This Is What Climate Change Looks Like

90 Degrees in Winter: This Is What Climate Change Looks Like

The National Weather Service is kind of the anti–Mike Daisey, a just-the-facts operation that grinds on hour after hour, day after day. It’s collected billions of records (I’ve seen the vast vaults where early handwritten weather reports from observers across the country are stored in endless rows of ledgers and files) on countless rainstorms, blizzards and pleasant summer days. So the odds that you could shock the NWS are pretty slim.

Beginning in mid-March, however, its various offices began issuing bulletins that sounded slightly shaken. “There’s extremes in weather, but seeing something like this is impressive and unprecedented,” Chicago NWS meteorologist Richard Castro told the Daily Herald. “It’s extraordinarily rare for climate locations with 100+ year long periods of records to break records day after day after day,” the office added in an official statement.

It wasn’t just Chicago, of course. A huge swath of the nation simmered under bizarre heat. International Falls, Minnesota, the “icebox of the nation,” broke its old temperature records—by twenty-two degrees, which according to weather historians may be the largest margin ever for any station with a century’s worth of records. Winner, South Dakota, reached 94 degrees on the second-to-last day of winter. That’s in the Dakotas, two days before the close of winter. Jeff Masters, founder of WeatherUnderground, the web’s go-to site for meteorological information, watched an eerie early morning outside his Michigan home and wrote, “This is not the atmosphere I grew up with,” a fact confirmed later that day when the state recorded the earliest F-3 strength tornado in its history. Other weathermen were more… weathermanish. Veteran Minneapolis broadcaster Paul Douglas, after noting that Sunday’s low temperature in Rochester broke the previous record high, blogged “this is OFF THE SCALE WEIRD even for Minnesota.”

A view of the Runge reservoir in the town of Runge, some thirty-seven miles north of Santiago on February 3, 2012. Reuters/Ivan Alvarado

www.thenation.com...

Another formality that seems to be going un-reported by the MSM. Minnesota is braking temperature records by 22 degrees, here in California we haven't really seen a winter, -7 inches from the normal. Plants have budded out prematurely, I know my trees and flowers were at least a month or more ahead of growing back leaves and flowering than the last few years.

here in ontario we have had the warmest winter on record,with temps.breaking records daily! it is 23 deg. c. (about 75 f.) today and has been for a few days,with more days ahead the same.
record breaking 'no snow' winter as well.
i can hear a guy cutting his lawn rite now,no joke! we also have an insane amount of birds,several species,but more than normal. many crows,and crazy swarms of starlings! plus the keep flying into my windows and the side of the house. coyotes are walking around in the daytime. rabbits are everywhere.
something is terribly wrong. im 45 and ive never seen anything like this in all my days. ya i remember some warm days in march as a child,followed by a snowstorm! we haven't even had a snowstorm yet! not a canadian one anyway. (5 inches of snow is not a storm,its pretty!!!)
anyway cool post thanx s+f for you.

I am glad you used the word "Climate Change" and not "Global Warming" because warmer weather does NOT mean global warming. It is actually much cooler in Europe right now than it usually is (it seems like the weather of NA has switched with EU).

I don't really know about the rest of the world but Canada is seeing early summer like weather. I believe it is something to do with either the water currents changing having an influence on air currents, or just air currents changing (specifically Arctic air/water currents).

Looking on the positive, having trees and flowers blooming early, and more vegetation in general is a GREAT thing for the air (increased O2, decreased CO2) and also could be good for the food supply (assuming drought conditions aren't in effect).

I don't see this as any reason to panic about climate change, however I do believe that the situation warrants more investigation. There are reports we are approaching a period of cooling although weather is almost impossible to predict.

reply to post by ThisIsMyName


I remember reading something about the deep horizon accident having an effect on the normal currents in the ocean, maybe that has something to do with the weather change....

Oceanographic satellite data now shows that the Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico has stalled as a consequence of the BP oil spill disaster. This according to Dr. Gianluigi Zangari, an Italian theoretical physicist, and major complex and chaotic systems analyst at the Frascati National Laboratories in Italy.

ww4report.com...

They might have changed the earth natural conveyer belt of how the currents work.

Ocean "Conveyor Belt" Sustains Sea Life, Study Says
An estimated three-quarters of all marine life is maintained by a single ocean-circulation pattern in the Southern Hemisphere that pulls nutrient-rich waters from the deep ocean, brings them to the surface, and distributes them around the world.

news.nationalgeographic.com...

NASA Study Finds Atlantic 'Conveyor Belt' Not Slowing
03.25.10

PASADENA, Calif. – New NASA measurements of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, part of the global ocean conveyor belt that helps regulate climate around the North Atlantic, show no significant slowing over the past 15 years. The data suggest the circulation may have even sped up slightly in the recent past.

Interesting, NASA did this study and it came out one month before the Deep Water Horizon Accident - it's not really valid now as the deep water horizon accident came later and have yet to find a current study on the oceans conveyer belt by NASA.

Deep Water Horizon was on April 20, 2010 - an ominous date in history

I live in Kansas and we have had the strangest winter/beginning of spring in recent memory.We had a total of one inch of snow, compared to thirty two inches last year, and above average temperatures throughout the winter months. Right now it is raining and every tree and flower appears to be budding and flowering. I can't wait to see what June and July bring.... I say there will be a severe drought/record temperatures.