Smitty's attempt to educate and to a much lesser extent, entertain, about all facets of life; but primarily the meteorological and the climatological aspects of the earth sciences.
As I sit here this glorious early star (and planet Mars, Saturn, Jupiter) bright crisp morn, I reflect back on my past week's interactions with the humans in my life. Many times, since the human who is interacting with me knows my love of the weather, the conversation turned to how "nasty" this recent weather has been. Both this past Tuesday and Thursday, frozen precipitation was observed in the Harrisburg area which is certainly not the 30 year climatological norm. However, we humans have very short memories! In all honesty, we had a beautiful week of weather...for what should be typical of late February. The next few graphics I will display are the month to date maximum temps for a few select years. Here is this year's month to date...unless you've been jet setting to south Florida or the SW corridor of the USA, it's been anomalously cold!
My grass farmer buddies keep telling me that they had 3 cuts in by this time last year! I'm sure they did...take a look at the same graphic for last year!
But some of you reading this weren't even walking (or crawling) this planet in 1982...
Or worst yet...1983!
Both of those above referenced years I was a young undergrad walking the streets and paths of University Park, PA in complete anticipation of spring warmth and the subsequent removal of the human winter-time wardrobe...if you catch my drift! When April rolled around, there was only a precious few weeks of human watching on the lawn of Old Main...or the "Beach" as it was affectionately called way up in East Halls! Yes...I am reminiscing...
So Smitty, what's your point? Other than the fact that I'm quickly getting old, my 55 years of life on "Spaceship Earth" is but a blip on the radar with my interactions with the Earth System! And our weather memories are equally limited. I wonder how the PSU area would've appeared during April 1816; The Year Without A Summer thanks in part to the volcanic eruption of Tambora coupled with sunspot minimum! The humans walking about likely bundled up tighter than Fort Knox. By the way, here is a pic of our sun as I'm typing this on this very cool early morn. We just broke a stretch of 67 "sunspot free" days with that "monster" spot below. Coincidence? I think not...
And those of you who know me well are familiar with my position of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) or human induced climate change. Simply put, yes...7 billion humans on planet earth have a major impact...NO DOUBT! But to single handedly blame humans for warming earth's climate is insane. The planet's climate system is so complex that even my buddy's flux capacitor can't even begin to scratch the surface of solving the intricacies of the climate puzzle. Why politics has entered this realm of science is atrocious! It has created a great disservice to better understanding "Spaceship Earth" in my humble opinion. Whether the graphic below for the next 45 days verifies or not, who is to say that the temps are outrageously anomalous when comparing the weather to these parts over the millennia? Will 2018 go down as the year without a spring? Rest assured, summer heat is around the corner; but that corner might be a few blocks away..just sayin'
OK...enough Smitty! I've opined enough. Keep the loyal readers loyal! I will leave y'all with my musical selection chosen by my Guidance Commons Com-padres...enjoy this throwback (not too different from your faithful weather blogger)! I love the strings in this ditty!
Enjoy this bright, precip free glorious weekend!
Smitty
AA: A beautiful weekend to hone those mowing and softball skills! Will the BoSox lose another game this month? Tough to go to the west coast and do what they're doing!
