If it's 60 degrees F, it must be spring ... or not

[Found in Yonkers]

By Miguel Llanos, msnbc.com

Temperatures in the 50s and 60s across much of the Northeast and Great Lakes region on Tuesday added to the drama over whether this month will go down as the warmest January on record in the continental U.S. The warm spell has also generated plenty of chatter and even a spring of sorts -- folks walking around in shorts and flowers blooming early.

Weather.com expected at least a dozen cities on Tuesday would set or approach records for a Jan. 31, with temperatures up to 20 degrees above average. "With the very warm air mass, several more record highs are anticipated on Wednesday as we kick off the month of February," weather.com meteorologist

Deke Arndt, the head honcho when it comes to monitoring temperatures for the National Weather Service, told msnbc.com that where he lives, in Asheville, N.C., he gets "a lot of people" asking about the emergence of daffodils in recent weeks.

Arndt tells them that while he's not a plant expert, "it's been very warm" and plants "are responding to soil temperatures."

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/31/10280563-if-its-60-degrees-f-it-must-be-spring-or-not

Gosh, I wonder what could be happening???

[MichiganVote]

1. Nice day. But its still winter in Michigan. We don't take it too seriously.

[thatgemguy]

2. Here On Ohio's Eastern Shore

The temperature peaked at 66 around 2 P.M. I spent time outside in the yard. We grilled for dinner too. Not January weather at all.

[liberal N proud]

3. And Europe is in an unusual deep freeze

Climate shift?

[DFW]

25. No, this is normal for this time of year here

We usually get one or two weeks like this when some front blows in from Siberia (where it's -50°).
Here in Central Europe, it's supposed to reach -10° to -20° (20°F to around 0°F) in Berlin this
weekend, and guess where I have to be all weekend for work?

I'm bringing a scarf!

[liberal N proud]

33. Keep warm

I guess what I was seeing in the news and what my friend from Bern was telling me made me think it was extreme.

Of course here in the states, we forget that -10 to -20 is not that extreme compared to -10 to -20 F.

[tridim]

4. Winter has been cancelled in Kansas City.

We haven't had one yet. Very strange. It was 70 yesterday and almost 70 today.

[DFW]

26. Send some this way!

It's frrrrrrrrreeezing over here!

It kills mosquito larvae, so it's useful, but why couldn't it happen when I was in North America a month ago?

[AnnieBW]

5. If the Groundhog sees his shadow on Thursday

We'll have six more weeks of not-winter.

[doc03]

8. Saw a groundhog road kill yesterday n/t

[lunasun]

12. already out of their holes! not waiting for 2/2

[htuttle]

6. We had about 4-5 inches of snow melt in less than 2 days

It's soggy here in Madison. (but nobody's putting away their snow shovels just yet...)

[doc03]

7. Was 61º here in Ohio, went to the range

today and fired couple hundred rounds pistol practice, shorts and t-shirt weather. It's still 58º at 922 pm.

[a la izquierda]

34. My husband and I were able to take out our road bikes...

which was nice. Can't mountain bike yet, as most of the trails are closed due to the ground not freezing.

[cstanleytech]

9. Mmmm its unusual weather to be sure but its happened before, just check

your local weather history for the past 50 to 100 years and I'll wager you will see periods with similar extremes.

[freedom fighter jh]

13. There have been similar extremes in the past.

I remember getting sent to Kansas City on a business trip one January about 25 years ago. My New York friends warned me to be prepared for cold -- and then it was 70 degrees.

But average temperatures are on a steady upward trend. Over the past century the world has warmed about 1.4 degrees F, and with carbon dioxide at such a high concentration in the atmosphere, more warming is inevitable, bringing with it rising sea levels and threatening coastal communities.

[cstanleytech]

17. Perhaps you meant that 2nd part of the reply for someone else, if not then

I am confused as why you even brought that all up because I didnt argue against any of that at all.

[rurallib]

16. I am not a historian, but I sure can't remember a sustained

warmth in January like this. That is good for 50 years or so.

[RebelOne]

10. It is in the mid-60s here in North Georgia

and by Thursday, the temperature is predicted to be 70. I hate it. I love winter, but it seems as if winter has skipped over my state this year.

[cstanleytech]

18. Yup same here, makes me worry that we are for an even worse summer than usual.

[dixiegrrrrl]

11. The early spring trees and flowers are in full bloom here- 6 weeks early.

Tomorrow it will be 70 degrees and rainy.

Tulip magnolias, daffodils, snowdrops, forsythia, all in full bloom.

[lonestarnot]

14. Sssshhh. You hush now and don't scare anybody up with that fucking climate change gibberish.

[Found in Yonkers]

31. Who said anything about...cc?

I'm thinking Jeeeeeeeeeeezus has blessed us for restricting them homersectionals!

[Arctic Dave]

15. And yet, Arctic Dave is freezing his gibblet bearings off in one of the crappiest Januaries he can

remember.

Did you know that the thermometer on a GMC pick-up goes "OC" once it hits -42.

The more you learn.

[cstanleytech]

19. I hate you sir!!!

Kidding btw, its just this warm winter is just making me worry about the summer because the summers here are already hot and humid

[TBF]

35. Well at least the Arctic remains cold -

here in Texas we are warmer than usual. Jan-April is usually our cold season but it was 70 when I walked the dog this am. Not that I'm complaining about tank tops and flip flops, but I do think we are doing damage to the atmosphere and the weather patterns are reflecting it.

I still wonder whether the nuclear incident in Fukushima is affecting any of this - it's been particularly off the past year.

[AverageJoe90]

38. Right around the same time last year......

We were freezing our asses off in near single-digit temps here in D/FW and there were at least two days I can recall where we snowed in pretty badly(for Texas at least).

[TBF]

41. We lived in Dallas the winter of 2003 -

we were just there for that one winter (my husband's job) but we had snow that year. I have pictures of my infant daughter all bundled up in her stroller and snow on the ground. We've even gotten flakes a few times in Houston but not this year. I can't complain because we are finally getting rain, but the temps are unseasonable for sure.

[fujiyama]

20. I would caution against using one particular warm winter as evidence of climate change

One year does not a trend make. Now, if we saw this say 10 years in a row, we might call that a trend.

That said, there's plenty of overall evidence of climate change - the melting of ice caps and rising sea levels being most obvious. It's also important to look at average temperatures over the years and there we do see a strong correlation between human industrial activity/CO2 output and average rising temperatures.

[cstanleytech]

23. Agree 100% on everything you said.

[jimlup]

21. As is explained by Dr. Heidi Cullen of the Weather channel:

Global Warming loads the dice - the chances of throwing a warm spell are much higher.

Good article at climateprogress:

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/01/31/415942/la-times-us-escaped-winter-global-warming-journalistic-malpractice/

[Rosa Luxemburg]

22. Is this El Nina?

[JayhawkSD]

24. La Nina, actually, and yes, it is.

Keeps the Northern jet stream up in Canada. It's in the 80's in San Diego County this week, and forcast to stay there for the next ten days.

[murielm99]

27. I am in Northern Illinois.

My husband was out walking the dog this evening, and he said he saw the strangest thing: night crawlers. It is January.

[caseymoz]

28. I'm not a denier, but in all truth, you can't judge by one year.

Global warming is proved anyway because record warm temperatures are being set at rates three times record cold temperatures are. That ratio has been increasing for twenty years. Add to that other observations, and the evidence is conclusive. Even a study funded by the Koch brothers confirmed it. Now deniers are still quibbling over whether it's anthropomorphic or not, but already 60 percent of conservatives look like idiots, and the other 40 percent are holding onto their last shred of dignity that's going to tear away soon.

Though I have to admit, I've always wondered how it would alter the Global Warming debate, and conservative/liberal politics in general if we began having years without winters. It would prove humankind is in deep trouble, but, on the bright side, it would prove progressives were right all along on an issue of world importance would make conservatives the jackasses of history.

Or what remains of history, anyway. I try to look on the bright side, but . . .

[AngryOldDem]

29. I am really dreading this coming spring.

I hope this isn't an omen for a bad severe weather season. There's always consequences to stuff like this.

(Right now, 5:30 am in Indianapolis, it's 53.)

[AverageJoe90]

39. I have a bad feeling it might be. nt

[dipsydoodle]

30. Its cold which triggers daffodils to germinate

not heat. So - it will be an earlier cold spell which caused that.

[fasttense]

32. I hate to see our bug population after such a mild winter.

Usually we get months of below freezing temperatures. But we are lucky if we got weeks of below freezing temperatures this year. This means a lot of bugs will have survived the winter and will be eating away at our garden and pastures. The grasshoppers in particular were rampant last year. More of their eggs survive a mild winter. I wonder if they will swarm.

[greiner3]

36. Weather is what't outside;

Climate is weather/time. In other words, climate is the process over which weather trends as shown by graphs and models with time as an x-axis and temps as the y-axis. This is overlaid with the atmospheric CO2 used as the y-axis. The resultant is the hockey stick model that has become so famous/infamous in the media. Peter Sinclair's excellent YouTube video series; http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610 explains it so much better than I can do with these few paragraphs.

The world is indeed seeing a trend in climate toward approaching chaos. The high temps, the shift in rainfall patterns, the increased strengths of weather related storms is increasing and the warming world's temps are melting nearly all the ice/snow that's locked up in glaciers and the poles.

Most of the public has no problem with this pattern. It's the energy cartel that is pushing the anti anthropogenic model and causing the under-informed to doubt good science. Even when most of America's people come to realize this is indeed a fact, the politicians' contributions coming from the energy cartel will still favor not adhering to what science has given it's nearly universal approval to and not be enough to allow for effective measures to be taken; in time.

I for one believe (my college major was ecology. I sat through one of the IPCC lectures and it scared the hell out of me. This was without the effects of the melting and the subsequent release of stored methane of the world's tundra being taken into account. The lecturer said this was proposed by the researchers within IPCC but there was so little science being done with the melting of the tundra's methane that they could not, without an accurate model what this release of methane would realistically do they could not, in the end, include it in their release of findings.

The IPCC lecturer said that using a best 'guess' scenario would add 3-5 degrees Celsius, 5-8 degrees Fahrenheit for those not growing up in President Carter's losing attempt to try and get the American public to at least try and learn the system used by most of the rest of the world.) that the next few decades will be the tipping point. We still have time to avert the worst scenario. If all the world's burning of fossil fuels would end today there would still be the rising of temps of 2-3 degrees Celsius and cause oceans to rise the meter or so by 2100. However, after this time frame the continue adding of carbon to the carbon cycle will be just too much and...

[madokie]

37. We've got jonquils up

fixing to bloom any day now. I kid you not

[YogiB]

40. The climate is completely messed up.