Bitter cold records broken in Alaska – all time coldest record nearly broken, but Murphy's Law intervenes

I feel another Nobel award coming on.
I declare Global Cooling to be a fact.

Whats the current coldest temp recoded there ?

If you go look at the sea-ice page on the side-bar, you will see a plausible explanation for both the recent dip in the sea-ice extent, and the very cold Alaskan temperatures.
The sea ice is being rapidly drifted from Novaya Zemlya straight across the Pole to Alaska and Western Canada. Strong polar winds are blowing from Russia across the pole straight into Alaska. Brrr.

The Ice caps are going to melt and the it means flooding on our coasts.

Bernd Felsche: That was a fascinating engineering solution you proposed. Might I suggest an alternative? Select a different battery chemistry, one that continues to function at adequate voltages to -80F or -100F. If that requires a larger battery because the power density is lower than lithium-ion, so be it. The mounting posts for weather stations are usually steel. They can handle the additional load. I suggest lithium/sulfur-dioxide.

That cold air will have to break free at some point, and move south. Depending on the upper air, that’s where it goes, and usually the US east coast. It’s a hard guess on the extent or probability, given the station surface baros in the 1020’s mb range. The real bad ones have much higher surface baro readings. Sometimes well over 1040 mb. When these break free, it’s a major CONUS cold event.
The last several years, Florida winters have had more instances where temperatures have reached the 20’s, overnight. We’ve already had two reaching 28*F, though it’s been fast to clear the area. (One day we had 28*F pre-dawn to 74*F by afternoon!)
I’ve got a Davis Vantage Pro 2 weather station with ISS. This is a good one, and repairable vs. having to replace the whole thing. Mine’s been in service since 2005, and I’ve only had to replace a couple parts on it: the thermometer chip and the UV sensor. They give you a discount if you call the service desk and ship back the non-working component. It’s not cheap, but worth the investment and maintainable.
It’s survived some pretty heavy Florida storms here. We are on the line where they hit their peak and the lightning makes you doubt if you are safe inside your house. Fortunately the weather station is wireless and on a different band than 2.4GHz WiFi. One less way for lightning to get in your house, and no interference or missed readings.
I also have the PC software to archive the data from the Davis, along with WSR-88D radar software from Gibson Ridge. The latter is awesome for radar, hands down.
Take care…
–Robert

I was just a kid when we lived in central Alaska in the early 1960’s, but I think it reached minus 40 degrees and we still walked to school. At least that is the way I remember it. I also seem to remember something about it being a dry cold instead of a humid cold, so it was more bearable. And we wore lots of layers of clothing beneath our parka’s. Alaska was great, the most beautiful state I have ever lived in…

Ela : I live in a small cabin outside North Pole, Alaska
There is NO WAY I could do that. Thank you for giving me permission to stay home. I’m not the least bit insulted. I know my limits even if I envy you yours.
(but it would be really cool if you could post some pics!)

This brings two questions to my mind:
1. Is carbon dioxide less effective as a greenhouse gas at -79 F than at more normal temperatures due to its main absorption bands?
2. Does the ground emit less of the appropriate radiation at -79 F, thus reducing the effectiveness of carbon dioxide this way?
(The amount of water vapor would be virtually non-existent at this temperature.)

I’m with Sarah Silverman. Global warming will benefit humanity like hiking Mt. Everest in casual clothes and shorts would be great.

Don’t forget the other day that solar storm and ejecta may have contributed to a reaction by out mother earth. She still has tremendous power and will live with or without us. Notice that barometer still dropping? WOW.

Look at the last 30 days global temperature anomaly map and it pretty clear how cold it has been in Alaska.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/images/rnl/sfctmpmer_30a.rnl.html
It appears to be related to the break down of the north polar vortex and the sudden stratospheric warming event. A mini-polar vortex settled in over Alaska instead (and this is drawing the warm Pacific air straight across North America resulting in the southern two-thirds of the continent being above normal over most of the winter while normally, cold Arctic air periodically dips down to freeze our … off, not this winter so far). Alaska has taken the brunt of the winter. Asia has been very cold as well.

Brimfrost 1989, 6th Light Infantry Division from Fort Freeze-at-Night (Wainwright) we had readings on ATC and other aviation gear of -83, -85 in the field where we camped outside… The dark red hoodies we had made up for participants had -83 lettered on the front. Good times. Its always cold up there, and who knows when it’ll be frosty or balmy from year to year. Better hope Global Warming doesn’t happen though, or all the 38 million in California will be moving up North! It sounds great to have Canada and Siberia warm up, but when Mexico looks like the Sahara where do you think all those people will go? China, Pakistan and India are already arguing over shrinking water sheds in Tibet. Russians in 50-100 years might have some problems. Meanwhile, Lake Erie and the other Great Lakes have something like 5% of all non-frozen fresh water so I’m not worried. Just wish the Canadians would quit peeing up-stream 🙂 Just kidding.

I’ve got a simple question: If the thermal equilibrium of the earth without an atmosphere is -18C (or there abouts) Then what mechanism brings about -80C/F in alaska? Seems there is a major interaction between the atmosphere and cold space that allows part of the atmosphere to be chilled to -80C and then ‘settle’ to the surface. So a large portion of the atmosphere is involved in cooling the atmosphere and hence earth?

Hmm that’s in the general area where the official low was recorded. Always nasty along the haul road during winter.

On the other hand, record lows run prima facie against the theory; if all the manmade CO2 emitted this past century causes back radiation which in turn warms the atmosphere alternatively slows down the cooling, one would not expect to see any record lows.

I tried to make that point on another blog a couple of years ago and had my comment deleted. If the projections for warming were to be believed going back to when they first started making such projections, it should be impossible to see a record low temperature today as the “global” atmosphere would now be radiating enough heat back to the surface to make it impossible. We should only see record high low temperatures.
But didn’t someone recently publish something along the lines of colder temperature being consistent with warming temperatures, or some such poppycock?

It’s all Bush’s fault.

The whole man-made global warming theory is a scam. Little global temperature fluctuations over decades are like the little temperature flutuations on any given day. Remember, even the pro-global warming scientists are touting a mere 0.8 K increase over 100 years, which is remarkable stable! It would be newsworthy if it DIDN’T change in 100 years.

Also, we had an X class Solar flair at about that time! …Check http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/alerts/alerts_timeline.html
for all the details!

I lived in the area of North Pole for 17 years. Being tough enough to make it during the winter is a big deal….when you’re young. Thankfully I got over it and now live in Arizona. LOL

Who designs this stuff ? Semiconductor diodes can track Temperature down to very low Temperatures, and quite linear with absolute Temperature, compared to a lot of other methods. Band-gap Voltage references, also can be made stable down to such Temperatures. At least 40 years ago,semiconductor circuits were being built that had data sheet specs from -55 deg C to +125 deg C for military or space applications. That’s -67 F, and far from the limit. Semi devices often fail Temperature wise simply from catastrophic mechanical failure, such as plastic encapsulated devices pulling wire bonds off ith Temperature cycling. Well you wouldn’t use that sort of packaging for mil spec stuff anyway, it would be hermetic.
I know that in 1966/7 we were dunking plastic encapsulated (epoxy) GaAsP red LEDs into liquid nitrogen to show people how bright they got at those Temperatures, and we did it live at trade shows, and I don’tever recall one of them failing, although for the life of me, I don’t know why, because they were pretty simple gold ball bonded devices; not at all high tech.
All the analog circuit stuff, I ever did, was designed to be accurate over the entire possible range of supply Voltage, and on battery stuff, it would read correctly down to battery Voltages, that were so low, you had just enough juice to put your head down between your knees and kiss your A*** goodbye.
Ell cheapo carbon zinc batteries that used to be used for flashlights; and torches too, could still put out power down to half of the new cell Voltage, from 1.50 Volts, down to 0.75 Volts. Modern LED flashlights have switching regulator circuits, that keep the light fully bright, way past the knee visibility point, so you think they never are going to die.
Don’t know much about Lithium rechargeables; there seems to be so many chemistries. I know you generally can’t buy, or air ship rechargeable Lithium CELLS, such as AAs. You can only buy rechargeable Lithium BATTERIES of multiple cells, that are required to contain a fail safe current limiting fuse (definitely NOT a fuze) .
I have a hard time believing that some thermometric gizmo, could be off by a factor of two and be left still functioning; it should have a low Voltage cutout that shuts the thing down before it reads rong.

Here in New Hampshire, which over the years have had lower lows than Anchorage AK, I back up my weather station (which uses lithium AA batteries) with a Type “T” digital thermocouple thermometer which I calibrate using liquid nitrogen, the ice point for water, and boiling water. It is linear. I have a difficult time thinking a weather station doesn’t have very sound and scientific back-up.

TimO; I to survived the Blizzard of 78, -60F. was wind chill guesswork, it was cold; but, not that cold. Personally couldn’t go outside to check temp as the snow was deeper then my doors, didn’t want to either.

If its a thermistor, Davis may be able to give you an estimated error range at that temperature. Given the effort to keep it cheap, I would bet its not an RTD.
However, NOAA should not be using such devices for cold weather conditions. Private stations – sure, that’s OK. But an official US station should be properly spanned. If it costs more, pay for it. By using stations that “bottom out” they are artificially raising the lower bound of temperatures (vs the old intrepid volunteer who used to use a mercury thermometer.
This is just like the NOAA. Half assed. Of course, NASA and DOD do it right…
http://extenv.jpl.nasa.gov/presentations/Low_Temperature_Lithium_Batteries.pdf
Anthony, you might suggest that they contact SAFT Batteries for special low temp operations. And span the damn thermistors correctly, or have a dual span if necessary.

@commieBob says:
January 30, 2012 at 4:46 pm
Our local weather guy says we are basking in balmy Southern Ontario because the jet stream is at its northern limit and is keeping the arctic air from coming south. Is that why it is so cold up north?
As good a hypothesis as any. My wife tells me that it is unusually cold in Japan this year. It seems like tongues of cold break out of the arctic rather than a broad band of the jet stream, hence the “localized” cold in Alaska. It’s been unusual here in eastern Canada (southern NB), with temperatures down to -18°C at night and a couple of days later up to +6°C and better in the daytime. Up and down like a toilet seat, as my cousin said recently. (I usually refer to a whoxx’s drawers for the same comparison.)
IanM

That dang Al Gore was right again. How the heck…………..??????????

@ Ian L. McQueen,
I grew up in Fredericton and remember school being cancelled one day at lunch time as the temperatures were just too cold. It was either ’69 or ’71. As I was just a little girl, I don’t recall the exact temperature that led to this decision, but I do recall the tears freezing to my face as I trudged a mile (uphill, of course) to my home – tears from the pain of the cold and not being adequately bundled. Any idea what the policy is on freezing temperatures and school cancellations?
Of course, in those days the temperatures were in Fahrenheit, which adds to my inability to remember the precise circumstances. I’m glad some Alaskans apparently like this weather, but anything below -15 C is not really my cup of tea.

phlogiston says:
January 29, 2012 at 12:12 pm
Snowy owls are making a rare mass migration south from the Arctic and showing up all across the USA:
http://news.yahoo.com/snowy-owls-soar-south-arctic-rare-mass-migration-175336821.html
Global warming must be making the heat intolerable up there (NOT)

I was stationed at Ft. Wainwright in Fairbanks in 1974 until 1976…
I was fighting the cold war way back then…
I apologize to everyone…
I lost, it is still cold up there…

A great discussion, for the most part. I’d like to hear from “Ed” at Jim River.

There’s a reason it’s referred to as climate change instead of global warming these days. As some areas heat up, climate patterns change and other areas cool. For example, the lower the salinity in the Atlantic (as the ice caps melt), the more slower the movement of warm water from the Gulf of Mexico to the UK gets, and eventually it could stop, plunging the UK into an ice age.

Are there a lot of sites in Alaska using the Vantage Pro2?
You would think that lots of places in Alaska get colder temps than -40 F.

…CLARIFICATION OF TEMPERATURES FROM JIM RIVER DOT CAMP…
NWS HAS DETERMINED THAT THE THERMOMETER IN QUESTION WAS INCORRECTLY SITED TOO FAR FROM THE REQUIRED LOCAL AIR CONDITIONING UNIT … THIS RESULTED IN UNACCEPTABLY LOW TEMPERATURE READINGS AND FAILURE OF THE UNIT … HENCE IT HAS BEEN STRUCK FROM THE RECORD…
/sarc off

Fact no doubt will encourage the global warming faithful to redouble their efforts, but for people who have questioned the gorite philosophy from the beginning and endured their insults, take a look at :
“Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.”

One thing strikes me, why install a thermometer that can not measure temperatures even close to what have been measured there?

The more you understand about physics and the universe, the more convinced you’ll be that modern man is completely incapable of creating, starting, speeding up, slowing down, or stopping global warming or climate change.
Our galaxy is rocketing through space at over 2 million MPH. We’re receiving more energy from the sun than 1,000 Hiroshima nuclear explosions, every second. But a cow farting in a pasture is going to bring Earth to its end?

Jim River is a mile from Prospect Creek. From Wikipedia….
“Prospect Creek is a very small settlement approximately 180 miles north of present day Fairbanks and 25 miles southeast of present day Bettles, Alaska. Years ago it was home to numerous mining expeditions and the camp for the building of the Alaskan pipeline. Today, it is mostly desolate with little activity since the completion of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline in 1977. Prospect Creek is also home to the U.S. record for lowest temperature. In January 1971, the record low temperature of -80°F (-62°C) was recorded. … There are currently no people living in this area.
…Prospect Creek Airport (IATA: PPC, ICAO: PAPR, FAA LID: PPC) is a state-owned public-use airport…For the 12-month period ending July 9, 2008, the airport had 498 aircraft operations.”
… So, in the heyday of the pipeline construction Prospect Creek was a NWS co-op site, and recorded the US record low of -80. The station closed in 1980. Now, the “town” is uninhabited, and the airport – a landing strip, reallly – is unattended with less than one flight a day on average. The FAA says RECOMMEND VISUAL INSPECTION PRIOR TO USING, LIMITED SNOW REMOVAL, and BEACON ON ONLY WHEN THE ASO FACILITY IS MANNED AT PROSPECT CREEK.
There hasn’t been a NWS station there in 32 years, and the automated stations at the Jim RIver DOT and the Prospect Creek Airport are only occasionally checked on and less frequently maintained. One can only guess how far off a non-NWS calibrated station that may be poorly located and may not have had new batteries in a year could be. Ten degrees? Twenty? We’ll never know. Glance through the personal weather stations on Weather Underground and you’ll see a scatter of 5 or 10 degrees under “normal” temperatures.
So, what was the real low at Prospect Creek? Although the lack of a calibrated, inspected, and properly sited station makes the answer irrelevant to records, let’s speculated. The old Prospect Creek station used to run about 5 degrees (ranging from zero to 10) lower than nearby Bettles (25 miles to the NW and a few hundred feet lower) during extreme cold events, but sometimes Prospect Creek was warmer. When Prospect Creek recorded the all-time low of -80, Bettles came in 12 degrees warmer at -68. When Bettles had it’s low of -70, Prospect Creek was -58.
This week Bettles recorded a record low of -60 for the date, but fell 10 degrees shy of its all-time low. I’d guess that a Prospect Creek co-op station might have recorded -65 or -70, or maybe even -72. 72 below would be second place, like the Phillies in the 2009 World Series. 79 below, almost 20 degrees colder than Bettles, seems quite unlikely.

Here in Canada one of our country wide news outlets is called Global News. They tend to be quite biased towards the warmer side. To day they reported the cold weather in Europe, then right after showed a moving graphic from NASA supposedly showing rising temperatures over many decades complete with bright burning colors. I thought it hilarious and so sad.

Richard Keen have you been there? Back in the mid 90s I was doing a bicycle race on the Yentna river and it was -30 at the riverbank cabins and I was told it was 10 degrees colder on the river a mere 50 feet away. I had no experience or frame of reference for telling the difference between the two but I could tell that when I cycled down the embankment to the river it got remarkably colder. Small elevation changes of 10 to 20 feet were very noticeable, almost like dipping in a pool.

I love cold. I hope I never live anywhere that it doesn’t get cold. It keeps poisonous snakes out. Record here in Minneapolis is only -41F (also -41 C). Record for MN: -60F, Tower, MN 2/2/96
Can you believe it’s been -2F in Florida? http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0113527.html

I thought about going to Alaska to visit sometime. To see some moose. But I thought better of it. And now even the poor moose are freezing up there. Brrrrrr!!

I am an actual Alaskan and have experienced temperatures of minus 60 on many occasions although not recently. There is a considerable distance between temperatures in the minus 50 range and those which might reach minus 70 or even lower. In Interior Alaska, for example Fairbanks, Delta, Tok, Northway and other areas along the Tanana River, minus 50 is fairly commonplace. Fort Yukon at the junction of the Yukon and Porcupine Rivers can be a bit lower still. Jim River and Prospect Creek lie to the west of Fort Yukon and are in the cooler category. Another scary place is on the Alaska Highway near the Canadian border, which includes Snag and Beaver Creek.
Unless temperatures in places like Fairbanks, Fort Yukon or Tok are reaching the minus 60 category I would be suspicious of claims of temperatures of minus 70 or lower in the region. I would fully expect the Jim River report to NOT be accurate.
With that said, the stories of Ed H, above regarding local lows in the Interior are worth thinking about. Contrary to some suggestions in the comments above, the temperature will drop and keep dropping in the absence of significant disturbance in the air. Some individuals living southeast of Fairbanks have reported temperatures below minus 70 and even lower in that area and I would believe those reports. In Delta in February 1975 I saw a thermometer at minus 80 and another a short distance away at minus 73. There was no doubt in my mind that it was pretty cold.
As severe as that seems, it is my understanding that temperatures in Siberia are routinely colder — in the minus 80 range. And I have a friend who wintered at the South Pole with temperatures of more than minus 100.
Here in Anchorage, it is warming up to 10 F for a few days, although I think it will probably head back down below zero by the weekend. God help the lower forty eight states if this cold air mass releases all at once and heads south in February.

John F. Hultquist says: January 30, 2012 at 8:09 pm
Makes me wonder, though, about the difficulty of marketing electric and hybrid-electric autos in certain areas. Do places that have generally low temperatures with occasional -40 days get exemptions for the CAFE standards?
——-
A quarter of the energy to run Fairbanks cars is already electrical.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/02/electric-cars-in-alaska/

> Alaska and Canada have been suffering through some of the coldest temperatures on record during the last week…
True, yet crap. Anthony, if you check a map you’ll notice that Canada is a pretty large country.
Here in Southern Ontario we have had the mildest winter in memory. We got 3 cm of snow today, more than we’ve had — in total — all winter. On the second-last day of January!
But wait! Weather isn’t climate!
Unless…it’s really cold. Then it’s climate! If it’s really mild then it’s just weather, which isn’t climate.
“Reality is that which, once you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” — P. Dick

Old Nanook says:
Unless temperatures in places like Fairbanks, Fort Yukon or Tok are reaching the minus 60 category I would be suspicious of claims of temperatures of minus 70 or lower in the region. I would fully expect the Jim River report to NOT be accurate.
… well, the Fort Yukon co-op station checked in with a -66 yesterday, Jan. 30. So we may have some other coop station sending in a -70 at the end of the month (not all coop stations report daily). There’s still the outside chance of some lucky station getting to -80. But probably not Jim River, which was also “only” -66 yesterday (did someone go out there and change the battery?).

Is it still possible to buy accurate equipment capable of streaming temperature measurements in Fahrenheit?
For calculation purposes you would have to convert these reading into Celsius prior to further use.

Extreme temperatures in any one location in any one year really do prove nothing either for or against the AGW hypothesis. I have posted elsewhere about the need to analyse at least 100 years of data before you start to be able to take out the effect of shorter ENSO and 60 year cycles and get down to the underlying ~1000 year cyclic trend.
I’m no warmist, but I am the first to confirm that the underlying long-term trend is still increasing due entirely to natural causes at a rate of about 0.05 degree C per decade, but such rate is decreasing and should be down to zero (ie a maximum temperature) within the next 150 to 250 years, after which about 500 years of cooling is expected. The trend is indeed expected to keep rising even beyond the year 2100 when it could well be 0.4 degrees above the current level. (See my other posts about the above 0.05C/decade calculation.)
Folks, the world is still warming. It only defeats our cause to try to prove it isn’t, because the 60 year cycle will turn back upwards after about 2028, so it’s best to be honest and tell them that’s what we expect. Let’s archive that prediction, as indeed I have a few months ago on my initial site http://earth-climate.com .
If you want to rubbish AGW you can do so using physics, on the basis that …
(1) Their assumptions relating to that -18C figure are not based on established physics, so all their sensitivity calculations are totally wrong, even if backradiation did warm anything. (See my posts on other threads for more detail, or my site http://climate-change-theory.com .)
(2) Backradiation actually does not exist to anywhere near the extent they suggest and they are not measuring it. (Their instruments measure frequency and convert it to temperature. Any further conversation to radiative flux is invalid.) They can show no warming from it (for example, show it warming a metal plate or melting frost) and that would be the only way to prove it had any effect such as what they say it has on the Earth’s surface. After all, they claim its intensity is about a quarter as much as the Sun at noon. It ought to melt frost in the course of 8 hours or so, but it doesn’t. The reason is, as Prof Claes Johnson proves, its frequency is below the cut-off frequency for which any warming could occur. And anything that does come down as LW radiation is probably just coming from a few “hot spots” in the atmosphere that were not necessarily warmed by carbon dioxide and its colleagues.
In summary, I would rather see this WUWT site place less emphasis on articles and news like this, and more emphasis on the physics of the situation. The warmists can’t argue that their physics is right about that -18C figure because they would just expose their ignorance if they still tried to support it. The Earth’s surface is far from insulated and so it is far from being a blackbody and really only radiates less than about 25 W/m^2. You cannot convert whatever it radiates to a “temperature” using the Stefan-Boltzmann Law, because so much other energy escapes by diffusion, conduction, convection, evaporation and chemical processes, leaving a lot less to radiate. What does still radiate carries no indication of ambient temperature and would in fact gives very cold values if stuck into that equation.

If the battery failed, why did the unit continue to report pressure ?

Climate change means ‘extremes’ at both ends of the spectrum (extreme cold, extreme heat), because the hydrological cycle is disrupted (globally). Record lows then become expected, and the same for record highs. These readings are actually proof that climate change is in fact occurring, quite rapidly now. Those that doubt this are basically idiots, ill-informed and opinionated without evidence or proof to back up their claims. In addition to Alaska, extremes are occurring in many other places of the world, including torrential rains (India, Pakistan, Australia, Vietnam) all part of the hydrological cycle. Other extremes are also occurring too, killer tornadoes in Indonesia, and Mozambique with killer storms. Bulgaria just experienced deadly blizzards, China massive snowfalls. There are climate extremes now occurring non-stop around the world.

This is why they should be using the wired version! Interesting that they don’t have a old style backup.

So much for man made global warming? Even if there were global warming would you tree huggers explain to me how raising my power bill, raising my taxes and electing left wing Loon Democrats is going to lower the earth’s temperature? So Minus -80 degrees in Alaska is still
to Warm for ya?
Perhaps if Congress & Obama were not burning through $3 Trillion bucks in 3 years it might lower the Earths temperature, it would at least lower the tax payers & voters temperature!
VOTE THE BUM’S OUT NOV 2012!

[ John says:
January 31, 2012 at 3:51 am
Climate change means ‘extremes’ at both ends of the spectrum (extreme cold, extreme heat), because the hydrological cycle is disrupted (globally). Record lows then become expected, and the same for record highs. These readings are actually proof that climate change is in fact occurring, quite rapidly now. ]
Why don’t you help us all out here and put a date on an earthly period when “climate change” didn’t occur. Then suggest a period in the past when record lows or record highs didn’t occur. Then determine a period on earth since life began when those record lows or highs caused mass extinction. Then determine if the highs ever did, or if the ice ages were the only time.

I’m sure Al gores concocting a new scheme, like man made global cooling to win another nobel prize and to make billions.

Alaska can keep the cold weather. Because of the jetstream, when it is way below freezing in Fairbanks in January it is balmy here in the mid atlantic.

One cool way to stay warm –
http://www.bullerjan.com/web/en/bullerjan/design.html
Enjoy!

Mary Turner says:
January 31, 2012 at 4:07 am
“A warming world does not preclude record low temperatures…”
Please explain the physics and thermodynamics behind this assertion. Remember, the earth has been “warming” for over 100 years…

Regarding the official statement, there’s a fine difference between saying temperatures from a personal station operating way out of its spec are unreliable and between saying they’re not correct. If they said they’re unreliable I’d definitely agree with them. But if they say they’re incorrect then I start wondering how much incorrect may them be. Maybe they could make the airport people fix their National Weather Service Standard-compliant equipment to allow some cross-callibration while it’s still chilly there?

Where is the energizer bunny when
you need him?

What the hell do all of you do when you aren’t on here?????? Where do you find time to disprove each other on weather facts???? Go…go outside…go talk to another human being. Come up out of your parents basement and venture out into society. Geeze……..

Global warming my a$$, I guess this puts an end to that hoax.

It’s been an unusually warm winter where I am in the northeast US. Could wind up being our warmest winter ever.
But every time there is a record low, it proves global warming wrong.

Ric Werme says: (in response to me…)
January 30, 2012 at 9:34 pm
>It’s not a NOAA station. It’s a DOT (Dept. of Transportation) station.
True… But I did preface it by stating my uncertainty as to who owned it. I also stated “…an official US station should be properly spanned.” That is still true. You don’t use measuring instruments where you expect them to go near or above (or below) their ranges. Its just bad science. I would have savagely beaten with broccoli undergraduates who used measurements outside the range of the measurement devices.
Thermistors use a curve fit to interpolate voltage to temperature. Dependent upon the equation (and there are a few standard ones – wiki has a good discussion of it) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermistor. Due to the log function, it may go out of linearity 50 c below its lowest temperature. But the good folks at Davis should be able to back calculate how badly its doing at that point (they have the constants for their thermistor, after all, and know how it works). After all, they have sold a device that is good to within +/- x degree. They just won’t stand behind something outside that range. I’m sure Anthony will report what that is.
As for our friends at DOT/NOAA (and even Davis). I mentioned the low temp lithium batteries that they should use. Since their temperature sensor is a plug in (and replaceable) they should make a low temperature spanned version. You don’t need to replace the entire unit. Just replace the plug in and do a software update. They should not be just tweaking the software to give a N/A when it gets below -40. They know they have a problem and their solution is to ignore it? Dumb.

Frank K. says:
January 31, 2012 at 5:37 am
Mary Turner says:
January 31, 2012 at 4:07 am
“A warming world does not preclude record low temperatures…”
Please explain the physics and thermodynamics behind this assertion. Remember, the earth has been “warming” for over 100 years…
…by <a href="http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/trend"0.8°C.
I’m not sure why you think outliers in a chaotic system should be constrained if we add energy to it, but lets assume its true. The lowest temperature recorded on earth is -89.2°C, the temperature rise seen since then, 0.45°C, would still allow lows of -88.75°C without falsifying claims of global warming.