Here’s my first rule – climate change is not a religion. You don’t believe in it or not. It’s happening and humans are the cause of it. Whether that’s great for us, bad for us, is not for me to say. That’s where your beliefs come in.
Now, onto the data.
Our long cold snap from the last week of January to Valentine’s Day only broke ONE cold temperature record at both ACY and Atlantic City, our main weather reporting stations. In other words, we’ve had this cold before.
What about the length of it? ACY and AC went 7 days with temperatures under 32F. That’s good for 10th all time at ACY Airport (records back to 1943) and 16th all time in Atlantic City (records back to 1873).
In other words, it’s been colder, for longer several times before.
And those several times before are generally a long time ago.
At ACY Airport 7 of the 9 longer sub-freezing streaks happened before 1980.
In Atlantic City, 13 of the 15 longer sub-freezing streaks happened before 1980.
Climate change doesn’t mean “it’ll never be cold again”. It’s just that it needs to be more unusually cold to produce the same cold as before.
On the opposite end, we can break heat records with less impressive heat. Record warm outpaces record cold more than 3x over in the past 15 years.
I love cold and snow more than most people. I’m not saying how to feel about climate change or not. You are all great and many of us understand that facts/forecasts is not the same as the politics of it.
Leave a Reply