No, it was not global warming.
It wasn't El Nino, either, and in any case that has been replaced by La Nina.
And contrary to the abnormal absence of late January chill, it wasn't even close to being the record high temperature for the month.
For New Englanders accustomed to bundling up just to grab the morning paper, yesterday's unexpected, unfamiliar gusts of warm and wet hit like a tropical dream sequence that made no sense to the skin, or the mind. Was it the shrinking ozone layer? Was it some unholy prelude to haywire weather for the millennium? Did the sky prematurely go Y2K?
The short answer, meteorologists said bluntly, was no. And the long answer? Well, no.
"We've had warm winter temperatures before we ever had global warming. It's not exactly unprecedented," climatologist Robert E. Lautzenheiser said, unfazed by the 62-degree record high yesterday. "It might make people feel more comfortable or trendy to say it's global warming, but there's no proof. This is not a Chicken Little scenario."
By 1 p.m. yesterday, the temperature had already dropped to 56 degrees. That was a far cry from 1906, Lautzenheiser said, when the temperature spiked to 68 degrees twice, on Jan. 21 and 23. The mercury hit 72 degrees on Jan. 26, 1950, the record high for a January in Boston.
"I don't think anyone was talking about global warming back then," Lautzenheiser said. "It got warm. Things happen."
And El Nino? "I hadn't really thought about it that much," said Lautzenheiser, dismissing the ocean-warming phenomenon as he corrected a reporter. "They call it La Nina now."
Oh.
Outside, the weather was like a one-day-only sale for residents in need of a thaw. John Azul of Cambridge, 39, joined a resounding chorus of New Englanders when he said, "It's beautiful. It should be like this every year."
On the other hand, some people were less than pleased.
"Contrary to popular opinion," said opining ski-slope fanatic Nat Stahl of Cambridge, "I miss the snow. I'm a snowboarder. I was looking forward to a good season, and it hasn't happened. It's terrible."
Of course, it rained a lot yesterday, making it hard for warm-weather sports fanatics to capitalize on the winter thaw. As of yesterday afternoon, the rainfall across Massachusetts came to about a half-inch, with some areas getting a little more.
James McCutcheon, another unfazed meteorologist at Weather Services Corp. in Lexington, said yesterday the storm that gave New England a January reprieve was much less forgiving in Arkansas, where its incarnation as a series of tornadoes caused devastation.
Locally, reality rudely interrupted the dream with dropping temperatures yesterday evening. Temperatures had dropped to 49 degrees by 6 p.m. By today, McCutcheon said, a 34-degree cold front would snap back with authority.
All of which made some think a shrinking ozone layer might not be a bad trade-off for just a little more warmth.
"If it has to do with global warming," said one woman, running too quickly down a rain-slicked Boston street to identify herself, "then I'm all for global warming."
Comments on this posting?
Click here to post a public comment on the Trash Talk Bulletin Board.
Click here to send a private comment to the Junkman.
Copyright © 1998 Citizens for the Integrity of Science. All rights reserved on original material. Material copyrighted by others is used either with permission or under a claim of "fair use." Site developed and hosted by WestLake Solutions, Inc.
Material presented on this home page constitutes opinion of Steven J. Milloy.