A wee bit of a follow-up for my earlier post on the storm. Maybe I have got soft from all this computer work, but I recall working in upper 80’s and even low 90’s before (though I think I recall on the latter days we took a several hour break in the middle of the day), so think that this additional 10-15 degree increase really does matter. The only thing we did construction-wise was to build a couple of 16 ft platforms to (ideally) help when we do get back to work. I did that work in the shade on the side of the house that tends to be breezy and I believe it was before 11 when I finished, but I was almost incapacitated by the time I was done. The thought of working directly in the sun (and largely without the benefit of any breezes) was such a problematic one that once the sun had been up an hour or so it was automatically rejected. Fortunately my wife also went along with the idea of staying inside and I was able to relax mostly guilt-free.
It is more than a bit irritating that the temps drop 20+ degrees the very day we go back to work!
I have been thinking a bit more about the concept I briefly mentioned in the post above. I am almost curious enough now that I might eventually be motivated to do some research, though our weather records are likely not good enough for meaningful extrapolations. I suspect that these 100 year events that have been crowding us lately might actually be clustered for real reasons and not just a happenstance of reporting bias (or global warming). It is difficult to cull out the reporting bias, people only tend to talk about exceptional events and in places of the country where upper 90’s in temps and humidity are routine, then those events are not going to be remarkable at all. Neither would the storms that happen there either and even then, because of the regular occurrence the storms that do for might not be as violent as what the 100 year event produces because of the regularity. Further, because the infrastructure (and flora and fauna) are adapted to such storms, violence like we recently experienced might also be routine and unremarkable. As such, only routinely recorded weather data would be of any value. When we were doing some research on the ‘derecho‘ we experienced last week most of us (myself included) were amazed to see that these sorts of events are quite common (hardly 100 year events, though indications are that for our region this might have been such due to the severity).
A lot of the more rigorous research I read (the stuff that makes it through peer review processes and isn’t just babble of talking heads and thus all about reporting bias) that looks into past weather records (one of the reasons why I know that the records are rather poor) indicates that the sorts of ‘anomalous’ events we are experiencing are not really that anomalous to begin with and are certainly well within the range of conditions that are considered historically normal. Indeed, I was talking with someone the other day that was amazed to hear that tornadoes in our area are rather routine with several occurring each year, though they rarely do much damage (the one that happened on the Maryland Eastern Shore was exceptional in that regard). I personally experienced a tiny one when I was 15 or 16 at our house in Manassas. The twister was grabbing trees about tree-top level, twisting them off and dropping them and I was fortunate to not have one drop on my pointy head. Except for the damage the falling trees did to houses, other than a few lost shingles it was quite unremarkable. Since the vast majority of twisters are deep inside thunderstorms, few people see them and thus until the advent of Doppler radar they were only visible by their damage. Reporting bias once again!
People also tend to forget things pretty quickly. It is amazing to me how many people need to be reminded of the ‘snowmageddon’ that happened back in ’96 (in the DC metro area, of course, I am no less guilty of reporting bias than any other human). I distinctly recall being trapped in an apartment for 3 days (fortunately we had power the whole time) with a 4 year old (you could almost set your watch by his tantrums) and digging a snow cave in a drift that was probably more than 6 ft deep. Earlier still I was trapped with an old girlfriend (sadly, none of the romantic stuff happened) for a couple of days in a 30 ft travel trailer and made a rather insane trip back to Virginia Tech from Northern Virginia on Interstate 81 which had several inches of icy packed snow almost the entire route. Of course, those who are totally convinced that all ‘abnormal’ weather is related to human impact will arbitrarily set the dates when human activity overtook nature’s might to accommodate whatever weather event that is under consideration, so they already have a ready explanation. To me, ‘abnormal’ weather _is_ normal weather. ‘Snowmageddons’ are not unusual based on my recollection (indeed, cold winters are not unusual either, I recall very clearly when I was in middle school (so the late 70’s) being able to walk on the Occoquan reservoir and the ice being over a foot thick) and neither are heat waves. If you look at the jet stream last week it makes this huge loop up into Canada and thus ‘pulled’ the heat from the gulf into the heartland and above (indeed, years ago I recall reading about ‘routine’ summer temps in the mid west and making firm decisions based on them not to ever live there). That it happened for a relatively long time and was accompanied with a derecho also wasn’t that unusual (derechos tend to be triggered by exactly such events).
So, I figure that ‘adverse’ weather events (so-called 100 year events) tend to cluster for no other reason that the conditions that favor one type of 100 year event also happen to favor another (derecho, flooding, wild fires (why do they build such combustible houses in well-known wild fire areas anyway?), etc.). I figure (which, I suppose, makes me the global warming denialist mentioned in the previous post) that we are just in a cycle of climate that favors somewhat (but only somewhat, as I tried to impress above) extreme weather and I figure that we are just as likely to drop back into a less extreme cycle than we are to continue with extreme weather.
