Trend for highest maximum temperature for Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1896-2020 is not quite 1.5 degrees F below the mean

 

Trend for lowest minimum temperature for Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1896-2021 is 2 degrees F below the mean

 

Trend for average temperature in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is 0.3 degrees F above the mean 1898-2020

 

Johns Hopkins: The COVID-19 case fatality rate to date in South Africa is 2.99% vs. 1.68% in the US

 Virus variant from South Africa detected in US for 1st time:

The variant first found in South Africa was detected in October. Since then, it has been found in at least 30 other countries.

It is not obvious that the mutation found in October is responsible for the outsized increases in cases and deaths recently observed in South Africa. Both rose in tandem not until the beginning of December, and the mutation could have been present earlier. Seasonal factors may be at work. July is South Africa's winter, January its summer. Elevation moderates summer high temperatures and latitude its winter lows.

Climate Update for KGRR: December 2020 and 2020 Annual

 

Climate Update for KGRR: December 2020

Max T 53, Mean 53, Annual Max T 94, Mean 94

Min T 18, Mean 4, Annual Min T 4, Mean -7, tied for eighth highest on record with 2010 and 1911

Av T 32.4, Mean 28.4, Annual Av T 50.1, Mean 48.2, fifteenth highest on record

Rain 2.81, Mean 2.45, Annual 37.44, Mean 34.77

Snow 4.9, Mean 16, Snow season to date 5.3, Mean 22.7

HDD 1001, Mean 1128, HDD season to date 2277, Mean 2485

CDD Annual 832, Mean 694, Peak year was in 1921 at 1200

By average temperature 2020 was 3.9% warmer than the mean, not because the shorter summer season was especially hot but because minimum temperatures in the longer winter season moderated.

Climate Updates for KGRR: October and November 2020

 October 2020 Climate Update for KGRR

Max T 79, Mean 79

Min T 25, Mean 28

Av T 48, Mean 51.3

Rain 2.67, Mean 3.03

Snow Tr, Mean 0.4

Heating Degree Days 527, Mean 424

Cooling Degree Days 0, Mean 9

Cooling Degree Days to date 829, Mean 700

 November 2020 Climate Update for KGRR

Max T 77, Mean 66

Min T 22, Mean 17

Av T 44.3, Mean 39.1

Rain 2.27, Mean 2.84

Snow 0.4, Mean 6.3

Heating Degree Days 614, Mean 772

Cooling Degree Days 3, Mean 0

Cooling Degree Days to date 832, Mean 700

Average Temperature Year to date 51.7, Mean to date 50: 2020 average temperature is running 3.4% above the mean.

Peak average annual temperature since 1898 occurred in 2012 at 52.8 degrees F, 9.5% above the mean average annual temperature of 48.2.

So it's been warmer than normal in 2020 to date, but nothing record-setting.

Grand Rapids, MI is forecast to receive its first sub 20 degree F temperatures of the season this week.

Things noteworthy from my reading October 17-24

 US wildfires may have burned approaching 8 million acres by now in 2020 but tens of millions of acres used to burn in this country annually before World War II, especially in the late 1920s and early 1930s when it was much warmer in the US.

Jim Lee, a pollster with Susquehanna Polling and Research, said "There are a lot of voters out there that don't want to admit they are voting for a guy that has been called a racist, that submerged Trump factor is very real. I don't see this a blue wave. I don't see Biden winning in the states Trump carried in 2016."

Joe Biden, who said he is the Democrat Party now, said after the debate “No one is going to build another oil or gas-fired electric plant." Which is complete lunacy. California has power shut-offs during the wildfires because of its war on oil and natural gas generating capacity. It is dependent on power imported from other states. Renewables can't meet demand when temperatures are too hot, when the wind dies, and when the sun goes down. Biden will turn all of America into California. Who are we going to buy it from then? Mexico?!

Sen. Murkowski of Alaska will vote FOR Judge Barrett.

BLM rioters blocked traffic in San Bernardino CA and keyed cars trying to get through. Left is, in the final analysis, lack of respect for property, including intellectual property, the notional property shared by the citizens and represented e.g. in statuary. By tearing down statues everywhere they declare that they are our enemies. We should treat them as such.

Twitter locked the account of The New York Post on Oct 14 in response to tweets revealing Hunter Biden's emails which Twitter didn't like. Democracy dies in darkness, eh WaPo? One of Hunter's alleged emails said "Hunter to hold 10% of the equity for The Big Guy." A Hunter Biden business associate surfaced who contradicted The Big Guy by claiming he discussed a lot of the business with him.

Internal polling by Hillary Scholten (D) and Peter Meijer (R) in Michigan District 03 agreed that Hunter Biden's Big Guy is ahead by 2 points in this heavily Republican district. Quite the thing that. Of course, they disagree about which of the two of them, Scholten or Meijer, is going to win Justin Amash's seat. Fear of a blue wave in Michigan is not misplaced. I'm hearing lowly Republican county office holders campaign on radio. Can't say I've EVER heard that before. Smells like fear to me.

A liberal pastor in Michigan who has been trying since 2015 to steer his conservative parishioners away from Trump has thrown in the towel and resigned, exasperated that they won't listen.

In Arizona Democrat Mark Kelly is trying to unseat Republican Martha McSally in the US Senate race. Someone floated a yearbook photo of someone dressed as a Nazi, claiming it is Kelly. Kelly campaign denies it. AZ Central found a guy named Ed who claimed to be in the photo and to know that the Nazi was definitely not Kelly. Ed must know who the Nazi is, but dang, AZ Central didn't go there.

Meanwhile, same thing at CNN. Ms. Amanpour informed a GOP official it's not CNN's job to investigate the Hunter Biden laptop affair. No kidding. She said that's the GOP's job, and CNN is not going to help them. CNN is an arm of the Democrat Party.

Trump mentioned in the debate that wind turbines kill a lot of birds and are bad for that reason. The New York Times responded that wasn't true because house cats kill far more birds than turbines do.

I think I've detected a pattern from AZ Central to CNN to NYT.

Trump in his first term isn't going to come anywhere close to appointing as many judges as the King, Jimmy Carter, did.

Speaking of Carter, who helped Israel and Egypt make peace, Trump has now presided over the normalization of relations with Israel by Sudan, Bahrain and United Arab Emirates. Quite the feather in his cap.

Republican voter registrations have outpaced Democrat in Pennsylvania over Trump's term as average unemployment in PA fell one full point from 5.4% in 2016 to 4.4% in 2019. In 2018 the average was even lower: 4.3%. COVID wreaked havoc on this record, but will voters blame Trump?

President in waiting, Kamala Harris, said 220 million in the US have died of coronavirus, which should mean fewer votes to count, for sure. In June The Big Guy had said 120 million had already died, but he moved that up to 210 million by early October. cc: TalkingPointsMemo.

The Big Guy predicted only 200,000 more deaths by the end of the year, which comes as quite the relief. The worst is behind us.

Except that the CDC released data showing excess deaths to Oct 3 are running about 90k higher than accounted for by COVID-19 deaths reported so far. In other words, The Big Guy is half way there already!

Young twitter users this week were utterly befuddled in droves by the idea that illegal kids were coming across the southern border on coyotes. One such tweeter is an investment advisor, corporate attorney, and chief deputy whip of the Georgia House Democrats. She said, "How the hell does a coyote bring a whole human across the border?".

Somebody claimed this week that Democrats and Republicans polled about equally reluctant to express openly their political views. Clearly the coyote-perplexed people voting for the Democrat COVID death misoverestimators weren't part of THAT poll.

Santa cancelled his appearance at Macy's for the first time in 160 years because . . . 2020.

But wait, it gets worse than 2020. The Big Guy said in the debate he'd get to zero emissions by 2025. Everyone on Twitter caught it. Democrats excused it saying he meant 2035. But even that is horrifying lunacy. It isn't achievable because most people are like me.

I have a natural gas fireplace, a gas furnace, a gas stove and oven, a gas dryer, a gas water heater, and a gas back-up generator, not to mention 2 pretty old gasoline powered cars. And don't get me started on the power equipment. There's the riding mower, two walk behinds, an edger, a weed whacker, and two snow-blowers, one for light and one for heavy duty. Oh yeah, and a chain saw. All of it is old but works and is well maintained.

The Big Guy wants a buy-back program for AR-15s, which will be cheap compared to a buy-back of all my carbon-emitting equipment. Ain't gonna happen.

Natural gas is cheap and clean, but The Big Guy hates it. The Big Guy has a dagger aimed at all of it, 2025 or 2035 doesn't really matter. America runs on cheap energy, and he aims to make it more expensive. Which will mean only one thing.

America won't run. The only thing keeping industrial production above the water line in this country is the energy sector. Take that away and down the toilet we go.

50 years ago this month guns that the black communist Angela Davis bought were used in the execution of Judge Harold Haley. Davis is a forerunner of today's violent communist Black Lives Matter:"She was acquitted in '72 despite her proven ownership of the murder weapons & a cache of letters she wrote to Jackson in prison expressing her unambivalent solidarity with his commitment to political violence". Davis is also a prominent originator of the idea of systemic racism, a system rigged vs. blacks. "With her blanket dismissal of evidence as irrelevant in trials of (automatically innocent) minority defendants, Ms. Davis indicts the entire American legal system as a rigged farce." It's rigged alright . . . in her favor.

Democrat Kamala Harris argued that people can't afford their health insurance under Democrat Obamacare which was rammed down the people's throats by Democrats and that something must be done about it by electing Democrats again.

And if you don't like that, she'll lock you out like Twitter locked out The New York Post.

The person who died in the Oxford coronavirus vaccine trial got the placebo, not the vaccine.

The Big Guy also echoed Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York this week, who once said "America was never that great".

The Big Guy tweeted: "America was an idea. We've never lived up to it . . .."

The Big Guy also took the endorsement of the Boilermakers Union Local 154 in Pennsylvania, which promptly informed him that they had already endorsed Donald Trump. "Don't try me, pal" was heard in response from the Big Guy according to two clearly disgruntled anonymous sources, one of which sounded Hungarian and the other Polish, who obviously were making this up out of their rancor over The Big Guy calling NATO allies Poland and Hungary "totalitarian" states.

The 80s called. They want their foreign policy back. 

Jeffrey Toobin's one-eyed trouser snake got loose while he was in a Zoom meeting, now known as an erection simulation, and all the ladies saw him stroking the creature, trying to pacify the wayward beast. Toobin apologized to his wife for not including her in the special moment.

Peter Strzok of FBI Trump-Russia Russia Russia! fame is now an adjunct professor at Georgetown. He'll probably find some young chicks there to replace the adulation, and other things, he used to get from Lisa Page. Parents, you have been warned. 

Some asshole pointed out that Trump's point four of America First in 2016 was to "end sanctuary cities".

What a jerk!

Given urban heat island distortions of +1 to +7 degrees F, average temperature rise of less than 0.3 degrees F above the mean since 1898 in Grand Rapids, MI is suspect

Given urban heat island distortions of +1 to +7 degrees F, average temperature rise of less than 0.3 degrees F above the mean since 1898 in Grand Rapids, MI is suspect (image D).

US EPA Heat Islands page:

"A review of research studies and data found that in the United States, the heat island effect results in daytime temperatures in urban areas about 1–7°F higher than temperatures in outlying areas and nighttime temperatures about 2–5°F higher. Humid regions (primarily in the eastern United States) and cities with larger and denser populations experience the greatest temperature differences. Research predicts that the heat island effect will strengthen in the future as the structure, spatial extent, and population density of urban areas change and grow".

The US Historical Climatology Network station in Grand Rapids, Michigan, looks increasingly compromised by urban heat island effects. It is located at the Gerald R. Ford International Airport (image A), where the main 8,500 foot runway did not become operational until 2001 and where 2 million passengers were not served for the first time until 2004.  

The weather station is located in the northwest corner of the 3,000 plus acre airport grounds at 4899 Tim Dougherty Dr, Grand Rapids, MI 49512 (image B). One can see it is now surrounded by industrial development to the north and west, the airport to the south and east, and a busy county road commission facility right east of the measurement station, which is accessed by a little walkway leading from the National Weather Service building (image C).

The county population has doubled in the last sixty years.

One can observe from the history of maximum temperature at the station (image E) that the trend is clearly lower by nearly 1.5 degrees F from the mean maximum over the whole period. The trend for minimum temperature is even lower, by over 2.0 degrees F from the mean (image F).

Click any image to enlarge.

A

B

C

  

D

E

F

Climate update for Grand Rapids, Michigan, January 2020: We're all going to die :)

Climate update for Grand Rapids, Michigan, January 2020

Max temp 49, mean 48

Min temp 11, mean -3

Average temp 31.3, mean 23.8

Precipitation 3.65, mean 2.07

Snowfall 11.5, mean 18.5

Heating degree days 1036, mean 1270

HDD season to date 3436, mean 3756

Minimum temperature was tied for 7th highest ever for a January.

Average temperature was the 6th highest ever for a January.

Precipitation was the 14th highest ever for a January.

Heating degree days were the 6th lowest ever for a January.

Season to date the winter has been 8.5% warmer than the mean using heating degree days, but still 7.9% colder than the 2011-2012 season to date of 3183 HDD. The 2011-2012 full season was the warmest winter on record in Grand Rapids using HDD.

Dec 2019 Climate Update for Grand Rapids, Michigan plus Annual 2019

Dec 2019 Climate Update for Grand Rapids, Michigan

Max Temp 61, Mean Max 53

Min Temp 7,  Mean Min 4

Av Temp 33.2, Mean Av 28.4

Precip 4.04, Mean 2.44

Snow 14.3, Mean 16

Heating Degree Days 978, Mean 1129

HDD Season to date 2400, Mean 2486

Annual 2019 Climate Update for Grand Rapids, Michigan

Max Temp 92, Mean 94

Min Temp -10, Mean -7

Av Temp 48.5, Mean 48.2

Precip 51.37, Mean 34.75 (wettest year on record since 1892)

Cooling Degree Days 742, Mean 693 

2019 was 0.6% warmer overall, as indicated by mean average temperature. The short summer air conditioning season was 7.1% warmer, as indicated by mean cooling degree days. Despite this mean maximum temperature was never reached.

The 2019-2020 heating season has been variable to date, but through Dec 2019 is deviating from mean heating degree days by less than 4% to the mild side. The previous heating season was utterly normal.  

Crazy Mazie Hirono, Democrat Senator from Hawaii: We've got to get people to believe in global warming like it's a RELIGION

The forecast low tonight in Grand Rapids is 7 degrees F, which would tie tenth lowest in the record books for minimum temperature in November.

Climate update for Grand Rapids, Michigan, October 2019: Really wet and not so hot

2019 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is already the 11th wettest year on record through October, displacing 2018 from that rank.

Precipitation to date is already 44.71 inches when long term mean to date is just 29.48 inches.

On the summer heat front 2019 was nothing like 2018, which was the 7th warmest summer on record.

Cooling Degree Days to date come in at 742 compared with the long term mean to date of 699, about 6.2% above the mean. The record hot summer was in 1921 with 1200 CDD, with the record cool summer in 1992 with just 316 CDD. 2018 CDD came in at 1003.

On the winter cold side of things, while 2018-19 was utterly normal (6722 vs. mean 6705), the 2019-20 season is starting off with Heating Degree Days over 12% below the mean. Most of that was due to September average temperature exceeding the mean average by 3.6 degrees F. Long term mean HDD in September is 134 but came in at just 45.

Grand Rapids, MI, Climate Update October 2019

Max temp 77, mean max 79

Min temp 31, mean min 28

Av temp 50.2, mean av 51.3

Precip 7.13, mean 3.03

CDD 8, mean 9

CDD to date 742, mean to date 699

HDD 459, mean 424

HDD to date (July-Oct) 512, mean to date 585

Snow 0.3, mean 0.4

Grand Rapids, MI, Climate Update September 2019

Max temp 88, mean max 88

Min temp 48, mean min 37

Av temp 66.4, mean av 62.8

Precip 7.32, mean 3.6

CDD 92, mean 76

HDD 45, mean 134

Your reminder that the world was warmer in 1300BC, 100BC and 1100AD than it is today

Trend for Oceanic Nino Index through 9/5/2019 shows Pacific Ocean temperature declining since 1951

Canadian court dismisses Michael Mann's libel claim with prejudice, Mann withholds his climate data to this day

Michael Mann "Hockey Stick" Update: Now Definitively Established To Be Fraud:

A prominent skeptical climate scientist in Canada named Tim Ball accused Mann of fraud in generating the Hockey Stick graph.  The famous quote, from a February 2011 interview of Ball, was “Michael Mann should be in the State Pen, not Penn State.”   In March 2011, Mann sued Ball for libel, focusing on that quote, in the Supreme Court of British Columbia in Vancouver.  Here is a copy of the Complaint.  (Note:  In British Columbia, the Supreme Court is not the highest appellate court, but rather the trial-level court for larger cases.)  The case then essentially disappeared into limbo for eight plus years.  But on Friday, August 23, the British Columbia court dismissed Mann’s claim with prejudice, and also awarded court costs to Ball.  As far as I can determine, this was an oral ruling, and no written judgment nor transcript of the ruling yet exists.  I have asked Ball to send them along as soon as they exist.

The story of Ball’s vindication, and of Mann’s shame, is a somewhat long one, and turns on Mann’s flat refusal to share publicly the data and methodology by which he constructed the Hockey Stick graph.  In about 2003 a very talented Canadian mathematician named Steve McIntyre began an effort to replicate the Mann/Bradley/Hughes work.  McIntyre started with a request to Mann to provide the underlying data and methodologies (computer programming) that generated the graph.  To his surprise, McIntyre was met not with prompt compliance (which would be the sine qua non of actual science) but rather with hostility and evasion.  McIntyre started a blog called Climate Audit and began writing lengthy posts about his extensive and unsuccessful efforts to reconstruct the Hockey Stick.  Although McIntyre never completely succeeded in perfectly reconstructing the Hockey Stick, over time he gradually established that Mann et al. had adopted a complex methodology that selectively emphasized certain temperature proxies over others in order to reverse-engineer the "shaft" of the stick to get a pre-determined desired outcome.

More climate BS: July 2019 hottest month ever recorded

Scientists confirm July was the hottest month ever recorded, setting new global heat record

If that were true we should at the very least have felt the residual effects of that even if local conditions were not record breaking, but we didn't.

Here in Grand Rapids, Michigan, maximum temperature in July 2019 never even reached the mean maximum, which is 94 degrees F.  We had zero, zip, nada days at or above the mean max.

Contrast that with the hottest July on record here going back to before the year 1900:  July 1921. Maximum temperature that month hit 100, which was the 9th highest maximum on record and one of the ten days that month when maximum temperature was at or above the mean max.

Average temperature was a record 79.7 in July 1921, with cooling degree days setting a record at 465. July 2019 didn't even come close to these records. Average temperature ranked 15th at 75.4, and cooling degree days ranked 14th at 332.

The July with the highest maximum temperature in Grand Rapids was July 1936, when a record 108 was recorded, one of nine days that month at or above the mean max of 94. That month ranked 5th for cooling degree days at 390, and 5th for average temperature at 77.3.

Apparently everyone has already forgotten July 2012, the second hottest July on record here in Grand Rapids. It ranked 2nd for cooling degree days at 449, 2nd for average temperature at 79.2, and second for maximum temperature at 104, with eleven days that July at or above the mean max of 94. But July 2019 couldn't hold a candle to July 2012 for hot conditions, yet somehow it was the hottest ever . . . everywhere else. 

The fact of the matter is the hottest Julys in Grand Rapids are a phenomenon of the distant past, with nine of the top fourteen for cooling degree days occurring before World War II. July 2019 ranked merely 14th in that list.

Ten of the top fifteen for average temperature also occurred before World War II. July 2019 ranked merely 15th in that list.

For maximum temperature July 2019 ranked tied for something like 72nd position.

Hottest July evah. Give me a break!

Temperatures in Grand Rapids, MI collapsed from 85 to 71 after 1:53am Saturday July 20th as storms knocked out power to thousands in West Michigan

The Sams Club in Kentwood lost power in the early morning storm, closing down the store and gas station for the day Saturday, which is quite unusual.

Workers there were observed after 1:00pm at the rear of the building tossing no longer refrigerated and frozen foods.

Consumers Energy crews were observed near the intersection with the store attempting to restore power in the sweltering heat.

The heat index not much later soared to 108 by 2:53pm.

A second round of storms after 4:00pm Saturday crashed actual air temperatures from 89 to 74, complicating the on-going power restoration efforts.

More than 500,000 without power in Michigan a day after ‘worst storm’ of the year:

While there are outages across the state, the Southeast Side of Michigan has the highest concentration. DTE Energy this morning said 375,000 of its customers remain without electricity after what it called the “worst storm” its line workers have dealt with this year.

" ... The weather event downed 1,100 power lines, making this the worst storm our region has experienced this year and one of the largest since the March 2017 wind storm," the utility said. ...

In West Michigan and the central part of the state, Consumers Energy was reporting about 122,000 customers without power today. Great Lakes Energy added to the tally with nearly 5,000 outages, mostly in Lake, Oceana and Osceola counties. ...

While there were strong wind gusts across the Lower Peninsula on Saturday, the most damaging happened in the areas of Kent and Ottawa counties [in West Michigan], the National Weather Service said. The damaging winds that took the house apart in the Jenison area were described as a “microburst.”

First 24 days of June 2019 running three degrees below average June temperature since records began in Grand Rapids, MI

64.7 vs. 67.7 degrees F through June 24th.

Temperature (dark blue line graph 1) in Grand Rapids has been skewed slightly cooler than normal in 2019 overall.

You can appreciate this best from Heating Degree Days (green line graph 2) which have run slightly ahead of normal, meaning slightly more energy inputs than normal have been needed to stay warm to date.

Cooling Degree Days (green line graph 3) on the other hand show that 2019 to date has been well below normal, meaning we have needed near record low inputs (1958) to stay cool.

Contrary to popular opinion, the extremes have been phenomena of the past, not of the present. 1912 was coldest on record through June 24th on a Heating Degree Days basis, and 1921 the hottest on a Cooling Degree Days basis. Not needing many inputs in more recent times, to stay warm in 2012 or to stay cool in 1958, is a sign of . . . c l i m a t e  m o d e r a t i o n.

Graph 1

Graph 2

Graph 3

June cold snap in Grand Rapids, Michigan

Using Cooling Degree Days (the more of which you have the more you need to run your air conditioner) Grand Rapids, Michigan has been about 56% cooler than normal to date.

Through June 19 we've had 33 CDD. A normal full June would have 139.   

University of Arizona-Tucson parking lot, a great place to measure official surface temperature to prove global warming AND kill your unattended baby or dog in the car from heat exposure at the same time

Story.