Thursday Thread - "And I thought last Thursday was cold!"

[FlaGator]

It’s 20 degrees this morning in North Florida and this time the wind is blowing. The weather person says that tomorrow morning will be just as cold or probably colder. The odd thing is by Saturday afternoon the temps will be back to normal with highs in the low 70s. I can't wait.

TOTD: The temperature changes got me thinking about all the times over the last 40 years or so that the weather seemed strange. Now every time the weather does something that people do expect it gets blamed as a sign of global warming, but now that I think about it has always been unpredictable, cold when it should be warm, hot when it should be chilly, snow in places it doesn't normally snow. My question is, do you think this changeable weather is a sign of climate change or is it the same old, same old that's been happening since people began noticing the weather? Is there an increase in weird weather events are just an increase in selective memory? I see it like the memory of pain. You can remember something hurt really badly but you can’t recall the pain itself which leads to the expression, “I never hurt like that before” to describe one’s most recent pain. Is recalling the weather something similar?

[linda22003]

TOTD: I think it's the same as always - changeable. We don't get the waist-high snows of my childhood any more, but I'm also not three feet tall any more. :D

[Space Gravy]

FlaGator, you will get two days of it. I'm west of you and this morning was as cold (18 or so) as yesterday morning.

TOTD: I don't put much stock in this. I remember when I was a kid hairspray and deodorant were going to end the world because of what they did to the ozone level. Thirty years later, we're still here and nobody even talks about it anymore. When we start seeing record high or low temps for the day within a five year loop I'll start taking it seriously.

[Celtic Rose]

We've got rain here in the bay area, and we might even get some thunderstorms (awesome!)

TOTD: I think that weather is weird and unpredictable. If you look at record highs and lows, many of them happened decades ago, which means that even though the weather is acting weirdly, it is not unheard of.

[RobJohnson]

Not quite 6 AM and its 52 outside. Things will cool off this weekend as CA has some rain storms approaching.
My mother has friends from IL flying in tomorrow and I hope they are able to enjoy some warm days.

I have not been feeling well and actually called in sick to work, have not done that since Dec of 2006...feelling not so good....might call in again today!

TOTD: I have noticed people, including my mother saying "it's never cold like this in the winter here" or "we have never had this much rain"

But of course, the weather records show it was colder last winter and there was more rain! Plus I remember her telling me that the desert was in full bloom in the spring, due to all the winter rains.

[Gingersnap]

Another beautiful day is on tap for Colorado. We'll cool back down on Sunday but the warmish weather has me in the mood for pruning. It's a tad early but I might have to do some bad things to a few shrubs on Saturday.

TOTD: We talk about this at work a lot. We have dozens and dozens of met stations all over the state and a lot of them send continuous telemetry back to the office. We can easily compare what's happening now to what has happened in the past. It's impossible to detect any "climate change" in our area because all the numbers before the 1880s are simply constructions based models. There is no way to determine if the models are completely accurate and any deviation would be more than offset by other factors related to land use and urbanization. Now, we do have drought cycles that last for decades but that's not related to global warming.

Linda nailed it: you remember weather selectively. Snow is deeper, rains are harder, and bad weather lasts for days when you are a kid. After all, you are 3 feet tall, your time-sense is totally screwed up, and you are outside for a significant part of every day. When you get older, you tend to remember the unusual events and totally ignore "normal" weather.

[Bubba Dawg]

Cold here, about 8 degrees this morning. About 31 now. Warming trend for the weekend.

TOTD: The older I get, the colder cold is, the hotter hot is, and the ground is a lot harder than it used to be.

At least I think so. I don't remember so good....

Seriously, weather memory, like just about any other recollection, is selective.