Three Examples That Prove the Media and Politicians Have No Clue What They Are Doing in Climate Science

By Chris Martz | May 30, 2019

Follow @ChrisMartzWX

Inconvenient Truths: Opinion by Chris Martz and Daniel Lai

Disclaimer: Both of us appreciate the fact that the media exists to spread useful information around to people on a daily basis. However, when there is bias and poorly conducted journalism, it needs to be addressed seriously.

Introduction

Time and time again, media outlets and our elected officials misrepresent various social, economic, and/or environmental issues in order to boost their ratings, gain political power, and/or create mayhem and hysteria among their viewers and constituents, respectively. The climate change debate is no exception, as the issue is constantly conveyed to the public eye as a 'crisis,'¹ (Figure 1) when in fact, good scientific analysis and data say otherwise. H.L. Mencken said it best; "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule."² If one can exercise power, then that person has the ability to control you through your actions.

Figure 1. Bernie Sanders says climate change is an 'existential crisis' - CNN.

Agree to Disagree

While many people have the perception that there isn't any common ground on climate change, this simply isn't true. Dr. Judith Curry, a climatologist noted that there are a few key things most 'skeptics' and 'alarmists' agree on.³

1. Global average temperatures are warmer than they were 100 years ago.
2. Man-made fossil fuel combustion has contributed more or less to the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.
3. Greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide and water vapor should cause some warming.

However, there is widespread disagreement and differing opinions on these two things...

1. How much warming we have seen is or isn't a result from man-made processes (including urbanization and land use) and what exactly causes the climate to change.
2. How much more warming, if any we will see observe century (considering lower tropospheric temperatures have plateaued since the very strong El Niño of 1998) (Figure 2).⁴

Figure 2. UAH Version 6.0 Global Troposphere Temperature Anomalies, 1979-2019 - Wood  for Trees.

Disagreement is actually good for science because it opens the door to new ideas, debate, and research. Without debate, advances in science would simply not occur.

Name-Calling Tactics

One of our biggest pet peeves in the entire climate change debate is the constant use of name-calling, and this name-calling primarily comes from those on who preach AGW. If you're skeptical of the 'climate crisis,' you're shunned and labeled as a 'climate [change] denier.' This use of name calling is not only unreasonable, but it also couldn't be further from the truth. Nobody I have ever met or talked to denies the fact climate change itself exists in natural form. Climate has been in a state of constant change for 4.5 billion years, and it will continue to do so in the future. Even those who have openly stated that global warming is the biggest scam and hoax ever, such as Donald Trump (Figure 3),⁵ don't really deny climate change - they're usually just referring to anthropogenic climate change.

Figure 3. Donald Trump calls global warming a hoax.

Misleading Information From the MSM and Politicians

Mother Jones, a generally left-leaning news website apparently had nothing better to do with their website's bandwidth, than compile a list of every single one of President Trump's Tweets mentioning "global warming" or "climate change," calling them "insane" (Figure 4).⁵

Figure 4. Every Insane Thing Donald Trump Has Said About Global Warming - Mother Jones.

In all fairness, Mother Jones should have also done an op-ed on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's 'tornado rant' on Instagram last Thursday, May 23. What she said on her story made her "end of the world"⁶ claim believable... (just a joke, don't take me seriously).

1. AOC Has A Tornado Rant About Tornadoes

Last week, Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to her Instagram story (Figure 5) stating that tornadoes are getting worse due to climate change; "The climate crisis is real y'all... guess we're at casual tornadoes in growing regions of the country?"⁷ ⁸

Figure 5. AOC's Instagram tornado rant.

First and foremost, tornadoes are not casual. Most tornadoes are spawned from highly organized thunderstorms known as supercells, and as a matter of fact, most thunderstorms don't even produce them (see the tropics for instance).⁹ ¹⁰ As Dr. Roy Spencer of UAH and Joe Bastardi of Weather Bell Analytics have been saying for years,¹⁰ ¹¹ one of the key components of tornado outbreaks are the 'clashing' of warm and cool air masses. When there is a lack of 'clashing' - as such has been the case in recent decades¹² (Figure 6) due to predominately warmer springs - tornado outbreaks and thus violent tornadoes (EF4-EF5) become more infrequent.

Figure 6. NOAA temperature anomaly composites, March-May 2008-2018.

Because of the lack of clashing, wind shear is inhibited, which would otherwise be vital for tornadogenesis.¹⁰ The end result of this setup is a decrease in violent tornadoes, which has indeed been observed over the past 69 years.¹³ In fact, last year was the first year on record with no violent tornadoes (Figure 7). This totally destroys AOC's theory.

Figure 7. Violent tornadoes in the United States since 1950 - The Washington Post.

2. The New York Times Ignores Weather History

Figure 8. It's Not Your Imagination. Summers Are Getting Hotter - The New York Times.

Two summers ago, The New York Times stated¹⁴ (Figure 8) that extremely hot summers are becoming increasingly common, and that it's not our "imaginations." They say, "Extraordinary hot summers - the kind that were virtually unheard-of in the 1950s - have become commonplace. Had the authors of that piece done any actual research, then they would have known that summertime temperatures used to be much hotter in the U.S. prior to the 1980s. Raw NOAA data¹⁵ shows that the percent of days above 90, 95, and 100°F have been plummeting for over 100 years, and the 1920s, 1930s, and 1950s, without a doubt, had the worst summers on record in the U.S.

Figure 9. Percent of days at or above 90, 95, and 100°F at all USHCN stations, 1895-2018 - UNHIDING THE DECLINE

3. The Des Moines Register and Elizabeth Warren Fail to Address Iowa Flooding Seriously

Figure 10. Farmers should be a part of the solution to climate change, Elizabeth Warren says in Iowa - Des Moines Register.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a Democrat running for President in 2020, visited Iowa this past spring to address the flooding that was widespread across the state.¹⁶ She stated, "I'm very worried about seeing the floods again. Climate change is real, the problem is urgent and we are running out of time."¹⁶ 

The entire problem with her statement is that recent flooding in Iowa had nothing to do with climate change. In fact, it was 'just the weather.' 

February, March, and April of this year were among the coldest on record across the western 2/3 of the U.S., especially the Northern Plains.¹⁷ Temperature departures from normal were a good three to six degrees below average in Iowa, which meant that the ground was frozen from both the winter and first half of spring.¹⁸ With the two large storm systems that rolled through the region in March and April dropping a nice, solid snowfall and rain, the combination of a frozen ground and melting snow meant that the water had nowhere to run off to, thus creating the flooding.¹⁸

Figure 11. Departure from normal temperature (F) (February-April) - High Plains Regional Climate Center.

In Summary...

In each scenario shown above, it is clearly evident that both journalists at media outlets and politicians alike have no clue what they are talking about when it comes to climate science, simply because they are too ignorant to look back at the past and look at statistical data that derails their train. And perhaps they purposefully don't look at the data in order to gain power and control over the American people.

These politicians are trying to implement policies that would put intense regulations on fossil fuel companies and the American people. If they can implement these policies, then that's one more thing they can control. While I'm all for renewable energy (if it were to be sustainable and effective), fossil fuels are our 'way of life.' Without them, we'd suffer consequences far greater than has ever been known to man.

It's important we educate the youth about the non-mainstream view of climate change, because our weather history and actual statistics are important for not only setting the record straight, but for our country's well being.

REFERENCES

[1] Sullivan, Kate. "Bernie Sanders says climate change is an 'existential crisis.'" CNN. February 25, 2019. Accessed May 30, 2019. https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/25/politics/bernie-sanders-climate-change-existential-crisis/index.html.

[2] Mencken, H.L. "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." BrainyQuote. Accessed May 30, 2019. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/h_l_mencken_143263.

[3] Steele, Jim. "Dr. Judith Curry and Dr. Patrick Moore demolish Michael Mann in climate debate!" A Walk on the Natural Side. June 12, 2019. Accessed May 30, 2019. http://perhapsallnatural.blogspot.com/2018/06/dr-judith-currys-debates-climate-change.html.

[4] "UAH Version 6.0 with Trendline." Wood for Trees. Accessed May 30, 2019. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6/plot/uah6/trend.

[5] Schulman, Jeremy. "Every Insane Thing Donald Trump Has Said About Global Warming." Mother Jones. December 12, 2018. Accessed May 30, 2019. https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/12/trump-climate-timeline/.

[6] Shorts, TheDC. YouTube. January 22, 2019. Accessed May 30, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHk8nn0nw18.

[7] Fredericks, Bob. "Meteorologist takes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to task about climate change message." The New York Post. May 24, 2019. Accessed May 30, 2019. https://nypost.com/2019/05/24/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-chided-by-dc-meteorologist-about-climate-change-message/.

[8] Bastasch, Michael. "'It's Just the Weather': Meteorologist Fact-Checks Ocasio-Cortez on Climate Change." The Daily Caller. May 23, 2019. Accessed May 30, 2019. https://dailycaller.com/2019/05/23/ocasio-cortez-weather-fact-check/.

[9] "Thunderstorm Hazards - Tornadoes." National Weather Service - JetStream. Accessed May 30, 2019. https://www.weather.gov/jetstream/tornado.

[10] Bastardi, Joe. "Some cold hard facts on tornado activity." CFACT. May 23, 2019. Accessed May 30, 2019. https://www.cfact.org/2019/05/23/some-cold-hard-facts-on-tornado-activity/.

[11] Spencer, Roy. "Roy Spencer: Why so many tornadoes this year? It's not what AOC, Bernie Sanders (or maybe even you) think." FOX News. May 29, 2019. Accessed May 30, 2019. https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/roy-spencer-tornadoes-ohio-ocasio-cortez-sanders.

[12] ERSL : PSD : US Climate Division Maps. March to May 2008-2018. Accessed May 30, 2019. https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/usclimdivs/climdiv.pl?variab=Temperature&type=1&base=8&mon1=3&mon2=5&iy%5B1%5D=&iy%5B2%5D=&iy%5B3%5D=&iy%5B4%5D=&iy%5B5%5D=&iy%5B6%5D=&iy%5B7%5D=&iy%5B8%5D=&iy%5B9%5D=&iy%5B10%5D=&iy%5B11%5D=&iy%5B12%5D=&iy%5B13%5D=&iy%5B14%5D=&iy%5B15%5D=&iy%5B16%5D=&iy%5B17%5D=&iy%5B18%5D=&iy%5B19%5D=&iy%5B20%5D=&irange1=2008&irange2=2018&xlow=&xhi=&xint=&iunits=1&scale=100&iwhite=1&iswitch=0&Submit=Create+Plot.

[13] Livingston, Ian. "2018 will be the first year with no violent tornadoes in the United States." The Washington Post. December 26, 2018. May 30, 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2018/12/26/will-be-first-year-with-no-violent-tornadoes-united-states/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.8eb032ca52a1.

[14] Popovich, Nadja and Pearce, Adam. "It's Not Your Imagination. Summers Are Getting Hotter." The New York Times. July 28, 2017. Accessed May 30, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/28/climate/more-frequent-extreme-summer-heat.html.

[15] Heller, Tony. "UNHIDING THE DECLINE FOR WINDOWS." The Deplorable Climate Science Blog. Accessed May 30, 2019. https://realclimatescience.com/unhiding-the-decline-for-windows/.

[16] Norvell, Kim. "Farmers should be part of the solution to climate change, Elizabeth Warren says in Iowa." Des Moines Register. May 3, 2019. Accessed May 30, 2019. https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2019/05/03/iowa-caucus-election-2020-elizabeth-warren-climate-change-farmers-flooding-missouri-river/1094532001/.

[17] ACIS Climate Maps. High Plains Regional Climate Center. Accessed May 30, 2019. https://hprcc.unl.edu/maps.php?map=ACISClimateMaps.

[18] Hassan, Adeel. "Why Is There Flooding in Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa and Wisconsin?" The New York Times. May 18, 2019. Accessed May 30, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/us/nebraska-flooding-facts.html.

Can A Tornado Happen in Winter?

By Chris Martz | May 29, 2019

Follow @ChrisMartzWX

"Can A Tornado Happen in Winter?" - Scott Martz

WeatherFact:

The short answer is yes. 

While tornado season is generally late March through early June ¹ due to high atmospheric instability and clashing of cold, polar and maritime, warm air masses, tornadoes can occur almost anywhere in the United States at any point throughout the course of a year.¹ ² ³ ⁴

Average number of tornadoes in December - NOAA.

Average number of tornadoes in January - NOAA.

Average number of tornadoes in February - NOAA.

Areas that are statistically the most likely to see winter tornadoes (December-February) are the Gulf states; Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Southeastern Texas, not to mention Georgia and Arkansas (not directly on the Gulf).¹ ² ³ ⁴

Winter twisters typically occur when cold air retreats allowing warm, moist air from the Gulf to surge northward into the southeast meeting the jet stream.³

REFERENCES

[1] Skilling, Tom. "Is it possible for a tornado to form during the winter?" WGN 9 News. November 27, 2018. Accessed May 29, 2019. https://wgntv.com/2018/11/27/is-it-possible-for-a-tornado-to-form-during-the-winter/.

[2] Skilling, Tom. "Can tornadoes occur any time of year?" WGN 9 News. April 12, 2019. Accessed May 29, 2019. https://wgntv.com/2019/04/12/can-tornadoes-occur-any-time-of-year/.

[3] Belles, Jonathan. "Your Average Tornado Risk By Month." The Weather Channel. April 18, 2017. Accessed May 29, 2019. https://weather.com/science/weather-explainers/news/tornado-risk-by-month. 

[4] "U.S. Tornado Climatology." NOAA NCEI. Accessed May 29, 2019. https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/climate-information/extreme-events/us-tornado-climatology.

Do Tornadoes Always Come From the Southwest?

By Chris Martz | May 29, 2019

Follow @ChrisMartzWX

"Do tornadoes always come from the southwest?" - Nancy Martz

WeatherFact:

Dear, Nancy,

This is an interesting question and believe it or not, it's one of the most frequently asked questions that meteorologists receive! This is one of only a handful of weather folklore beliefs that is actually backed up by science.

The majority of tornadoes do indeed generally travel in a southwest to northeast direction, however, they may spawn and move in any direction along a horizontal plane. Most tornadoes originate from supercell thunderstorms, which like most storm systems, move in a west to east or southwest to northeast direction in the Northern Hemisphere.

So, then this begs the question why storms move west to east?

The reason for this is because the troposphere's maximum height varies from the poles toward the equator. Near the poles, the troposphere is approximately 4 miles high, whereas it's almost 12 miles high near the equator. This is because warmer things expand and cooler things contract. 

This variation in the troposphere's altitude sets up a downward slope from the equator, poleward. As a pocket of air known as a 'parcel' slides down the slope, it moves from south to north and with the Earth's counterclockwise spin on it's axis, the Coriolis force pushes that parcel eastward thereby creating the southwest to northeast flow.

REFERENCES

[1] Edwards, Roger. "The Basics About Tornadoes." The Online Tornado FAQ. Accessed May 29, 2019. https://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/.

[2] Jimenez, Jesus. "Why Do Tornadoes Always Seem to Travel Southwest to Northeast? Curious Texas Investigates." Dallas News. January 14, 2019. Accessed May 29, 2019. https://www.dallasnews.com/life/curious-texas/2019/01/14/tornadoes-always-seem-travel-southwest-northeast-curious-texas-investigates. 

Fact Checking Hurricane Claims in the "Sustain Ability" Instagram Video

By Chris Martz | May 19, 2019

Follow @ChrisMartzWX

Over the past couple of weeks, there has been a growing number of fellow classmates posting controversial things on their Instagram stories, most of which surround abortion and climate change. I believe everyone's opinion should be heard, and they are entitled to express them under their First Amendment right. I have no problem with anyone posting opinionated things on their stories, however, when those posts lack facts is when I have a problem.

Personal Statement:

As many already know, I tend to lean conservative on many issues; I try to take a rational approach to things. I come from a scientific background, as I aspire to become a broadcast meteorologist. Because of my scientific background, most of my opinions on social, economic, and environmental issues are based on historical facts, statistics, and data. 

While my stance on catastrophic man-made global warming remains skeptical, and along the lines of what conservatives tend to think, my stance is solely based on scientific analysis and statistics. 

I think conservatives tend to have an overall better grasp of what to do in response to "climate change," as they don't want to invoke policies and regulations that would inhibit economic growth, whereas liberals want to enact policies that have intense regulations. To the contrary, both liberals and conservatives tend to have a poor understanding of how climate change itself works and often misrepresent claims when communicating to the public. 

When listening to climate scientists, liberal politicans will often look to people like Dr. Katherine Hayhoe or Dr. Michael Mann who portray climate change as being a problem if carbon dioxide emissions aren't regulated by policies. In turn, those politicans falsify claims made by the climatologists and portray climate change as being this massive crisis and extinction event where laws need to be passed that control everyone and everything. On the flip side, conservatives will generally follow scientists like Dr. Roy Spencer and Dr. Judith Curry, who like me, believe that climate change is mostly natural. In turn, those conservative politicans end up claiming that climate change is a hoax and is not real, which is also wrong and misleading, just in the opposite way.

With policies that liberals are perpetuating, it is coming across as if they are trying to gain political power and control over the people by using weather and climate (which I have a passion for) to justify the end result. It's deeply disturbing to me that the science has been so politicized. 

I love forecasting the weather because I love nature, God's creation, and the fact that weather is something that's changing all the time. In terms of climate, I believe the same thing  - based on research - that climate changes due to various reasons (ocean cycles, volcanism, the sun, and yes, to an extent, man-made influences) and that you can't exactly pinpoint a man-made cause because it gets lost in the hands of natural variability.

I'm not here to criticize anyone about their stance on climate change, but because I have conversed with numerous scientists on this issue, and because I am going to college to study atmospheric science, I hope I will be able to open your eyes to the non-mainstream view.
_________________________________________________________________________

Out of all of the videos that I have seen that have been shared on Instagram stories, the one called "Sustain Ability" is perhaps the most misleading one, so let's dive into it...

I happened to find the video on YouTube,¹ so please take three minutes to watch the video. 



Now that you have (hopefully) watched the clip, let's take a look at the narrator's claims about hurricanes and see if they make any sense.

Most of the video emphasizes pollution, which I agree is a major problem, but it's not causing climate change.

Between the 10 and 12 second mark, the narrator tells us that Hurricane Harvey, which devastated Texas nearly two years ago, was the "biggest hurricane ever recorded." Taking that statement literally, to say that Harvey was the largest hurricane ever is unmistakably a lie. 

In fact, if the narrator had done any research, he would have known that Harvey was only 280 miles (450.6 km) in diameter,² ³ which is not at all large for a hurricane. The largest hurricane ever recorded was Typhoon Tip in 1979 with a diameter of 1,380 miles (2,220.9 km) (Figure 1). Now compare that to Harvey in 2017 (boxed in red).

Figure 1. Hurricane size comparison.

Between the 12 to 15 second marks, the graphic states that Hurricane Irma was a Category 5 storm. This too is false. 

According to NOAA's National Weather Service (Figure 2), Hurricane Irma, while devastating, was a Category 3 at landfall, not a Category 5 like it says in the video.⁴

Figure 2. Hurricane Irma synopsis. - NOAA.

Hurricane seasons of the present are nothing compared to what they were in the past. Officially, by wind speed, the worst hurricane to make landfall in the U.S. was the Category 5 "Labor Day Hurricane" in 1935 with a wind speed of 185 miles per hour at landfall when it struck the Florida Keys (Figure 3).⁵ By barometric pressure, the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 also ranks first place because it's central pressure was 892 millibars or 26.35 inches of mercury at landfall.⁵

Figure 3. Surface map depicting the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane.

The worst landfalling hurricane by fatalities in the United States was the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, which claimed the lives of around 8,000 people.⁵ The Galveston Hurricane was a Category 4 at landfall.⁵

Figure 4. Surface map of the Galveston Hurricane.

On September 21, 1938, New England was ravaged by a Category 3 hurricane. It ranked among one of the most destructive on record with a death toll of anywhere from 400 to 800, with 50 foot waves in Massachusetts and a peak storm surge of 17 feet in Rhode Island (Figure 4), not to mention producing massive flooding in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.⁶ ⁷

Figure 5. Storm surge from the 1938 hurricane.

Because of the amount of infrastructure we've built along the coast in the last 50 years, it's easy for one to have the perception that hurricanes are becoming worse. In terms of money and damage, they are only because there is more "stuff" for mother nature to destroy, but as usual, people on the man-made global warming side of the argument blame it all on your SUV.

Joe Bastardi, a meteorologist at WeatherBELL Analytics, has done some good research on hurricanes and climate change, and has come up with an incredible theory as to why we have seen a decrease in landfalls (Figure 6) over the years.

Bastardi basically stated⁷ that tropical cyclones are nature's way of balancing heat around the globe, part of a process known as the atmosphere-energy balance. Hurricanes and for that matter, all tropical cyclones remove heat from the tropics by carrying it to temperate (mid-latitude) climates. Because most of the warming relative to 30-year averages has occurred in polar regions, mainly the Arctic (through a process known as Arctic Amplification), the warmer temperatures in the northern climates would produce a weaker temperature gradient (temperature change with distance), thus the need for heat distribution by tropical cyclones and thus hurricanes is reduced.

This is one of the main reasons for why we have seen less hurricanes in recent decades, rather than more as per what the "Sustain Ability" video claims.

It's very important that people, including my classmates, question what others are telling them. You shouldn't believe everything you hear, especially if it's from some random guy on Instagram who doesn't have a solid background in what they are talking about. It's also important we stand up for what we believe in rather than just sitting back and saying nothing at all.

If anyone has any questions, I'd be more than happy to answer them, clarify points, or hear your view on the issue. Let the data speak for itself, like I did above. 

REFERENCES

Important Notice! All of these citations will be put into Chicago-style format sometime tomorrow. I've been very busy and had barely enough time to write this piece. Check back tomorrow for full citations. All links should be working. :-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs4zj0ttRqU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoxKH_v8b-8

https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/typhoon-tip-earths-strongest-storm/87362

https://www.weather.gov/tae/Irma_technical_summary

http://weather101.net/what-is-the-worst-hurricane-to-have-ever-hit-the-us/

http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/great-1938-hurricane/

https://www.weather.gov/okx/1938HurricaneHome

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/58822-challenging-global-warming-attribution-to-hurricanes

D.C. To Have First 90 Degree Day This Weekend

By Chris Martz | May 16, 2019

Follow @ChrisMartzWX

While April 2019 sure had it's fair share of 80 degree days in our nation's capitol, not to mention ranking among the warmest on record, the mercury did not climb to 90°F once during the course of the month. The highest temperature achieved last month was 84°F which was recorded at DCA on April 8th. To the contrary, the low temperature last month was 34°F on April Fools Day (April 1st).

So far in the month of May, Washington, D.C. has recorded three nonconsecutive 80° days; 87°F on the 2nd, 81°F on the 7th, and 82°F on the 10th. 

As a ridge of high pressure builds in over the eastern half of the U.S. late week, we are expecting temperatures to soar into the mid to upper 80s and low 90s, before some real heat builds in this weekend. 

Map via Tropical Tidbits.

On my 7-day forecast, Sunday is forecast to be our first 90° day in D.C. Whether we actually reach 90°F or not come Sunday afternoon is unknown, but some models are very aggressive with the maximum temperature that afternoon.

A month or so ago, I decided to do a little research, and I plotted a graph of the first 80°, 90°, and 100° days of the year by day number in Washington, D.C. As you can see by the graph below, the earliest 90°+ days have come earlier by about nine days - and you could argue that's due to various different reasons. The 30-year average (1981-2010) date for the first 90° day is May 17th; the 1881-1910 average was May 26th.

For a bonus, the earliest 90° day in D.C. occurred on March 22, 1907 and the latest first 90° day occurred on July 12, 1979.

All historical climate data presented in this blog can be accessed from xmACIS2.

Welcome to WeatherFacts!

WeatherFacts is a brand new weather website that was launched by Chris Martz on May 3, 2019. The main purpose of this blog is to provide a good understanding of our atmosphere and weather processes and how they develop and impact us here at the surface.

The section Meteorological Madness! deals with meteorology topics like the atmosphere and it's composition, layers, and properties, as well as the Earth-atmosphere energy balance, the oceans, seasons, the jet stream, wind, fronts, clouds and precipitation, extreme weather, and synoptic meteorology. 

Climate 101 is focused on climate change. Unlike many climate websites, I express my views and give readers a perspective on the issue that they often don't hear in the mainstream - the skeptical side. 

For those who are seeking weather forecasts, please visit my flagship site NoHype Weather.

PLEASE NOTE! This post will continue to be updated until the education series is complete. Also, Climate 101 and Meteorological Madness! have not been started or completed yet, respectively, so please follow me on Twitter where I will eventually post a link to the completed article. Thanks, Chris.