64 Oklahoma temperature records broken in July 2012
By KEN MILLER, Associated Press
2 Aug 2012 OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) – More than 64 temperature records were broken in Oklahoma during a scorching July, and additional ones fell across the state Wednesday on the first day of August, according to the National Climatic Data Center. The National Weather Service reported that Guthrie, about 30 miles north of Oklahoma City, registered 114 degrees to break the statewide record of 113 degrees, set at Meeker in 1896 and tied in Ralston last year. Weather officials said it would be Thursday before other temperatures were officially recorded. Records began falling early in the afternoon before leveling off. Chandler, about 45 miles northeast of Oklahoma City, was at 113 degrees at 2 p.m., breaking the record of 109 degrees for the date set in 1923, while Lawton, in southwestern Oklahoma, was at 109 degrees at 2 p.m., breaking the record of 106 set in 1999. The hottest temperature ever recorded, 120 degrees, has been reached six times, most recently at Tipton in 1994. “It’s too hot to eat,” said Megan Freedman of Midwest City as she stepped out of an Oklahoma City office building. Of the 64 temperature records broken or tied during July, 13 were Tuesday, the final day of the month. Despite the records, it did not appear likely the record for the hottest day ever recorded in Oklahoma would be broken, 94.9 degrees set on Aug. 12, 1936, a date when the 120 degree record was reached in both Altus and Poteau, said associate state climatologist Gary McManus. “We didn’t do it last year,” McManus said, in regard to July 2011, the hottest month ever recorded in the United States in records that date to 1895, and to the summer season, which was the hottest in state history and second hottest in U.S. history. […] Preliminary data from the Oklahoma Mesonet, the statewide average temperature for July was 85.9 degrees, 4.3 degrees above normal. The best relief from the heat, sustained rainfall, is not likely in August, typically the driest month of the year, McManus said. The most recent U.S. Drought Monitor report showed parts of northwestern Oklahoma in exceptional drought, most of the western one-third of the state, the Panhandle and most of eastern Oklahoma in extreme drought, and much of the remainder of the state in severe drought. The monitor is updated each Thursday.
64 Okla. temperature records fall or tied in July
Senator Inhofe (Oklahoma) still refuses to accept any human responsibility for climate change, and more importantly, he doesn't even believe its real. Unfortunately, he's joined by others.
So even though temperature records are being broken, and entire towns in Oklahoma are being reduced to ashes (wildfires), these events are somehow not related.
The mystery remains: Do you believe your eyes, your actual experience, your tests and your results, even your thermometer – or do you believe your (s)Elected "official" whose is an expert at nothing but obfuscation and supporting the oil industry?
Does it take the loss of entire small towns to "prove" anything?
Should it?
We pay professionals, experts in climatology a living wage to estimate these things. Many have spent entire lifetimes analyzing, assessing, measuring and modeling the data about the Earth's climate. Many have traveled to remote regions of the world first-hand to see it and measure it for themselves (thousands). And the one inescapable conclusion they reach is the same — its here, its now, and its all because of us.
Monday will be an announcement by Dr. James Hansen, who has just said Climate Change Is Here and Its Worse Then We Thought.
How much worse? Would you believe 5000%? Would you believe that that figure is already happening?
Regarding Hansen's new study:
"The frequency of “3-sigma” Extremely Hot Summers has gone from 0.1~0.2% to 10% in 50 years, a 50X or 5000% or more increase! Therefore, the probability that a particular recent 3-sigma heat event is due to natural variation is ~1/50 or 2% and the chance that it is caused by climate change is ~49/50 or 98%! Note that 4 and 5 sigma events — which essentially were unheard of in the past — and now happening a few percent of the time. The chances that these events are due to natural variation is close to zero.
Also note that this study is not based on climate models nor is it a prediction. It is a simple statistical analysis of measured temperature data from the past 60 years. The 5000% increase in Extremely Hot Summers already happened! And we can expect the frequency of these events to increase this decade and the coming decades."
The scientists are RIGHT because the EVIDENCE EXISTS. Oklahoma should fully understand this now, but like the proverbial saying, a 2×4 to the head still won't sink in with some people. Even the loss of one's home may not be any proof.
We probably need to go beyond the pitiful attempts to "convince" the public, which has neither the interest, the education or the desire to be persuaded to the truth, and go after the only other idiots that matter — legislatures. They're the ones that can make policy changes that will trickle down to industry, business and how we live our lives, and how much more contribution we dare make to the atmosphere.
Recent analysis indicates that we really cannot contribute anything more. As in ZERO. And that we must find ways to pump it all BACK out of the atmosphere as quickly as we can before catastrophic destabilization occurs (which may actually already be underway).
This is what needs attention, funding, focus and effort.
Convincing and non-intelligent public and idiot lawmakers is almost a complete waste of time and effort now, something else nobody on planet Earth has anymore. ~Survival Acres~