warm autumn month.

For the United States, October was the fourth warmest in 120 years of record. The warmth was driven by the month being in the Top 10 warmest in much of the western United States, and most of New England. And New York State.

The Midwest continued to be the nation's ice box, as it has been all year. However, in October, temperatures there were near normal, not below normal as they've been during most of 2014.

Overall, precipitation for the United States was near normal, but nearly percent of the nation was still in drought. California's dire drought situation didn't get any better in October, I'm afraid.

With just two months of data to go, it looks like California will have its warmest year on record. Many western states will have one of its Top 10 warmest years on record.

By contrast, upper Midwestern states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa and Illinois, are likely to have one of their Top 10 coldest years on record.

You can't read much into the global climate change situation by looking at United States data alone. The nation comprises maybe 2 percent of the world's surface.

We'll have to wait another few days to see how the entire planet did in terms of climate during October.

Hot Times In September Are More Evidence Global Warming Is Resurgent

NCDC's map of global temperatures in Sept. 2014
are showing a LOT of global heat.  

If you were sweating it out in September, you weren't alone.

The whole world was hot, hot, hot.

The National Climate Data Center said Monday that if you combine ocean and land temperatures, September was the hottest such month since they started keeping track of these things 135 years ago.

Monday's announcement echos NASA, which earlier this month, using their own measurements, also said September was the hottest on record across the globe

We might be starting a trend of renewed, more intense warming, but of course it's a little too soon to be sure.  But here's food for thought along those lines:

The NCDC said this year so far ties with 1998 as the hottest year on record. A lot of people who say global climate change is not happening or is a non-issue would tell you that 1998 was the hottest year on record and it's been cooling off ever since.

That's not at all right, of course. The year 1998 had a mega-El Nino, which causes global temperatures to get hotter than they normally would be, with or without global warming caused by us humans belching tons of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere.

Also, overall, the Earth's climate has continued to warm since 1998, just not at as fast a pace it was during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s

Besides, 1998 isn't the world's hottest year on record. The Top Five hottest, starting with number one and working down to fifth hottest are: 2010, 2005, 1998, 2013, 2003.  So global warming has kept going since 1998 despite what the naysayers tell us.

The apparent slowdown in the rate of warming over the past 15 years isn't really shocking. Many scientists say a lot of the increasing heat in recent years has been going into the oceans. Also, human caused global warming doesn't shut down other natural cycles in the climate.

Human caused global warming might overwhelm these cycles, but they're still in play. So the pace of global warming might wax and wane during different decades.

The heat of 2014 could be a sign that the slightly slower pace of global warming might be ending, but of course we would need many months and years of additional data to verify that.

But every month so far in 2014 except February ranked among the top four hottest months on record. May, June, August and September were the hottest such months on record. February brought a "cool" spell, in which the world had "only" its 18th hottest February, out of the past 135 years.

We might be heading into another El Nino, a periodic warming of the eastern Pacific ocean. As in 1998, the current building El Nino might be adding more heat on top of the warmth induced by carbon dioxide emissions.

It's unclear how strong the upcoming El Nino will be, if it comes at all.  It probably won't be as strong as it was in 1997 and 1998, yet still we seem poised to break high temperature records set then.

Obviously, I hope that a faster pace of climate change isn't starting. But if it is, the people who are telling us the concept of human-caused  climate change is bunk might have to change their narrative.

You know, the false one that said climate change stopped 20 years ago. I wonder what they'll come up with for a new story?

Global Temperatures Didn't Get Memo; Not Playing To Conservatives' Talking Points

Hot times: NASA's map of September global
temperatures shows a lot of heat.  

The dwindling number of people who keep telling us that climate change isn't real have a problem.

These shrinking number of shriekers say all this talk of a warming planet is just a plot by climate scientists to rake in zillions of dollars in research grants, and a plot by the UN to take away all of our freedoms.

But here's the problem. The data keeps showing more and more warming.

And on it went today. NASA said September was the warmest on record, and the six month ending in September were also the hottest on record. Their records go back to about 1880.

There's a pretty decent chance that 2014 will end up as the hottest year on record, too.

Yes, I know six months doesn't prove too much. You want to look at the long term trends. Will things generally keep getting hotter, as they have been? True, we've had a slowdown in the rate of warming over the past decade, but is that slowdown over? Are we going to start heating up really, really fast again? Time will tell.

And some of this year's global heat is probably due to a burgeoning El Nino. An El Nino, to oversimply things, is a periodic warming of the surface water in the eastern Pacific Ocean.

El Ninos tend to make the globe as a whole warmer. But since this is so far a weak El Nino, you'd expect things to be warm-ish, but not record breaking.

Anyway, I'm getting technical. I'll look forward to the even more closely watched National Climatic Data Center statistics on September global temperatures, due out in a week or so.

Of course the problem for the climate science deniers is every time something like this happens, like this hot September, that blasted, pesky media keeps reporting it. And people hear about it. And gets some of them thinking, "Hmmm. Maybe the world is warming up. I keep hearing about these hot climate reports."

In the face of evidence, the narrative is changing. Many people have given up the "climate change is a big lie" meme for other arguments.

In Congress, a number of Republicans claim not to know anything about what's going on, because they're not scientists.

Which is a weasely way to get out of commenting on climate change. Or even better, doing something about it.

Most members of Congress are not scientists. But most are not economists, but they make decisions that  affect the economy all the time. Most members of Congress are not military strategists, but they make decisions about wars and diplomacy all the time.

Or at least they're supposed to. Seems they're making no decisions on anything at all lately, but that subject is for another screed I'll write about some other time.

My point is, most members of Congress are not climate scientists, but that doesn't preclude them from seeking advice from climate experts.  But oops, the public isn't suppose to realize that, or at least say it out loud. My bad.

At my house in Vermont this week, we're supposed to get near record high temperatures tomorrow and Wednesday. That means little of course, because a warm spell on a pinprick spot on Earth doesn't tell you anything about global warming.

But these hot spells keep hitting people with increasing frequency all over the world. Which makes me wonder when the climate deniers will become a tragicomic laughing stock among us sweating masses.

I think that might be starting to happen already.

Yep, It Was Just About The Coldest March On Record In Vermont

You knew March was cold, and you were right.

No April Fool. This is a perennial bed between my deck
and driveway in a photo taken this morning, April 1 in
St. Albans, Vermont. Often, at this time of year
a few tentative daffodil leaves are starting to
poke up here. Not this year.  

The news out of St. Johnsbury, Vermont this morning is they had the coldest March on record, in data that goes back 120 years.

The mean temperature for the month in St. Johnsbury was 18.9 degrees, decisively colder than the previous record chilly March, in 1900.

In Burlington, Vermont, it wasn't quite a record. The mean temperature in March, 2014 there was 22.1 degrees, which was almost nine degrees colder than normal.

This makes the month that just ended the fourth coldest March on record in Burlington.

I'm sure we'll get reports later today of other cities reporting their coldest March on record in 2014, or at least something close

In northern New England, temperatures will continue below normal for the first week of April, but not nearly as far below normal as it was in March.  At least it doesn't look like we're on pace for a record cold April.

And a thaw has set it, the maple sap is running, and the next storm, due Friday night, looks as if it will be mostly rain, at least in the valleys.

We'll take any improvement we can get.