On Thursday, CNN’s Sally Kohn decided to play meteorologist, claiming a radical shift in New York City’s weather was evidence of climate change.
Uh, no.
Kohn refused to back down:
That prompted others to smack her down again:
It’s gotta be global warming? Let’s take the time machine back to January 22, 1943. Let the National Weather Service tell the story:
The Black Hills area can experience spectacular temperature variations. Day-to-day changes occur as cold and warm fronts cross the northern Plains. However, temperature ranges across the area at a given time can be just as great. They happen rapidly as the wind direction changes, most notably the warming Chinook winds that have given the Black Hills the reputation as the “Banana Belt” of the Midwest. Other temperature differences are caused by inversions, when warm air flows over a shallow pool of cold air. Because the Black Hills rise above the plains like an island in a body of water, they are in the warm air layer.
The most notable temperature fluctuations occurred on January 22, 1943 when temperatures rose and fell almost 50 degrees in a few minutes. This phenomenon was caused when a frontal boundary separating extremely cold Arctic air from warmer Pacific air rolled like an ocean tide along the northern and eastern slopes of the Black Hills.
Want to go back farther in time? Let’s try this, as reported by Weather.com:
Ahhh…a temperature of 67 degrees at noon on an early December day might give you thoughts of an outdoor lunch. If you were in Amarillo, Texas on December 12, 1919, this would’ve been a bad idea…unless you’re a weather enthusiast. A powerful cold front raced through the northwest Texas city during the lunch hour, ushering in cold northerly winds that dropped the temperature to 23 degrees by 1 p.m. An incredible plunge of 44 degrees in one hour! It got even worse through the afternoon and early evening. In fact, by the time people were cleaning up from dinner around 7 p.m., it was only one degree above zero.
Want to go back even farther? Try this:
Oklahoma City accomplished a rare feat on November 11, 1911. Warm air ahead of a cold front allowed the afternoon temperature that day to reach a record high of 83 degrees. Then, the sharp cold front sliced through the Heartland and dropped temperatures in an extreme way. Just before midnight, the low temperature bottomed out at a record of 17 degrees. This is a total drop of 66 degrees from the record high to the record low. Both of these temperature records for November 11 remain intact more than 100 years later.
But don’t tell Kohn. You might get a frigid response.