Bouncing thermometer
Here’s a “bouncing" graph showing the daily “high and low temperature” bands for Naples Florida and Fargo Minnesota.
Why is it bouncing?
Hint: it has nothing to do with basketball,
Rather, its bouncing because Fargo is so cold ... Or is it because Naples is so warm? Probably a little of both!
One thing is for sure: it’s been an unusually cold start of the summer for Minnesotans (… not that they can’t handle it):
Meteorologist Daryl Ritchison reports in his Storm Tracker blog that Fargo recently spent 5 consecutive days below the 60º F mark – a first for June. Even more telling has been the absence of tornadoes. All that cold air has pushed the traffic along tornado alley further south.
The tell-tale line for me is the 70º F mark.
That line is shown by the light orange band on the “bouncing" graph.
Here in Naples we’re in our 5-month stretch where not even nightly temperatures drop below the mark. Come winter, day-time temperatures usually find a way above 70, even if night-time lows drop into the 50s and 60s.
Compare that to the Fargo.
Daytime highs only manage to break the 70º F mark for 3 short months (plus an Indian summer) … after that’s it’s a steep plunge back into the Canadian freeze.
But Minnesotans are to cold and snow what Floridians are to heat and humidity ...
Even if they do relish the warm weeks of a fleeting summer the same as we do our ephemeral blasts of winter.
10 comments:
Interesting comparison, Bob. My Michigan friends who visited us recently were complaining about the temperatures being so cool up there so far this summer. Actually they said that they haven't had MUCH summer at all yet.
Glad I"m in the center of the country and we get a good balance. However, We are in tornado alley--so that's not fun.
Betsy
The good news for us is it looks like we may be flirting with 90 at some point next week. Summer returning to the our area will be great! Great Post Robert.
Daryl Ritchison
WDAY-TV Meteorologist
Fargo, ND
Do Minnesotans and Canucks drink less booze during their brief summers?
Thanks for your comments.
It's true Betsy: the date that summer starts and ends is variable ... depending on where you live.
Daryl, I'm so embarrassed ... and geographically impaired: Fargo is in ND, not MN. For a Floridian, anything that far north might as well be frozen tundra. But no excuses, I've updated my mental map.
As for seasonal drinking habits, I recommend a strict diet 8 glasses of water per day, plus fresh vegetables from your garden.
Robert,
Fargo, yes is in North Dakota, but we're a border community with Moorhead Minnesota, so you were only off by a few yards. ;-)
Bob,
Global warming, normal cycles, or increased demand for H2o, or somehting else. What do you think is the major contributor to this phenomenon?
Brad
That's a good question Brad. While it's become almost cliche to point the finger at global climate change these days, the truth is that weather in any one place at any one time is influenced by a combination of long-term, seasonal, and ephemeral atmospheric twists and turns. As cold as its been up there, Daryl points out that unusually warm weather has been forecast for next week.
What would be your take Daryl?
I find it interesting how the cold weather, to date, has dampened tornado frequency in Minnesota. We see the same drop in hurricane frequency in Florida during El Nino events.
Suffice it to say that the weather is a complex stew of air and water.
Weather patterns change on scales ranging from yearly to decadal to hundreds of years. Our average lifespan is too short to fully see the long-term normal changes of climate at any one geographical location. Right now the planet is in a cooling period (yes you read that correctly) as global temperature have dropped over this decade. This also is just normal climatic variations as shifts in solar energy, oceanic patterns and other variables slowly fluctuate through time.
We may never fully understand all the dynamics of our atmosphere, but "weather happens" and normal weather is too often made to sound freaky or unusual by our 24 hour news stations. Nothing that has happened in recent years is unique or unusual and truth is if you look through history, our weather has been much more benign lately than it often has been through the past several centuries.
I should have signed that last note, my bad.
Daryl Ritchison
WDAY Meteorologist
Fargo, ND
Wow --> great stuff Daryl. The concept of global cooling fascinates me. What concerns me most about increased CO2 in the atmosphere is its effects on ocean acidification.
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