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The historic U.S. heat wave is rattling climate scientists. Here's what they have to say
(www.sfchronicle.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2026
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The end of february and early march here in the midwest was similarly brutal.
My local ski hill was poised to have a banner March, they had stockpiled an incredible amount of snow after a great year of natural snow. Nearly 2 times the average amount.
But the last week of february and first week of march was blowtorch weather. Rain and overnight lows higher than average highs. Daytime highs nearly 30° above normal.
It ended up closing its regular closing day.
But what killed me most was the regular people talking about how great it was it was 74° (30 above average) in March. Because it was 20° (10 below average) in February. I had to point out 30 above average in August is 112° before they lost thier sense of giddyness. Its going to be 84 on Sunday, which is 2° away from peak average summer temps. This summer is going to kill swathes of people.
what got me is initially folks were talking about how brutal the winter was and I was like. This is kinda what I would call typical before the 90's. Now granted the double tap and what we got after new year maybe would have made it a bit worse than normal even back then but yeah the wierd swings have never been normal. I get it though. Its kinda nice to have some warm weather but while its nice as an individual in a point in time its scary as eff when you think about what its supposed to be and how abnormal it is and how we 100% its an effect from climate change but there are folks who want to pretend it does not exist.