I was watching a bit of the Australian Open tennis tournament last night and the commentators were showing the thermometer at courtside - 104 degrees F. It did appear that the humidity was under 30% though, which reminds me of that saying: "And the devil said yes, but it's a dry heat..."
I'm not the least bit surprised that the winter here in the States (and the whole northern hemisphere for that matter) is colder this year. If one has been following the information that the responsible climate scientists have been posting for the last several years, it is clear that the earth is returning to a cycle of colder weather. These same scientists predicted that the winter of 2008/2009 would mark the first year of the cool down (although the winter of 2007/2008 was a bit of a wake-up call as well). Even The Old Farmer's Almanac, which has always been a surprisingly accurate gauge of weather, predicted that this winter would be a cold one. The afore mentioned scientists are saying at this point that although the data indicates a cycle of colder weather, it's not conclusive enough at this point to determine if that means winters like in the 1940's and 1950's, or a Little Ice Age such as in the mid 15th through early 19th centuries.
