Nearly 14,000 warm weather records, coast to coast. Almost surreal, like we skipped 2 months and went right to May. Or June. Map courtesy of NOAA and Ham Weather.
March, 2012 was the warmest on record for the Twin Cities [Mpls/St. Paul, MN], with a temperature departure 15.5 F. above average. "This March saw the earliest occurence of 80 degrees on record in the Twin Cities (17th) and at Eau Claire [WI] (16th); was the greatest number of 70 degree days for a March at all three climate locations, had St. Cloud see its first cooling degree days in March ever."Images and text from Paul Douglas' incomparable On Weather blog. Here in Madison, Wisconsin, we had our first milkweed plants emerge in the garden on April 2, over a month sooner than any previous year. New record early sightings have been reported for every spring butterfly in Wisconsin, and a peek at the Monarch migration map shows them to have been seen in northern Missouri already (typically only at northern Arkansas by now).
It's not an unpleasant change at our latitude (our household heating bill was half normal for March), but one wonders what the summer will bring.
"..but one wonders what the summer will bring."
ReplyDelete..besides record insects, you mean?
I've been wondering the same thing. I get the feeling we are going to pay for this.
My dad, 91-years-old, gave a lot of money to Newt Gingrich (or maybe Santorum) has come around to the feeling that global warming is real, but that it doesn't have anything to do with the industrial revolution. The thought is that the planet has been naturally warming since the last ice age and this is just more of the same.
ReplyDeleteI don't see people in China being interested in trading their cars back in for mopeds. So, unless Siberia, the Northwest Territories, and Tierra del Fuego become the new wheat belts before the rest of the agriculturally-productive regions of the planet shit the bed, we are all royally screwed.
Intoxicating weather here in NY. Clear, 50 -70 degrees with no leaves on the trees and no black flies yet! There are fire warnings though...
ReplyDeleteIt is really pleasant. We sit out, eating lunch in the sun. I will not even THINK "Maybe we'll get burned out by a monster drought this year" or anything like that. Nope.
This is what happens in The Netherlands: in our May-like March weeks the North Sea will warm up, causing it to rain all summer. At least, that's what last year was like.
ReplyDeleteMy friends in Ontario Canada said they have never experienced a winter this warm. Temperatures In Pittsburgh PA, where my youngest lives, were warmer than those here in Southern California in March. Either the time or the weather is out of joint, and I'm going for the weather, along with global climate changed caused by the use of fossil fuels.
ReplyDelete