So I was not unjustified when I complained last week that the sustained cold and snow had made me fed up with winter. It turns out that February was the coldest February and the second coldest month in Cleveland history.
February set records for average low, average high and the most days of sub-zero temperatures.
In fact, the temperature was last above freezing nearly three weeks ago – when the high reached 34 degrees on Feb. 11.
…As for temperatures, Northeast Ohio Media Group research of available weather records back to 1871 found:
- The average daily low for the month of 5.2 degrees bettered the mark of 6.8 degrees, set in 1978. Both are well below what is typical. Over the last 145 years, the average February low has been 20.6 degrees.
- The average high of 23.4 degrees this past month is the coolest on record, below the previous mark of 24.0 degrees for February 1875. The average high in February typically is closer to 35 degrees.
This February, temperatures in Cleveland – factoring in both highs and lows – averaged 16.2 degrees below normal, the weather service reported. Current normals are based on 30 years of temperatures from 1981 through 2010.
The coldest day was on Feb. 20, when the temperature dropped to 17 degrees below zero.
So take that, scientists, global warming is a hoax!
Meanwhile, we had a record-breakingly warm February (and winter as a whole) here in Seattle.
Nope. The only proof I’ll accept against global warming is if you toss me a snowball in Washington, D.C. in the “unseasonable’ month of February. ‘Cuz everybody knows it never snows in D.C. in February. Also, it rained for two days in a row in California last month, so that proves our drought is over.
Those who deny global warming almost perfectly coincide with those who deny the US’s economic mess. That’s quite apt. In the past, growth and recession were gentle ups and downs, then in recent decades became excessive and highly damaging at both extremes (e.g. wealthy accumulation of the rich, the 2008 and next recession to come).
In the same way, El Nino and La Nina years were occasional ups and downs in temperature. Now weather comes in extremes of rain and drought, heat and cold. And in both cases, those who caused the problem want to deny any involvement, they want to pretend it’s not happening or “we have always been at war with East Asia”.
I’m preaching to the choir here but somebody has to drive it home.
All of this is in line with what the global warming models predict.
Adding energy to the system increases temperature differentials, which causes increased wind and faster and more violent mixing with what had previously been considered exclusively arctic and tropical temperatures wandering outside their normal ranges. The increased seawater temperatures and warmer air over the oceans picks up more moisture which gets dumped in the encounter of warm and cold air masses as record rainfalls and mountains of snow. The faster and more intense encounter between hot and cold bodies results in increasingly treacherous and violent weather with record cold being rapidly followed by record highs, snow followed by melt, and refreezing, and flooding. If systems get fixed in place this can repeat itself many times over.
In other words, we get what we are seeing now.
But, clearly, global warming is myth created by …