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Wednesday, July 1, 2015

High temp record in Washington state broken by 15 degrees Fahrenheit!

by tamino, Open Mind, July 1, 2015
Sometimes I wonder whether Anthony Watts is trying to show how wrong he is about global warming.
In a recent post he shows some of the “hate mail” (although they seem like hateful comments) he’s received. One of them comes from an angry somebody in Washington state, which has recently suffered through a terrible heat wave and some ferocious wildfires.
What’s puzzling is Watts’s reaction: he reports recent record-tying and record-breaking temperatures from Washington state. What’s surprising is not that the recent heat wave tied or broke record highs for so many locations, but by how much.
Consider La Crosse, WA, for instance. On Friday (June 26), it broke the all-time record for that date, not just by a degree or even two, but by 5 degrees. That’s five degrees hotter than any other June 26th on record. The next day (Saturday June 27) it broke the record for that day too, exceeding the hottest June 27th on record, not by one, or two, or even five degrees, but by 9 degrees.
If you think that’s impressive, consider that on Sunday (June 28) it tied the all-time record for any day, not just for that date. And it was not even July or August (the usual hottest months) yet. As for the daily record, of course it broke that. Not by one degree, not by two, not by five, not even by nine. It broke the June 28th record by 15 degrees.
The list Watts displays is so impressive, I have to wonder: WTFUWT?
Maybe I should send him a “thank you” comment, for illustrating just how extraordinarily hot it’s been in Washington state recently.
UPDATE:
Jeff Masters has an excellent blog post pointing out that record-setting heat is now being felt on four continents.

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