Home restaurant’s sprawling outdoor patio in Los Feliz, set under a canopy of large trees, was designed to take advantage of California’s temperate climate and typically sunny skies.
But this February has been so cold that the restaurant scrambled to set up extra heaters outside the Craftsman-style house to keep diners and workers warm during the record-setting cold winter.
“We had three heaters going for a while and this month it just hasn’t been enough,” said Sam Yoo, a manager at the restaurant. “I’m trying to have the waiters and hostesses wear warmer clothing, but I have one heater set up right by the host stand so they don’t catch colds.”
For the first time since forecasters began recording data — at least 132 years — the mercury did not reach 70 degrees in downtown Los Angeles for the entire month of February.
The average high for the month was 61 degrees, significantly lower than the historical average of 68 for February. That makes it the eighth-coldest February on record, said Ryan Kittell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.
“Most of the time we’ll get one or two Santa Ana wind events in between the rain that would give us temperatures above 70 degrees,” he added. “But it’s just been back-to-back storms and no offshore flows.”
It’s a big change for Southern California, where temperatures having been rising to record levels in recent years along with a prolonged drought. Weather experts said the chilly February doesn’t signal a larger change in some of those trends.
According to the Met Office, the UK’s mean maximum temperature in February was at 3.5C above the average between 1981 and 2010, making it warmest ever.
Saved lot of money on heating, and enjoyed great weather, we want more of it. Long live global warming !
Winter (DJF) Climate Extremes Index (CEI) for the the West USA
NOAA calculates Climate Extremes Index for the USA regions that experienced extreme conditions. The index is calculated as the arithmetic average of values from a specified set of data for extreme events from :
– monthly maximum and minimum temperature,
– daily precipitation,
– monthly Palmer Drought Severity Index
– wind velocity of land falling tropical storms or hurricanes
A value of 0% for the Climate Extremes Index indicates that no portion of the region experienced extremes.
A value of 100% would mean that the entire region experienced extreme conditions
The last 50 years shows degree of correlation with the (last 5) sunspot cycles delayed between 3-6 years
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/W-US-ext.htm
data: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/cei/we/cei/01-12/data.csv
BTW,February sunspot index is out and it has grand total value of SSN=1 ( in old units, here)
“A chart meticulously plotted by Homewood from the Met Office’s Central England Temperature record dating back to 1659 shows that February 2019 ranked as only 15th among our warmest Februarys”
Exactly. The mean temperature for the CET has been exceeded several times, most recently in 2002. It was the run of high maxima towards the end of the month which pushed the average CET daily max to a new record.
These were accompanied by clear, calm conditions, resulting in some frosty nights, which meant the average mean was rather lower.
And in a well-publicised event, the UK had its first ever winter temperature of 70 deg F, reaching 21.2 C (70.2 F) at Kew Gardens on the 26th February.
Poor Los Angeles !
“It’s a big change for Southern California, where temperatures having been rising to record levels in recent years along with a prolonged drought. Weather experts said the chilly February doesn’t signal a larger change in some of those trends.”
Meanwhile, over at Roy”s house(Spencer) it seems globally February showed an uptick in the data. A reminder that just coz it is cold or warm outside your back door, we are best to look at the big (global) picture.
No kidding, MN was Coooold and broke a 60 year old record for snowfall in February…the CO2 laid in waiting for a long time before attacking 😉
The 50’s were pretty cold and snowy in MN. The rural areas shut down schools often. The big cities let the kids walk to school if they could. Not pleasant at all, but the record year only had a few school closures in the cities.
Yeah, just as long as you don’t cherry-pick, distort, and magnify by 100 to get your “big picture”.
You can pick any of the main data sets you want. They all show warming over the last few decades.
No… meanwhile over at Roy’s, the globe shows a slight “down” tick for February (although insignificant). Meanwhile the entire lower 48 shows a massive drop that swamps the global anomaly figure. And February has been damn cold up here in Canada too. So it’s not just “your back door”.
This is funny, considering how you and others tout every heat wave as proof of global warming.
Summer heat waves are Global Warming…winter cold waves are Climate Change
Climate Change is also every rain storm ( NorEaster, Hurricane, Tropical Depression, 1/2″ sprinkler), wind storm (Bluster, Tornado, stiff breeze), lack of rain storm (drought, sunny day), lack of wind storm (stagnant air, high pressure cell)
Don’t forget how horribly climate change has impacted our autumn weather.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=siM6CPniUgU
Simon, what is it with guys who want to ignore the El Nino conditions that have been present since September? We know why Jan/Feb is slightly higher. Are you hoping people won’t correct your nonsense or are you just out of touch with reality?
He examines the data for evidence to support his position. Not for understanding.
Take ENSO out = warming. leave ENSO in = warming. What’s your point exactly? ENSO is not the reason for the warming. You are looking in the wrong place.
Yup. Exactly. I noticed that global satellite temperatures only go back to the 1970s, just a decade before most millennials were born, a reminder that just coz there is an uptick in data last month, or last year, or last decade, or last quarter century, we are best to look at the big (4.5 billion year) picture. Do you still agree or disagree?
Jim
I agree it is good to look at all data. Can’t argue with that. But you are trying to distract.
“We had three heaters going…”
Curious… were they solar or wind power heaters? Thanks for your time.
It’s odd they needed any heaters, it’s LA, there’s plenty of hot air to go around
Most mobile outdoor space heating is propane or kerosene
The horror!
Weather experts said the chilly February doesn’t signal a larger change in some of those trends.
Every warm day is PROOF of Global Warming, every cold month is apropos of nothing. Thank you, “weather experts” for your lockstep bootheel declaration of “belief” in Global Warming. Here’s another $Grant$ to study jetstreams, El Niño, and the existential threat of CAGW
Certainly. As every weather event is consistent with Climate Change, nothing can disprove it.
The minor little problem is the standard of Karl Popper as to what science is.
Just wait til the ocean temperatures catch up with the land temperatures.
It should read:
“Weather experts HOPE the chilly February doesn’t signal a larger change in some of those trends.”
“…Meanwhile, over at Roy”s house(Spencer) it seems globally February showed an uptick in the data…”
Positive anomaly, but it was a downtick from January (but essentially unchanged) and no change in trend.
Not to worry; a couple of dataset revisions and LA’s high temperature in February 2019 will have been 90 degrees …
“the restaurant scrambled to set up extra heaters outside…
Propane-powered no doubt. Thank God for fossil fuels. Affordable fossil fuels that is.
Some greenhouses in cold weather use propane heaters not just to keep the night temps up but also to make CO2 to fertilize the growth. When I lived in Massachusetts, we had 2 Mosquito Magnets set up in the backyard that used propane to make warm CO2 to attract mosquitoes as it sucked them into a little basket trap.
The Democrats, the Left, the Progressives, (whatever you want to call them) want to make affordable propane that this restaurant used for its well-heeled customers all but unaffordable for everyone but the most affluent. The climate change elitists are attempting scare enough the ignorant masses with climate porn.
The Liberal elites will concentrate the wealth even further, despite what they claim about reducing the growing wealth inequality. Their energy policies would do exactly the opposite, their policies would make luxuries like sitting outside on a outdoor restaurant patio in February in SoCal with propane heater keeping the chill away only available to the richest 1% of the society.
The serious reality is “fighting global warming” is just a gimmick, a hook by adopted by Democrats to impose more government and more taxation to pay for it on the public for more political power.
God help us if a Liberal climate warrior like Sanders or Jay Inslee takes over the White House in 2021, becasue Civil War 2.0 would soon follow.
Right , a gimmick – to hide the financial time bomb. Another Lehmann is on the way , much bigger, more destabilizing. Bush and Obama bailed out with other gimmick stringers.
That has a tendency to change people’s vote and politicians too. Both Trump, and Sanders, campaigned on exactly that – to break up the banks with Glass-Steagall. When this hits no-one will look sideways at CO2, and the climate gimmicks. Of course this will blow the GND right out of the window and serious economics will land on the table – a real New Deal, Bretton Woods, and energy crash programs.
Cold reality refutes fevered climate change fiction.
Calgary just set it’s coldest month on Record. (just weather 🙂 )
“I’m trying to have the waiters and hostesses wear warmer clothing, but I have one heater set up right by the host stand so they don’t catch colds.”
Who knew that the cure for the common cold was a space heater?
In regards to the caption under the picture: “The San Gabriel Mountains dusted with snow were a rare but beautiful backdrop above downtown Los Angeles on Feb. 6. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)”, this event is rare as long as you define rare as happening every year. Mt Baldy (San Antonio to the rest of the world), the tallest peak in the picture is 10,069 feet above sea level, and features a ski resort. I don’t know what the LA Times writer was smoking, because it snows in the San Gabriels every year. Now to fact-check the still warming in LA statement.
“It’s a big change for Southern California, where temperatures having been rising to record levels …”.
==============================================
No doubt at least partly due to the rapid high-energy urban growth in the Los Angeles Basin (“a huge bowl of sand”) over the 20th century.
https://www.latimes.com/resizer/z9M4ykUS3B3tNVrzaJliGUUEunI=/415×0/www.trbimg.com/img-5c785345/turbine/la-1551389505-ngchx6o4g7-snap-image
I’m sure those heaters were electric space heaters plugged into California’s oh so pure renewable grid, right? Right?
Don’t worry, it’s still climate change. CO2 causes cold, warmth, droughts, floods, hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes, civil wars, mental illness, too few wildlife, too many wildlife, etc etc etc. These confirmation biased fools believe any change in weather is due to evil republicans. They have been told this throughout their entire lives, so who can blame all but the most intelligent and inquisitive to question it?
I live in SF area, and I’m certainly thankful that I don’t hear about the “new normal” drought on a daily basis anymore, but there’s certainly no downward trend in climate change activism.
I wonder if the “record highs” were merely average highs that were propelled by higher lows generated by UHI.
UHI in the lower troposphere? How does that work?
Should say, UAH USA48 temperatures were about average for February 2019. UAH_TLT measures the temperature of the lower troposphere, not the surface, where UHI is a problem in some locations.
Since the “Lower Troposphere” is the area of atmosphere from the surface up to about 12k altitude, YES… UHI does affect a portion of the Lower Tropospheric temperature measurements which is affected by UHI
It is dependent on the altitude of the measurements
I wouldn’t have thought that the average temperature of a vertical ~12 km column stretching from the ‘near surface’ to the mid-troposphere would be significantly impacted by ground level UHI in some (not the majority) of its near surface locations. Roy Spencer doesn’t mention any required correction for UHI in the processing steps for UAH_TLT v6: http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/Version-61.pdf
I am a climate change activist. I believe climate changes, it always has and always will.
I do not believe co2 plays any part in that climate change. No ice core data has ever shown CO2 drives climate changes. All studies of ice cores has shown climate change i.e temperature drives CO2 it is never the other way round.
If CO2 were always a driver of temperature, then temperatures would never be able to fall with a stable CO2 concentration…yet it does and as temperature falls, CO2 follows suit
This just in!
Scientists have just discovered that the Earth has NEVER EVER been in an ice age! Just global warming periods that produced a lot of snow and cold. Film at 11.
Course, what they call cold out theah, over heah in New Hampsha we call t-shirt and shorts weatha.
Not sure about this and haven’t checked, but.. was this the coldest February in LA’s recorded temperature history?
Most of the US lower 48 states were about average (slightly below) for February according to the satellite data. Nothing unusual.
DWR54,
This post is about weather at the surface, not from the satellites.
For your reading pleasure, here are 2 more:
https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2019/02/third-coldest-february-in-seattle.html
http://inlandnorthwestweather.blogspot.com/2019/02/february-recap-records-broken.html
Great Lakes Ice Cover, as reported by NOAA:
Now at 74.2%. Same date last year at 34.3%. In 2017 it was at 5.2%.
Stunning pictures of an ice-house in Pulaski, New York.
We may not know for a few years yet, but perhaps the cooling has already started.
Ice Age cometh
I have read on this site numerous times that carbon dioxide levels trail Earth’s temperatures by approximately 800 years. It follows that the current rise in C02 since around 1850 is mostly dependent on what happened about 800 years previous, the Medieval Warming Period (MWP).
Questions: Can we predict a future drop in C02 levels echoing the end of the MWP and the descent into the Little Ice Age? Can we use a current graph of C02 levels to look back at the MWP as an aid in determining the shape of the increase and decrease of global temperatures of the MWP?
Thanks,
Mike
Others are far more qualified than me to answer the question, but my take is that the date resolution of the ice core data is poor, and (a) you can’t use “800 years” as a meaningful number. ie, you can’t subtract 800 from today’s date and get a meaningful date, (b) in this context, you can’t even use today’s date as a meaningful date – ie, we aren’t in “2019”, we are just somewhere in a timespan of possibly several centuries.
Vancouver BC just had the coldest February since 1937. Four degrees Celsius below the monthly norm.
For sure you can not see the impact of El Niño. This clearly shows the circulation in the Eastern Pacific. Warm air from the Equator did not reach California.
http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mtpw2/product.php?color_type=tpw_nrl_colors&prod=epac×pan=24hrs&anim=html5
Subsequent northern fronts provide rainfall in California.
Another snowstorm is moving from west to east US.
whereas in the UK we had new record high temperatures for February…20.2 degrees C, which is just nuts… it ought to have been 10 degrees lower. We had a week of brilliant sunshine and temperatures in the upper teens (C, not your old fashioned Fahrenheit!).
spring flowers and butterflies everywhere.
The world’s climate doesn’t stop at US national boundaries…
How many stations broke their records in the lovely early spring week here in Blighty? Just because a couple recorded new maxima doesn’t mean they all did. Breaking a record in one (or maybe two or three locations) doesn’t mean it did everywhere, but listening to the UK MSM you could be fooled into thinking exactly that
Cherry picking, thorougly sick to the back teeth of seeing it, whether right here or anywhere else. This applies to both sides of the argument, of course.
Spring temperatures in the UK will be very variable.
I don’t have the number of places to hand, and I’m sure you could find it as easily as anyone else, if you’re really interested. You can be sure that if places as far apart as London, and West Wales broke the previous UK February record on separate days, then the warmth was country-wide. Meanwhile the Scottish record was also broken, and many towns along the South coast, in the Midlands and the North set new records of their own.
Curiously (after all, “it’s only weather”), only a year ago, on 1st March 2018, a new UK record for a low daily maximum was set, at -4.7 C at Tredegar in Wales (with an unofficial reading of -5.2 nearby)
Powerful frost and blizzards in the US. Temperature in degrees C.
A powerful stratospheric intrusion in two days will bring a strong frost to the east US.
It’s either a lack of knowledge or actual deception but space heaters (usually propane powered) are a common fixture in Southern California outdoor restaurants or restaurant patios and are almost always in use during winter evenings. It doesn’t get to be freezing more than once or twice a year but chilly nights are common.
The snowstorm moves to the northeast US.
Hey, I spent 2 weeks in Europe in June, and never saw 70 degrees.