AP: January Weather Hottest by Far: "Last month was by far the hottest January ever."

[DeepModem Mom]

January Weather Hottest by Far
Feb. 15
By SETH BORENSTEIN

WASHINGTON (AP) - It may be cold comfort during a frigid February, but last month was by far the hottest January ever.

The broken record was fueled by a waning El Nino and a gradually warming world, according to U.S. scientists who reported the data Thursday. Records on the planet's temperature have been kept since 1880.

Spurred on by unusually warm Siberia, Canada, northern Asia and Europe, the world's land areas were 3.4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than a normal January, according to the U.S. National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. That didn't just nudge past the old record set in 2002, but broke that mark by 0.81 degrees, which meteorologists said is a lot, since such records often are broken by hundredths of a degree at a time.

"That's pretty unusual for a record to be broken by that much," said the data center's scientific services chief, David Easterling. "I was very surprised."

The scientists went beyond their normal doublechecking and took the unusual step of running computer climate models "just to make sure that what we're seeing was real," Easterling said.

It was.

"From one standpoint it is not unusual to have a new record because we've become accustomed to having records broken," said Jay Lawrimore, climate monitoring branch chief. But January, he said, was a bigger jump than the world has seen in about 10 years....

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070215/D8NAE9404.html

[evlbstrd]

1. Damn.

Just ...

damn.

[ben_meyers]

2. Of course Arizona has to be different!

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0201FrigidJanuary01-ON.html

[msongs]

3. same for southern california as in Arizona .....brrrrr! nt

[Harper_is_Bush]

4. It's just cyclical

:sarcasm:

[barb162]

5. February is the coldest on record; it's zero here

and been super cold the last few weeks

Global warming is a fact, but you just wouldn't know it here as it's way more than 30 degrees below normal

[Harper_is_Bush]

6. global warming also means temperature extremes, warm and cold

but you knew that I'm sure.

[Harper_is_Bush]

7. And where has Feb been labelled "coldest on record"? n/t

[ryanmuegge]

8. Well, it's been bitterly cold here in rural Illinois, as usual.

In 2004, though, we had a severe thunderstorm on December 30. Now THAT was unusual.

[piesRsquare]

9. In addition, I'm also redundant as well...!

;-)

[Doondoo]

10. K&R

[Vinca]

11. The weather has been crazy this winter in southern Vt/NH.

It was so warm around Christmas I had leftover petunias blooming in an outdoor plant pot and was seriously considering planting some spinach. There were reports in the paper that some maple syrup producers were tapping trees, an event that usually occurs in late February or March. So here we are in February and we just had our first real snowstorm and it's finally gotten cold. I'm wondering how this weirdness is going to affect the sugar maple trees and all the bushes and perennials that started coming up.

[semillama]

12. I was in Williamsburg, VA January 13th

and it was in the 70s. I felt like I was about 500 miles south of where I should have been.