Climate Change-up

Nobody asked but …

I could be wrong.  Amiright?  Here it is two days before American Thanksgiving and it’s 57 degrees fahrenheit at 2:30pm in Lexington KY.  Maybe it’s warmer than usual but maybe not.  It seems we’ve had a nice, long Indian Summer, but I also remember most Thanksgivings to be the occasion of a warmish rain.  So memory will not serve me in this inquiry.  I have never made a studious notation of the weather where I might be on a given day.  I also see that right here in central Kentucky, that the temperature readings, reported on radio, TV, and the Internet, seem to differ as much as 10 degrees F on either side of an average.  I think of temperatures as being as variable as the weather itself.  Now I have been observing weather for 72 plus years, but I don’t pay much attention to it.  I remember 4-foot snow drifts when I was about 6 years old.  I remember that it rained nearly constantly while I was an undergrad at the University of Kentucky, whereby I developed a strong dislike for umbrellas.  I remember a day when it got to be -24 degrees F.  I remember once in Liberty KY, when it said 122 degrees F, in the shade, in the alley behind my Grandmother’s flower shop, according to a rusty old Double Cola thermometer.  And lastly, I remember a nine-day power outage due to an ice storm.  Again, memory is not a good guide, since I have not paid measurable attention to most events that do not mark the extremes.  I am a scientist, but I really don’t know any of us that have been consistent enough to predict weather.  Heraclitus said that you cannot step in the same stream twice, and I have had pretty much the same experience with the climate.

Kilgore Forelle