I interviewed Jeff Masters near his home in southeast Michigan on saturday, for an upcoming video. It just happened to be a day of record warmth, so we spent the time on the shore of a small lake a short walk away, where in former decades a ice would have been thick and safe for walking – we hugged the shore and kicked holes in the slushy surface.
48 hours later, we are in a hard, white freeze. Not enough snow for January, but, it’s cold. We’ll take it.
Above, Paul Douglas gives us another “Live at Five” look at how extremes are reshaping our weather.
A bit off topic
The Ivanpah Solar Thermal Generation Station in the Mojave Desert is scheduled to go into production later this year:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2013/01/09/168945619/under-construction-the-worlds-largest-thermal-solar-plant
I’ve been looking forward to that for quite a while. Considering that CA has had the SEGS units in operation for 25 yrs and how sunny the Southwest is, there should have been a lot more projects like these already in operation.
This is zero emission 19th century tech – how did this not catch on sooner.
I worry about the desert creatures
You’re missing a “by” before “the shore” there…
I know I’ve seen something several times in the last year or two but, related to the Paul Douglas segment, what are the actual numbers, comparing the number of record highs to the number of record lows?
Not just in his Jan. 17 map, but over the last 1-, 3-, 5-, 10- years or whatever.
I’m thinking I’ve recently read that there have been something like 3-5x record highs than lows but I’m not sure for what time period.
Thanks.
This might help on daily highs vs. daily low records:
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/07/17/529211/illustrating-the-explosion-of-daily-records/