Both Sides

[gonefishin]

Is it always necessary to present both sides of the argument? Maybe.

January Statistics

The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) just released the January climate summary for the contiguous United States, along with some January weather highlights across the globe.

According to the NCDC findings, January was the 49th coolest January on record for the contiguous U.S., or you could say it was the 65th warmest on record. This is based on the data from 1895-2008. January was also the 50th driest on record or 65th wettest, depending on how you want to look at it.

Other U.S. highlights for the month....

--73% of the southeast remained in a moderate to exceptional drought.

--The second largest January tornado outbreak on record (54 unconfirmed tornadoes) happened on January 7th-8th. I wonder where Tuesday night's terrible outbreak will rank for February?


The NCDC will not release the global statistics until the 14th, but they did include some regional highlights.....

--Severe winter weather (cold/heavy snow) impacted parts of China. Some of the worst in 50-100 years.

--January was the hottest on record in Australia for the country as a whole.

--Large parts of the Middle East were exceptionaly cold with unusual snow, especially the first half of the month.

By the way, according to the Polar Research Group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the current southern hemispheric sea-ice area is at 2.9 million sq/km, which is about 400,000 sq/km greater than the normal level expected for this time of year, or slightly above-normal. Based on the latest trend on the chart, it appears that the southern hemispheric sea-ice area could be right at normal by March.

[Phil Lilley]

Thanks for the info... great reading.

What's the url of the site you're getting this from?

[gonefishin]

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html

I actually found the link on the NOAA Weather Site. Thought it was interesting.