Yes, it was cold in parts of the U.S., but the chill's far from historic

Exactly my own experience.

http://www.eenews.net/stories/1059992541

Stephanie Paige Ogburn, E&E reporter
ClimateWire: Wednesday, January 8, 2014

With the launch of a Polar Vortex Twitter account, videos of boiling water freezing going viral, and the Weather Channel reporting on the "shattering" of cold records, anyone tracking the recent cold snap across the eastern and middle parts of the United States could be forgiven for thinking this sort of cold was unprecedented.

In fact, it's not.

"This is not anything that I would deem to be unusual or extraordinary," said Mark Wysocki, the New York state climatologist.

"The type of winter that we are currently experiencing we have experienced in the past, when you take a look at records across the Midwest and Northeast," he continued.

William Schmitz, the service climatologist and a meteorologist at the Southeast Regional Climate Center, agreed.

"It's cold," Schmitz said. "But just like the Northeast, it wasn't all-time record-breaking."

While cold records may be set for individual days -- Monday in Chicago, for example, was the coldest Jan. 6 yet observed, with a low of minus 16 degrees Fahrenheit -- temperatures are not reaching record winter lows and in many cases are far from it.

In Chicago, on Jan. 16, 2009, the town reached minus 18 F, part of another winter cold snap. On Jan. 20 of 1985, the city saw a low of minus 27 F.

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Atlanta and other Southeastern cities saw similarly chilly temperatures, with the expected high for yesterday reaching 24 F.

But a cold snap the city experienced in February 1996 was worse, with daily highs reaching only 18 degrees, said National Weather Service meteorologist Ryan Willis.

n the 1980s, Willis said, cold periods like this were much more usual. In the recent past, they have become less frequent. This is perhaps why the cold seems out of the ordinary.

New York climatologist Wysocki said that since the last couple of winters have been fairly mild, this one, which he called "typical," might seem worse in contrast.

"I'm sure if people sat down and really thought about it, they'd think, 'I've experienced this weather before, and this is nothing new. It's just been a while since I've had it, that's all,'" he said.

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As for the dreaded "polar vortex," which is responsible for the cold sweeping through much of the country? It's there every winter but moves around -- sometimes it's nearer Canada and the United States, other times closer to Asia and Europe, Wysocki said.

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Hoerling also addressed the idea of weather weirding, that climate change is causing the weather to behave more erratically. Scientists analyzing temperature fluctuations in the United States have been unable to find any increase in temperature variability, he said.

"The weather is not getting weirder in our neck of the woods, as best as we can tell," he said. One area where a climate change signal is apparent, said Hoerling, is in extreme high temperatures.

"If you take the whole U.S., the indications are that there is an increasing frequency of record high temperatures versus record daily low temperatures," he said.

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