Late Winter Storms

California, where I live and work, is getting hammered again today by a winter storm.  This is a big one, as the adjacent map shows.  The storm extends from Washington State south through Southern California, and east into Arkansas, up to Michigan.   This is roughly two thirds of the U.S. 

In California, this storm is bringing rain to the lowlands, plus snow to the Sierras, which will melt later and become very welcome fresh water in a time of drought.   But it is also bringing cold temperatures, resulting in my running the furnace in my humble abode.   

How things have changed since I first moved to Southern California 23 years ago.  My interview day was around February 1, 1986.  It rained that day.  My future colleagues assured me, almost apologetically, that this was very unusual and there would be no more rain for the next 9 months.  Being from Dallas, and before that Houston, this was out of my range of experience.  It rains frequently in those two Texas cities.   Yet my colleagues' words were prophetic, and it indeed did not rain again until November.  

Now we have rain plus snow on the 22nd day of March.    The high temperature for today in Los Angeles is expected to be 59 F.  The normal for today is 70 F.  

A word to all the global warming alarmists, and the climate change proponents, especially those who fervently believe that man's activities are the cause, or culprit.   Many of us, like me, are paying very close attention, collecting and archiving data.   I am highly skeptical of man's part, if any, in the slow warming and cooling of the earth's atmosphere.   Part of my skepticism arises due to wholesale adjustments to measured temperatures from the past, by those particularly at NASA under James Hansen.  It is telling that the adjustments were broadly downward for data before about 1965, then broadly upward since.   The impact is to increase the upward slope of the time-vs-temperature curve.  Hmmm...this is a slap in the face to all the good people who took the time to carefully look at a thermometer, then write down their reading and report it to others.  

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.