Yes, your correspondent realizes that anecdotes about individual weather events or temperatures at one point in time in one location tell us little to nothing about climate patterns.
Yet it’s still amusing to recall the frenzied discussion about a global warming “tipping point” when considering the recent record of global surface temperatures or reading this story from USA Today.
Many parts of the northern and eastern USA took a serious chill pill in March, and several places probably will record one of their 10 coldest Marches.
“Several cities in the Upper Midwest, Great Lakes and northern New England are flirting with a top 10 coldest March,” says Weather Channel meteorologist Chris Dolce. “It’s a huge turnaround from two years ago in March 2012, when many of these same cities saw their warmest March on record.”
Dolce reports that Burlington, Vt., and Caribou, Maine, are seeing their coldest March since weather records began. (Burlington’s weather records began in 1884 and Caribou’s in 1939, according to the National Weather Service.)
Despite what happens in the final days of the month, both cities are likely to see top 10 coldest Marches.
Other cities that have been unusually frigid in March include Green Bay, Wis. (fourth coldest), Buffalo (fourth), Detroit (sixth) and Chicago (eighth). Most of those cities should remain in the top 10 regardless of temperatures this weekend.
Nationally, according to data from the National Climatic Data Center, 2,071 record low temperatures have been set this month, compared with 242 record high temperatures.