The U.S. State Climate Extremes Committee established by the National Climatic Data Center has updated and refined its national database of climate extremes. Now anyone can conduct a Web search to find the dates of extreme climate records in their home state. The chart above shows the numbers for Virginia.
Notice how the hot-weather extremes occurred in 1900 and 1954, the cold-weather extreme occurred only 27 years ago, while the extreme rain and snow events occurred in the 1990s. Whatever may be happening to the world as a whole, Virginia does not seem to be suffering any undue extremes of heat and drought.
No meaningful lessons can be drawn from this data regarding climate change globally — Virginia constitutes too small a percentage of the earth’s surface. What the data should do, however, is inoculate people against drawing conclusions (as a certain other blogger who shall go unnamed, but whose initials are PAG has done) based upon this summer’s heat wave. Yeah, it’s hot. But it’s been hotter before.
— JAB
Update: I have changed the headline because the original lent itself to the misleading impression (as seen in the comments) that I was denying that temperatures were rising in Virginia. I don’t know if average temperatures are rising or not. I am saying that our recent heat wave is not unprecedented.
