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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Brumar89 who wrote (58134)9/13/2014 3:40:41 PM
From: Wharf Rat  Respond to of 86356
 
"I understand this past winter was a real barnburner up there. "
Just like the thrilling days of yesteryear, but with a new Lone Ranger.

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when from out of the past came a sudden blast of cold

Scientists: Americans are becoming weather wimps
January 9, 2014
WASHINGTON (AP) — We've become weather wimps.

As the world warms, the United States is getting fewer bitter cold spells like the one that gripped much of the nation this week. So when a deep freeze strikes, scientists say, it seems more unprecedented than it really is. An Associated Press analysis of the daily national winter temperature shows that cold extremes have happened about once every four years since 1900.

Until recently.

When computer models estimated that the national average daily temperature for the Lower 48 states dropped to 17.9 degrees on Monday, it was the first deep freeze of that magnitude in 17 years, according to Greg Carbin, warning meteorologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

That stretch — from Jan. 13, 1997 to Monday — is by far the longest the U.S. has gone without the national average plunging below 18 degrees, according to a database of daytime winter temperatures starting in January 1900.,,,

In the past 115 years, there have been 58 days when the national average temperature dropped below 18. Carbin said those occurrences often happen in periods that last several days so it makes more sense to talk about cold outbreaks instead of cold days. There have been 27 distinct cold snaps.

Between 1970 and 1989, a dozen such events occurred, but there were only two in the 1990s and then none until Monday.

usatoday.com