Sleepless in Midland

ERCOT -- Texas' fair weather friend

This seems like a you-had-one-job joke. Energy is reliable in Texas so long as the temperature is within the comfort zone, but not so much in extreme heat or cold. The Energy Reliability Council of Texas is a fair weather friend.

During this time of frigid temperatures -- falling to as low as one degree above zero in Midland -- energy has been anything but reliable as thousands of households have been without electricity.

Texans our outraged, and politicians are on alert. 'This is unacceptable.' Gov. Greg Abbott calls for reform of Electric Reliability Council of Texas:

“Reviewing the preparations and decisions by ERCOT is an emergency item so we can get a full picture of what caused this problem and find long-term solutions,” Abbott said.

Meanwhile, ERCOT helpfully explains:

ERCOT is restoring load as fast as we can in a stable manner. Generating units across fuel types continue to struggle with frigid temperatures.

They're probably doing the job the best they can. However, if the best they can do isn't good enough, it may be time for someone else to do the job.

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3:25 PM 2/16/2021

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Panic over climate change has been as cyclical as the climate

I stumbled upon this article featuring images of newspaper articles from the past several decades about climate change.

The period featured in the article started in or around 1917 with warnings that the glaciers were shrinking. That period continued through the 1930s when the dust bowl caused, of course, by human activity threatened humanity.

But in the 1970s the scenario turned upside down, and the fear then was global cooling and the coming ice age.

Then it flipped again to get to the present day when global warming is once again the existential threat.

The article, Climate Change Has been a Routine Scare Tactic Since the 1930s, is worth a look, at least for the ancient articles. And it ends with this interesting explanation:

The difference this time is they have been able to get governments interested on the basis that they can stop it by raising taxes. Canada imposed a $1,000 tax per home to stop global warming. Perhaps the theory is if the politicians get more money they will speak less and reduce the hot air they spout out by yelling the end is near.

Well, maybe. But it seems that the more money politicians are able to take from taxpayers, the more they want.

Via Liberty Pen.

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4:55 PM 9/17/2019

The downside of desert dwelling -- heat

Midland, Texas. What a lovely place. But there's an annual reminder that this is definitely desert country. The summer heat!

This screen shot shows the National Weather Service forecast for the day. As you can see, the temperature around noon was 102°F with an expected high of 114°F. Ouch!

Willis Carrier is a national hero.  His invention changed lives.

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1:20 PM 8/26/2019

Thank goodness for air conditioning and the system that keeps it running

A little storm front is angling from NW to SE in the western side of Texas as of the time of this writing. And temps are slightly lower than they've been for the past few weeks in which the daily highs exceeded 100F by several degrees.

In the history of Texas, air conditioning is a fairly new phenomenon. But what a difference it makes. Without air conditioning on a hot summer day the heat can occupy a person's entire attention.

In years past, over usage has caused system shutdowns, even without Russian hacking. Luckily, to date this summer our little region of Texas hasn't had a power outage, and that's with record setting electricity demand.

So, keep up the good work, energy workers! We're depending on you!

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1:52 PM 7/26/2018

Waiting for El Nino to cure summer drought

Long term weather forecasts are notoriously unreliable. But here's one those of us in drought stricken Texas are hoping will come true:

chance for El Niño increasing to about 65% during fall, and to about 70% during winter 2018-19

Source: CLIMATE PREDICTION CENTER.

El Niño typically results from higher than usual water temperatures in the Pacific. And the phenomenon usually produces wetter weather in the Southwest. Here's hoping!

More resources: Current status.

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11:56 AM 7/15/2018

Iowa guy brags about not having an air conditioner -- don't try it in Texas

One of the things on my fear list is a long term blackout. Never mind that 90% of us will be dead within a year. The heat would make Texas unlivable.

It's hard to imagine the early arrivals who settled in West Texas before air conditioning became main stream. My parents, my sibling, and I lived here during that time. But in the old days houses were built to allow circulation of the air. And I can say without air conditioning that if you've never experienced it, you don't know what your are missing. But to paraphrase the old saying, that luxury once experienced became a necessity.

Just a couple of weeks ago we endured a high afternoon temperature of 110 degrees F. And it was awful. The breeze outdoors in the sun felt like the air that rushes out of a hot oven if your face is too close to it when the door opens.

Anyway, I read this: I Gave Up AC This Summer To Live Within My Means, and came away thinking it must be nice to live in a climate that doesn't test your limits every day.

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2:13 PM 7/9/2018

Baby it's cold outside --7 degrees at 7am, 9 degrees at 9am

Out here in the desert that is Midland, Texas, the nights sometime get cold, but not usually this cold.

The temps here this morning were nothing to impress Northerners, but for us, it was damn cold.

At around 7am the temp was around 7ºF. And at 9am it was 9ºF.

 
Who couldn't love the symmetry?

La Nina is coming to suck moisture out of South

Texas has drifted in and out of drought status for years. And if the NWS is correct, we're headed back into it. NWS Climate Prediction Center's long-lead seasonal outlooks tells us the following:

THE DECEMBER-JANUARY-FEBRUARY (DJF) 2017-18 OUTLOOK AND SUBSEQUENT OUTLOOKS ARE HEAVILY INFLUENCED BY ONGOING LA NINA CONDITIONS THAT ARE FORECAST TO CONTINUE THROUGH LATE WINTER. THE DJF OUTLOOK FAVORS ABOVE-NORMAL TEMPERATURES FOR THE MAJORITY OF THE FORECAST DOMAIN, INCLUDING MUCH OF ALASKA. THE HIGHEST PROBABILITIES OF WARMER-THAN-NORMAL TEMPERATURES ARE LOCATED ACROSS PORTIONS OF THE SOUTHWEST AND TEXAS. DURING THE WINTER MONTHS THROUGH THE MARCH-APRIL-MAY (MAM) 2018 SEASON, ENHANCED ODDS FOR BELOW-NORMAL TEMPERATURES ARE HIGHLIGHTED IN VARYING AREAS OF THE NORTHERN CONUS, SOUTHEAST ALASKA AND THE ALASKA PANHANDLE, WHILE ABOVE-NORMAL TEMPERATURES REMAIN FAVORED FOR MUCH OF THE WESTERN AND SOUTHERN CONUS, AND NORTHERN ALASKA.

We gotta have some maps:

Map sources: La Nina moves in for the winter and U.S. Seasonal Drought Outlook.

Compare pet handling in hurricane Katrina with Irma

Not long ago we noted that aside from the politic opportunities for the opposition party, the lesson learned from hurricane Katrina was that people loved their pets very much. When responders came to rescue stranded individuals, they refused to take along the person's pet. And the pet owners loved them so much they would rather stay behind and risk their own safety than leave the animals behind.

Compare that with the Irma rescue squads. Now special accommodations are made for the lovable little creatures.

In fact, look at this remarkable indication of how far down this path we've gone. Dozens of dogs abandoned, left unable to escape as Irma bears down. Now they're talking about filing charges against pet owners who leave a pet behind. They seem to isolate those situations in which the pet is chained or fenced. But still, what a contrast.

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12:09 PM 9/12/2017

Shoppers stripped store shelves for Harvey prep -- left behind one category of food

Anyone who has ever lived in a hurricane prone region has experienced the run on groceries after the weather forecasters have created the customary panic. The last time I experience one the only items left on the shelves were canned beats.

So this post at ijr.com struck me as funny. See photos of the store shelves at Texan Posts Photos of Absolutely Barren Grocery Store After Hurricane, With One Hilarious Exception.

SPOILER ALERT! That one category was refrigerated vegetarian fake meat. Very telling.

Editor's note. Next time look for canned beats. Robo-ed.

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1:01 PM 9/8/2017

Animated earth showing wind currents -- check out Irma

If you haven't seen it already, now would be a good time to check out the animated version of planet Earth showing wind currents. Irma really stands out, but I guess the redness helps with that. The image on the right is just a screen shot snapped at 3:53 PM central, 9/5/2017.

Here's the link to see it move.

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3:53 PM 9/5/2017

Houston just took a big hit as migrant magnet

The city of Houston and surrounding communities have been magnets for companies and individuals for decades. That's about to change.

Harris County has had a flood problem for a long time. Any heavy rain, which they have plenty of without a hurricane, typically results in street flooding. It may not have been obvious to those people in other states who sought a new locale. But with Harvey in the headlines, it is now.

Furthermore, residents in our little city of Midland, Texas, see local taxing entities hike their taxes every year without some calamity as an excuse. Residents in Harris County and the city of Houston are sure to see their taxes sky rocket even without talk of fixing the constant problem of water runoff.

Dallas and Austin got a big boost from this. People and companies looking for a Texas city governed by Democrats will gravitate to those cities over Houston for years to come.

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10:59 AM 9/1/2017

my hurricane story

Hurricane Harvey has certainly left a lot of destruction in its path. It's my understanding that the typical homeowner's insurance policy does not cover flood damage. So there's going to be some major headaches in the future.

The city of Houston has few avenues for water runoff, so a heavy rain, which occur frequently there, can leave streets flooded for hours and sometimes days.

I was working in a downtown Houston office once when one of those sudden, heavy rains occurred. The streets flooded, of course. And even though I waited a few hours to leave the office, I had to drive through some deep water. Fortunately, the old Volvo kept running until I got home.

The next morning I checked the engine oil level. It was a quart too high, and the oil looked like chocolate milk. Ouch! No permanent damage, though. Thanks goodness.

Meanwhile, click the link to read my Hurricane Alicia story, written in this blog's infancy: Alicia Debris Still in the Streets. Spoiler alert: here's the punchline:

Days later the Houston Chronicle headline screamed "Alicia Debris Still in the Streets". And, later that fall a friend of mine came to a Halloween party dressed as "Alicia Debris" - obviously a street walking hooker. What an uproarious time we all had once it was all over!

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2:55 PM 8/28/2017

The six gun may have won the West but the air conditioner won the South

Here in the middle of the desert -- Midland, Texas -- it gets hot in the summer. Although, lately the mid afternoon temps have been a bit lower than the 106°F temps we saw last month, the mid 90s can still heat up a house to unlivable conditions without an air conditioner.

Now, it's true that there was a time when no house had air conditioning. And part of the reason for the migration of people from the North to the South is the prevalence of air conditioning. But there's a price to pay. Electricity isn't cheap.

So leads like this one don't exactly drop our jaws: Air conditioning and other appliances increase residential electricity use in the summer. Although, that same outfit tells us in How is electricity used in U.S. homes that only 18% of our electricity usage is for air conditioning, that's probably for the full year. During the summer it has to be much higher.

But those days when houses didn't have air conditioning are long gone, and I shudder to think about life in the South should the electric grid go out. There are still people around who grew up in Texas in a house without an air conditioner. (I'm one of them.) But few would want to go back to that.

But the silver lining to a dead grid is that the electricity bill would be zero. In fact, the system that actually gets the bill delivered will have probably collapsed, too. So we've got that going for us.

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2:13 PM 8/23/2017

High winds, downed trees, and dumpster hogs

Friday evening high winds hit Midland, Texas, and it felt and sounded like a hurricane. One report said wind speeds hit 74 mph which would qualify as a Category 1 hurricane were we not in the middle of the desert. So the next day the damage became visible as the sun came up -- tree limbs everywhere.

The city has a recycling area where citizens can dispose of downed limbs, and so many took advantage of it that there was a mini-traffic jam when I was there. But bless 'em, they were doing the right thing, unlike the dumpster hogs who filled up the neighborhood dumpsters with their limbs.

The city frowns on that. But frown is all they do. There's really no way to police the dumpsters without surveillance cameras, and that's a taxpayer expense no one wants to bear, never mind the intrusiveness. But without enforcement the hogs win the day.

If you live in a brick house here's why it's so hard to cool it off in the summer

This should probably be common sense, but I discovered it first hand more or less by accident when I picked up a brick that had been sitting in the sun. It was very hot to the touch -- hotter than the outside temperature -- too hot to hold comfortably. It had absorbed the heat from the sun.

These photos show two thermometers. As you can see, when they are side by side in the shade they both show approximately the same temperature -- slightly above 100°F.

But place one of them in a brick sandwich, and in a short time it's showing around 130°F. Ouch!

Welcome to Midland, Texas.

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1:08 PM 6/15/2017

Vernal Equinox hit west Texas like a hot knife

The first day of Spring occurred earlier this week. And those of us in West Texas are feeling the heat -- the high today is expected to be 90°F. This is way too early for such hot weather. We typically get the first 100° day in May, but if this keeps up, that day may come sooner.

In any event, we want to scratch our heads when we see articles like this: Why the Spring Always Seems Colder Than It Should Be:

But why? Isn’t there more sunlight in the spring? Yes, but warming up the planet takes time. Enter “seasonal temperature lag.” More of the sun’s energy is hitting this part of the Earth come spring, sure, but most of it is being used up to heat the ground and large bodies of water first. Once that happens, everything else catches up and the overall temperature finally increases. So, it’s spring now, and you can be excited about the notion of it, but it won’t stop feeling like winter for a little while longer.

Forecasts tell us to expect some cooling here soon. However, there is a good lesson here: Generalizations about climate are notoriously unreliable.

1:38 PM 3/22/2017

Rachel Briers, a meteorologist with amazing hands

It's probably not a compliment to say that a TV meteorologist could be a hand model. But Newswest9's Rachel Briers could be a hand model.

A meteorologist has to watch herself on a monitor and move her limbs to coincide with what the viewer sees on the small screen. Watch the opening segment of the movie "Groundhog Day" as Andie McDowell mugs in front of the green screen to see how difficult the job must be.

Anyway, Rachel Briers makes it look effortless as only someone with an athlete's body control could do. Her hands move right along the edge of a cold front with the grace of a ballerina.

It's memorizing. And the weather reporting is good too.

Here's a video compilation that appears to have been made at her previous place of employment. Newswest9 probably saw that and declared her a must-have. Now she's a keeper.

Kids and pets aren't the only things we shouldn't leave in a hot car

Anyone who has had to leave his/her car out in the sun during this blistering 100 degree heat we've had out here in West Texas knows that the inside of vehicle can become an oven. Too often we see stories of cooked kids and pets. And of course, we all want to avoid that.

There are other hazards caused by the heat. Accuweather.com provides this list of 5 surprising items that can become dangerous when left in a hot car. Spoiler: Sunscreen, glasses, drinks, medication, and wet swimwear. (Most of these are obvious. As for the swimwear, wrap in a towel and grow your own bacteria.)

Finally, here's my favorite sunshine story. Seems this building in London -- called the Walkie Talkie building because of its shape -- had curved walls that reflected sunlight down below. Some poor guy parked his Jaguar on the street and ended up with warped plastic parts. See Reflected light from London skyscraper melts car.

Now it's true that some sports cars look like they've been left out in the sun too long. But in this instance, it wasn't the metal body that melted, just the plastic molding and mirror housing.

Meanwhile, John Kerry wants us to turn off our air conditioners. HA HA! You first, Secretary Kerry.

Fat chance he'll demonstrate that particular bromide for us.

30 minute tsunami warning when Cascadia fault snaps

There are people who follow this stuff very closely, especially if they live in the target zone of the Pacific Northwest. I don't know how close Jazz Shaw of hotair.com is to the danger zone, but he's got a fine article about a training session scheduled to take place next week to help prepare responders for a potential catastrophe.

The Cascadia Subduction Zone is a 620 mile fault line running off the West coast from Northern California to Southern Canada. It's over due for a quake, and when it happens, a tsunami will likely follow.

Here's Jazz Shaw in Pacific northwest stages drill to prepare for massive tsunami:

The fault line is only a short ways off the coast and if the geologic record is any indicator, when it decides to snap it does it in a big way. We could readily be talking a magnitude nine earthquake which will shatter much of mankind’s wonderful constructions along that region. But then, perhaps less than thirty minutes later, a wall of water like something out of a disaster movie will come roaring ashore and wipe out everything in its path.

That’s barely enough time to clear out a gas station, say nothing of the major population centers from northern California to the Canadian border. From the projections I’ve seen, the dead would likely number in the tens of thousands at least and the infrastructure will be pretty much wiped out. No power, no cell towers, no running water, and whatever isn’t collapsed or underwater will likely be on fire. So what sort of precautions are they taking? As I said, you’re not going to get any significant number of people to high ground in that amount of time so I assume it’s mostly rescue and recovery missions. Ham radio is a great start, but I assume they’ll be telling people how to have a bug out kit ready and some stores of food and potable water to keep them alive (assuming they survive the initial onslaught) until they can be evacuated to some intact territory.

Californians have been bracing for earthquakes for years, and the big one has yet to strike. But maybe they'll all strike at about the same time. Here's Wikipedia:

Studies of past earthquake traces on both the northern San Andreas Fault and the southern Cascadia subduction zone indicate a correlation in time which may be evidence that quakes on the Cascadia subduction zone may have triggered most of the major quakes on the northern San Andreas during at least the past 3,000 years or so. The evidence also shows the rupture direction going from north to south in each of these time-correlated events.

One more reason for Californians to move East. But just so you know, the East coast isn't entirely off the hook. See Atlantic hurricane season: La Nina may fuel most active season in 3 years.

Bustin for Badges -- hard duty for hard people

The last time I did volunteer work for this event the wind was powerful and the dust was horrific. See Blasted away at the Bad Boy Blast. (The owner of the name Bad Boy Blast has redirected it to make money for volunteer fire departments.)

This time the sporting clay shoot for the benefit of local law enforcement was called Bustin' for Badges, and it took place yesterday -- Friday, April 30, 2016. And the wind was powerful and the dust was horrific.

With the rain the area has had this past Spring the dust wasn't quite as bad as the previous time. However. with the 30 plus mph wind it was less than ideal. But never mind. The shooters enjoyed themselves, and the event probably earned a fair share of money even if it was down significantly from recent, boom time, years.

Some highlights:

1. The spectacle of a clay pigeon acting like a boomerang. The machine would launch it high into the air, it would hang for a second, then the wind would bring it back behind the launching machine. Look out below!

2. "Obama Presidential Library" signs on the port-a-potties. Make a donation. Liquid assets accepted.

3. Tilted Kilt Shooting Team. Needs practice.

More computer power helps weather forecasters fine tune their forecasts but still won't improve long range forecasts

Anyone who watches TV weather men/women describe the regions weather will probably stay with it long enough to look at their chart of temperatures and precipitation forecasts for the next week or ten days. If they kept a record, they would likely find that those precipitation forecasts on the far end of the range are the least accurate. At least it seems that way out here in the Western side of Texas.

Eric Niiler at Discovery.com basically confirms that in How Far Ahead Can We Predict the Weather? He says this:

One of the country’s leading commercial forecasters, AccuWeather, said earlier this month that it could predict the weather conditions and temperature three months ahead of time. It’s a bold claim that has been refuted by some meteorologists who say such a 90-day forecast will only be as good as historical averages and not much use to someone planning a hike or outdoor wedding this summer.

That’s because the Earth’s atmosphere is a chaotic system that doesn’t follow an easily predictable path, according to Keith Seitter, executive director of the American Meteorological Society in Boston.

The good news is that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has upgraded its supercomputers to give them more capability. More from Niiler:

In simpler terms, it means that the faster, bigger computers will allow the agency’s scientists to:

-Better predict the amount, timing and type of precipitation in both winter storms and thunderstorms
-Create “water forecasts” and more accurately predict drought and floods
-Connect the air, ocean and waves to track eight hurricanes at once

These supercomputers are the brains behind the weather forecasts you see on TV each night or your smartphone when you wake up.

Interesting article with bonus points for not carving out an exception for global warming predictions.

West Texas dodged a hurricane

Yesterday evening one of the local TV station's weather people predicted area storms and wind gusts in nearby Big Spring, Texas, of up to 74 mph.

Now that's a powerful wind! Did it happen? My link to historical weather at NOAA.gov no longer works. The best I can find for historical data is this one which showed a gusts of 32 mph at MAF. That was outside the area covered by the storm clouds, and there isn't an easy way for the arm chair weather observer to get that particular bit of historical data for that location.

However, if there were sustained winds of 74 mph, then that is a hurricane by definition. Residents along the Gulf Coast would have cleared the store shelves. Whew! We dodged a hurricane.

Winter's last gasp in west Texas

The temperature here in Midland, Texas, this afternoon is a pleasant 55F after an evening in the 30s. This could well be the last taste of winter we have this season. And it is so pleasant.

Spring here lasts about five minutes, and the first 100F day typically occurs in the month of May. So by golly, I'm going to enjoy this cool air while I can. Too bad there's not some way to store cool air and issue it into the house in the summer. Oh well.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

It was a snow day in Midland, Texas, today, with most businesses closing. It didn't actually snow today, though. It all came down yesterday, 12/27/15. And it was beautiful!

This morning as I tried to walk in the yard my feet sank into the snow a couple of inches above my ankles. It looked like one of those reality shows from Alaska. Down here in the west Texas desert we don't see blizzards like these too often. (Don't get ahead of me here -- I'm not blaming global warming or its young progeny, "climate change," this was just an extraordinarily wet cold front that produced a plentiful quantity of snow.)

And it was close enough to Christmas that we may even be able to say it was a white Christmas.

Meanwhile, someone has a storm story to tell.

All he left were his tracks.

The real losers were the school kids. They're still out of school for the holidays, so a get-out-of-school-free card was spent uselessly.

Quicksand in California or liquefaction on the freeway

Liquefaction is a very interesting, and earthy, problem. The word is usually connected to earthquakes, with a dirt and water mixture shaken to produce a slime. But it happened the other day in California. They called it a mud slide, but the result was the same -- vehicles encased in solid dirt.

See some amazing photos at Dailymail.co.uk in 'A raging river of mud': Hundreds of cars and trucks completely CONSUMED by 6ft-deep California mudslide. My favorite is the one showing two guys standing on solid soil looking down at a tractor trailer half consumed by the earth.

What do the mosquitoes know that we don't -- they don't lay eggs in Midland tap water

Midland, Texas, and surrounding areas have been in a drought for quite a while, although there have been periods of reprieve from time to time. Lately the rains have been a refreshing relief.

The water that falls from the sky is relatively pure, presumably only affected by the airborne contaminants. But water from the tap originally came from the ground and contains whatever it picked up while under there. Plus it has been heavily treated by the municipal water department. Some residents drink it, but most buy bottled water or have their own reverse osmosis system filtering it before they consume it.

Recently some rain water got captured in a bucket in my back yard. There's also a bucket of tap water back there for the foxes and other feral animals. Here's the thing. The other day I noticed mosquitoes flying around the rain water bucket, and inside there were larva swimming all around. I dumped it immediately. But there were none in the tap water bucket. What do the mosquitoes know that we don't?

Perhaps it's the arsenic in the water supply.

Another El Nino -- bring it on

Nothing helps alleviate drought conditions quite like a good old fashioned El Nino. And almost as if on cue, here comes the next one:

An El Niño that is among the strongest on record is gaining strength in the Pacific Ocean, and climate scientists say California is likely to face a wet winter. “There’s no longer a possibility that El Niño wimps out at this point. It’s too big to fail,” said Bill Patzert, climatologist for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge.

“And the winter over North America is definitely not going to be normal,” he said. ...

Scientists know that El Niño is getting stronger because of rising sea-level ocean temperatures in the Pacific west of Peru, and a change in directions of the wind along the equator that allow warm waters to surge toward the Americas.

California needs this. And Texas can always use more rain, especially the desert parts. So bring it on.

Good news for early risers -- meteor shower maximum tomorrow morning (8-13-2015)

If you're sleepless in the wee hours of Thursday, August 13, 2015, here's something to watch instead of that dreary, motionless, blank of a ceiling. Click Kick Back, Look Up, We’re In For a GREAT Perseid Meteor Shower for details. Excerpt:

Every year in mid-August, Earth plows headlong into the debris left behind by Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle. Slamming into our atmosphere at 130,000 mph, the crumbles flash to light as the Perseid meteor shower. One of the world’s most beloved cosmic spectacles, this year’s show promises to be a real crowd pleaser.

Not only will the Moon be absent, but the shower maximum happens around 3 a.m. CDT (8 UT) August 13 — early morning hours across North America when the Perseid radiant is highest. How many meteors will you see? Somewhere in the neighborhood of 50-100 meteors per hour. As always, the darker and less light polluted your observing site, the more zips and zaps you’ll see.

That may be only one or two a minute on average. But some can be quite spectacular. Hey, what are ya gonna do otherwise, sleep?

What color is your weather? Mine's bright red, thanks to NWS map.

WattsUpWithThat.com tells us that the National Weather Service has adjusted its sliding scale so that the nice cool blues and greens on the weather map represent much colder temperatures than the used to. And now the comfortable range between 70F and 80F is yellow and red.

Check out WattsUpWithThat.com for a display of maps and legends from 2008 and 2014 for striking comparisons.

The one above tells the story very succinctly. Notice that the color bar is the same for both years, but the temperature range changes so that the ranges most comfortable to us changed from blue/green to yellow/red.

Looks pretty sneaky, especially when the government is using global warming fears to rally an element of the Democrat constituency. We've seen so many other government agencies used as weapons against political opponents, so it shouldn't be surprising that NOAA has succumbed to pressure to help the party.

However, Mr. Watts explained that the shift wasn't sinister at all but merely a computer caused adjustment because one temperature station during the recording period registered a 110F temperature. Well, OK, that's a plausible explanation. But it is awfully convenient.