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