It's a fact. What matters more in the current climate is not whether it is hot or cold but what the temperature is in downtown Washington, D.C. By "the current climate," we don't mean the average temperature of the United States or, for that matter, the globe. We mean the climate of weather hysteria that has pervaded American culture since the rise of cable television, superimposed on a scientific and political process that sees much more in global warming than mere heat.
So the extremely warm temperatures of the last week in January have prompted the usual hand-wringing around the Nation's Capital. That concern is doubly important as Congress is about to consider omnibus energy legislation. The President's plan is to develop domestic sources—meaning Alaskan oil and American coal—while the Opposition wants to curtail fossil fuel usage because of global warming. Nowhere has there been a more stark choice of energy futures presented to Congress, so it isn't surprising that all the no-burn forces in D.C. were wailing about the temperature, which flirted around 80° over much of the District on January 30. The pols forgot to notice that, across the country, it was snowing on the beach at Malibu.
All of this makes for a very interesting historical comparison. While our political climate was different, weather may have been even wackier in winter past. As an example, let's compare events in the winter of 1931–1932 to today.
For the entire East Coast, all the way from Florida to Canada, 1932 (i.e., the 1931–1932 cold season), was "the year without a winter." Figure 1 details the observed high temperatures in Roanoke, Va.—in the heart of the mid-Atlantic region—with normal highs.
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Figure 1. Daily maximum temperatures for Roanoke, Va., for the winter of 1931–1932 (red values). Blue values represent the long-term average daily maximum temperatures. |
It's not a misprint. It actually hit 87° on February 11, and, throughout the winter, temperatures were truly Lake Woebegon: almost every day was above average. The average high for the entire 90-day period was a stunning 10.5° above the mean.
This history really did repeat itself, albeit in somewhat muted fashion, during the January 2002 warm spell. Want proof? Here's what the Washington Post had to say in 1932:
Washington's temperature yesterday set a new high record for this time of year, with a mark of 75° at the Weather Bureau and 80° at the kiosk opposite the Post Building [January 14, 1932]
The official Washington temperature climbed to 76 degrees yesterday to tie the all-time January maximum temperature...Flowers have never ceased to bloom in the Capital this year, coaxed out by the succeeding days of warm weather...frogs are croaking in the reservoir...just like the do in the summer. [January 15, 1932]
Four pages later, we read, "Coatless citizens pluck pansies and pussy willows at New Haven, Conn....Cleveland schoolboys go swimming in Lake Erie with temperature at 70" (January 15, 1932). And finally, "A maximum temperature of 77 yesterday topped by two degrees a 60-year January record" (January 16, 1932).
A comparative survey of Mid-Atlantic temperature readings from January 30, 2002, reveals in fact that January 16, 1932, was the warmest day averaged over the region in the entire 20th century, and that this year's was a wee bit warmer.
But these two January days also have something more remarkable in common. Also from the Washington Post in 1932: "The first snow in decades today fell in scattered parts of southern California as winter dealt a rude jolt to summer's kingdom…in the rich valley of the citrus belt, where Riverside is located, there was a slight snowfall, the first in 40 years" (January 14, 1932), and "Southern Californians try to explain the first snow fall in 50 years" (January 15, 1932).
The two warmest January days in the last 108 years (the period of reliable records) in the Mid-Atlantic were also two of the very few days it has ever snowed in downtown Los Angeles. What gives?
The heat in D.C. was driven by the same jet stream that plunged all the cold air into Los Angeles. Scientists have known about this for decades: The major pattern for winter temperature anomalies in the United States is not for the country as a whole to be warmer or colder than normal, but for the west to be cold and the east warm, or vice versa.
The entire winter of 1932 and the last week of January 2002 represent the quintessence of this pattern, as shown by the comparative maps in Figure 2.
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Figure 2. Top: The temperature departures from normal for the month of January, 1932. Bottom: The temperature departures from normal from the week of January 27–February 2, 2002. |
Just how wacko was 1932? Figure 3 compares mid-Atlantic winter average temperatures for the last 20 years—when everyone has been wailing about global warming—to that year. Nothing is even close. The warmest winter, 1990–1991, averaging 40.5°, falls almost six degrees short of 1931–1932's 46.1°.
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Figure 3. The average wintertime temperatures for the Mid-Atlantic since 1980, as compared with the average for the winter of 1931–1932. |
The usual climatic suspect, El Niño, does not explain 1931–1932. Instead, the temperature anomalies of 1931–1932 look like the absolute extreme version of something called the "Pacific-North American [PNA] Oscillation," a standing wave in the jet stream that plunges cold air either into California or the eastern United States. Unfortunately, the PNA is defined by data way up in the troposphere, and 1931–1932 was before the regular and systematic launching of weather balloons.
There is some evidence for a connection between the PNA and El Niño, but it appears years later, with big El Niños apparently driving big changes in the PNA. Still, there's no El Niño in the late 1920s that appears strong enough to have driven 1931–1932. And for heaven's sake, don't blame human changes to the greenhouse effect, because we hadn't done much to the atmosphere back in the 1930s.
Perhaps more interesting than speculation as to the causes of the "year without a winter" in the eastern United States is the historical response: Nothing.
If 1932 repeated itself now—averaging 10 degrees above normal for the entire winter—the number of weather-angst stories would probably push something like the Enron bankruptcy into the funnies. In 1932, however, except for the few stories that were filed on the warmest of the warm days, no one cared.
The "year without a winter" followed close on the heels of another two of the largest climate anomalies ever seen in the Washington, D.C. area: The spectacular heat of the summer of 1930 and the 1930–1931 drought.
A search of weather records from 1930 reveals three consecutive weeks of high temperatures ranging from the high 90s to 109° (with dozens of readings at 106° or above) from mid-July through early August 1930. It takes drought to generate such heat, as normally moist conditions in the forested Mid-Atlantic tend to hold high temperatures in the mid-90s most of the time. In fact, the drought of 1930–1931 is the benchmark drought for the last 100 years. Forest fires raged and half of the counties over large regions reported shortfalls of potable drinking water.
Don't even ask about crop yields in 1930. In the Shenandoah Valley, which was the granary of the Confederacy, 1930 yields don't look much different than those of dust bowl Iowa in 1934 or 1936.
But where were the weather and climate horror tales? In today's climate, if Washington had just experienced its hottest summer, its biggest drought, and its warmest winter—all within 24 months of each other—you can bet that the nation would be immediately plastered with a global warming tax. But back in 1930, 1931, and 1932, when Washington didn't take itself so seriously, no one noticed.