January Statistics
The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) just released the January climate summary for the contiguous United States, along with some January weather highlights across the globe.
All images courtesy of NOAA/NCDC.
According to the NCDC findings, January was the 49th coolest January on record for the contiguous U.S., or you could say it was the 65th warmest on record. This is based on the data from 1895-2008. January was also the 50th driest on record or 65th wettest, depending on how you want to look at it.
Other U.S. highlights for the month....
--73% of the southeast remained in a moderate to exceptional drought.
--The second largest January tornado outbreak on record (54 unconfirmed tornadoes) happened on January 7th-8th. I wonder where Tuesday night's terrible outbreak will rank for February?
The NCDC will not release the global statistics until the 14th, but they did include some regional highlights.....
--Severe winter weather (cold/heavy snow) impacted parts of China. Some of the worst in 50-100 years.
--January was the hottest on record in Australia for the country as a whole.
--Large parts of the Middle East were exceptionaly cold with unusual snow, especially the first half of the month.
By the way, AccuWeather.com's senior meteorologist and long range weather expert Joe Bastardi just recently posted an article about the global warming debate and computer modeling on the icecap blog. If you are interested in reading about Joe's opinion on the subject, here is the link to the article.
