Purple means record low, white means record snowfall. This is actually pretty interesting as a demonstration of the low quality of the surface temperature database. I'm not buying record high (red dot) in Greenville, NC, Memphis, Chicago, and Portsmouth NH. Just not buying it. What seems much more likely is a data error or some sort of malfunction. The data sets are quite frankly full of this sort of thing, and the software to "correct" things adjusts the data so that temperatures appear to be higher.
But even with the data being cooked, January was record miserable weather.
High temps in Chicago might be possible. If you do some looking into it, over at Watts Up With That? you will see that the siting of many measurement stations, particularly in urban areas, is simply horrible.
ReplyDeleteWhen the hot exhaust of a ventilation unit is blowing on your thermometer, of course you're going to get high records.