Record-breaking events occuring nationwide

When you consider the phrase “record breaking” in the context of weather events, certain things might come to mind. Tornado outbreaks, 100-year floods, devastating drought and monster hurricanes are some of the events you might read about or see on the news on what seems like a more frequent basis these days. Still, one would think that record-breaking weather events would be rather uncommon.

On the contrary, in what might be hailed as a record-breaking year for extreme weather, mother nature is throwing all sorts of punches.

So far this year, we’ve seen disastrous crop-destroying freezes in California’s Central Valley, followed by all-time record heat across much of the West, Great Plains and Southeastern United States. On July 5, Missoula reported its highest temperature recorded of 107 degrees. Many other locations in states like Nevada, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington and South Dakota reported average July temperatures to be the warmest in history. Soaring heat in the first half of this month is already destroying crops in the nation’s Midwestern breadbasket. According to the World Meteorological Organization, January and April of 2007 will rank as the warmest months for global land surface temperatures. These scientists believe that an increase in earth’s temperature of about 1 degree Celsius over the last couple of decades may be responsible for some of the wild weather extremes seen not only across the U.S., but across the world.

For example, this year was South Asia’s worst monsoon flooding in at least 60 years in India, Nepal and Bangladesh. Severe flooding was seen recently across southern China, England and Wales, which saw the wettest May and June ever. Germany experienced the driest April on record, and then turned around to have the wettest May in its recorded history. Chile is seeing its coldest winter in the last 30 years, and extreme heat has plagued southeastern Europe in May, June and July of this year.

Across the U.S., detailed weather records are kept for most major towns and cities by the National Weather Service. Record highs, lows, high minimum temperatures and low maximum temperatures, as well as rain, snow and wind are recorded each day. While some reporting stations may only have weather data going back a few decades, most major cities have data going back to the late 1800s, including Spokane and Coeur d’Alene. Whenever a weather record is tied or broken, the National Weather Service issues a public information statement with the details.

In an effort to get a more quantitative look at the types of extreme weather that have been occurring this year, fellow meteorologist Randy Mann has been compiling a national data base of “record-breaking” weather occurrences beginning in January. As of Aug. 11, there have been an amazing 6,507 weather records broken across the U.S. alone (6,382 daily and 125 monthly and seasonal weather records). That is an average of more than 29 per day. The types of records break down into the following percentages: 57 percent are warm records (high and high minimum temperatures), 23.8 percent are cold records (low and low maximum temperatures), and less than 20 percent are precipitation records (rain and snow). The current charts indicates that 285 weather records fell across the country just last week. Just what does all this data mean anyway? I don’t have the space here to speculate, so I will leave that open to debate by the various climate “experts.” The statistics are interesting nonetheless, and you can find more details, along with a state-by-state breakdown of all these record weather events by visiting www.ExtremeWeather Records.com.