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January 19, 2024

Texas Monthly misses boat on polar vortexes and climate change

As anybody who knows much about climate change knows, problems with polar vortexes in specific and upper-latitude jet streams in general are a climate change issue.

Yet, just a couple of weeks ago, Texas Monthly decided to look backward not forward, despite the increase in polar vortex surges down here to Tex-ass in recent years.

And blew it, not only on looking backward not forward, but on what it got wrong within that.

Contra Alexandra Samuels, 52 degrees is BELOW normal for most of Texas outside the Panhandle in early January. Note that where I live, where the almanac on Weather Underground says the average is above 52, has actually had that many days above 52 in the last 10 days. If Samuels had wanted to talk about something relevant to climate change this time of year and over the recent past, she would have discussed polar vortexes.

And, now, we've just faced one fairly severe one, with a lesser one creeping in as I type. The one bit of good news is a steady week of rain showers after that; we've still not fully recovered from last year's drought.

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