Friday, January 26, 2007

Record cold temperatures: Northeast

Right now in Boston, we have -16 C (+3 F), near the record low temperatures for this day from 1927 when they suffered -17 C (0 F). The wind chill is -28 C (-18 F). It will be neither too pleasant nor too easy to walk outside, even for the last of the real men. It's going to be the second coldest day in this century so far in Boston: the coldest day was 1/15/2004 when Al Gore gave a major speech about the global warming in New York City (this frequently observed type of correlation is known as the Gore effect).

According to Wunderground, other places have already breeched their daily record lows. For example, -11 C seems enough in Philadelphia. -13 C (+9 F) in Stamford, CT seems to tie the record from 1982, and they may have already broken it. The flag at Buffalo airport, NY froze in full-wave mode. Recall that the freezing point for flags is rather low. ;-)

The winds from North and Northwest seem to go on. They're the main reason why the high on this day will be a record low for January 26th in much of the East Coast.

Cold weather is also moving to North Dakota and is already creating headaches in Utah. Alaska saw record low temperatures today, too. Frigid weather is expected to go on throughout February in Colorado. Denver's January has so far been the seventh coldest January on record.



Western and Central Europe has experienced some snowstorms. For example, 100 flights were cancelled in Prague. 100,000 families in France were cut out of electricity. Snow arrived in Spain, too. The picture above is a signpost for Madrid.

When the winter was balmy, every other journalist would find a climate scientist who would say that this could really be a result of the "climate change". Once the weather becomes frigid, you won't find any articles about the climate. Suddenly it's only the cold facts themselves - cold weather - that is reported. Isn't it interesting that warm weather is related to the climate but cold weather is not?