In committee vetting Energy Secretary nominee Chris Wright, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski bemoaned how it was colder in Washington, D.C. than it was in Alaska, and that the thermostats are “out of whack.” It’s a problem, she was explaining. Alaska is not cold, and D.C. is.
Directing her remarks at Wright, she then said technologies can help Alaskans adapt to climate change.
Wright was appearing for his first Senate grilling in the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, where much of the talk from Democrats was about climate change.
This week in Washington, D.C. it is chilly, for the district at least. It’s in the 20s to the low 40s. It will be even chillier next week, during the outdoor Inauguration of Donald Trump as president. Temperatures are expected to reach a low of 11 degrees.
Often, when the temperatures in the continental United States drop, Alaska will experience a warm spell. This curiosity has been happening regularly this winter, with bitter cold weather south, and warmer air moving into Alaska, where today in Utqiagvik it is -6 degrees, in Kotzebue it’s 11 degrees and Nome is a balmy 19, at this writing.
“We’re living with it, we’re dealing with it, we’re feeling it,” Murkowski said to Wright. “We’re feeling it in Alaska right now. I wish I could tell you it’s as cold in Alaska as it is in Washington, D.C.”
Actually, it was colder in Alaska today. Except in Ketchikan, where it is 46 and raining.
Alaska has been going through a warm super cycle for many years, but at least it is not as warm as when dinosaurs roamed Alaska, around 120-million years ago. It was as warm in Alaska then as is current day Puget Sound.
But back to Murkowski’s declaration of coldness in D.C. There’s an explanation.
Meteorologist say that when tropospheric ridges develop in the jet stream over Alaska, it flips the Eastern Pacific Oscillation to negative, and that creates polar air coming over the north pole from Siberia and into Canada and the Lower 48.
This winter in Alaska, the main pattern has been a southerly flow of warm air coming across the warm Pacific Ocean.
These flips in temperatures between the Lower 48 and Alaska happen with frequency, and this particular episode of cold weather for D.C. is not that noteworthy.
“In February 1899, a two-week period of exceptionally cold weather culminated in what weather historian David Ludlum (1970) describes as ‘the greatest Arctic outbreak in history.’ Temperatures fell to 0°F (-18°C) along the beaches of the Gulf Coast and ice flowed from the mouth of the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico,” says a report for NASA/Goddard Space Center in 1988. Read more about the phenomenon at this link.
It is not unusual for cities in the lower 48 to be colder than AK, especially cities on large bodies of water, like Anchorage.
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And, the Earth is essentially a closed system. There is only so much heat to go around. If AK is having a particularly warm winter for whatever reason, somewhere else will be having a colder than normal winter. This time, AK got well over it’s fair share of warm days, and (GASP! The HORRORS!) DC got stuck with a bit more cold days than normal. If she thinks this means something, she is clearly demonstrating a complete and total lack of knowledge on weather and the climate.
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This weather is proof of… NOTHING. Not a damned thing, and trying to say it is proof of something for political purposes is not working any more.
When Alaska was a rainforest, CO2 was at 8,000ppm. At 150ppm, plant life dies. earth is about 450ppm. We could actually use MORE C02. They used to call it global warming, then Scientists realized the earth is actually in a cooling stage. Now it’s climate change with the inclination that humans caused it. Humans virtually have NO effect on natural climate change. It’s a complete hoax to push carbon credits primarily.
Nature just smacked you upside the head and you’re still beating the same stupid partisan drum. Hilarious!
Keep your head in the sand & keep moving through those sheep pens to the slaughterhouse & bless your heart!
regurgitating libtardian thought patterns? Try going outside more.
Loving the 46 degrees and the rain, We aren’t shoveling, burning, no snakes, and our Island borders are secure. (LOL)
I’m about ten degrees colder, but everything else aligns. I might add no lines, very few leftists, and no ticks.
Also, regarding the headline. The Princess isn’t very bright. Imagine that temperatures have variation! One of the great faults of nepotism is low quality.
Washington DC may be cold, but nothing is colder than the heart of a deep state nepotistic RINO political opportunist and traitor.
Hell is trying to freeze over
‘https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/10/globalist_misinformation_no_the_earth_is_not_warming.html
The partisan dorks have been saying that global warming was a hoax a all these years are looking REALLY stupid right now.
Science is not your strongpoint, is it?
“IF” there was a record of earths yearly temperatures, you would see this is nothing new!
But you “The sky is falling” nut jobs just love to have some catastrophe to scream and holler about!
Bet you can’t wait for the next made up “pandemic” so you can put your mask back on, how many booster shots have you got so far?
I have never taken the fake vax shot and I am still here along with all the others who did not fall for your left-wing-nut bs!
Keep on being a sheep, looks like that is your claim to fame!
‘https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/10/simple_facts_expose_the_climate_change_hoax.html
Climate change is not a hoax although its effects are much slower and not noticeable in many lifetimes. “Man made” climate change is a hoax. And yes. The earth is cooling.
I think you should adult more before you drink your coffee black.
‘https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494423001779
This link is for you Black coffee although I doubt you read much at all
Murkowski is a flipping dunce. Where’s her science background? Must be all that climate change that Frank produced when he became the first Alaska governor to buy a business jet on the dime of taxpayers. And a yacht. These Murkowskis live like kings and queens but expect all other Alaskans to live like subjects of their fiefdom. No!
Sorry Lisa, your Uncle Joe will be leaving soon and those millions he sends you to pay people not to work will end. Are your Democrat friends telling to you “crank up the heat” on the climate change rhetoric? Why don’t you give us a Monkey Pox scare while you’re at it.
These temperature flips between Alaska and the lower 48 states have been given a formal name (by me), ‘the North American paradoxical winter weather phenomenon.’ I should copyright this name before Joe B. plagiarizes it, and before Hunter B. sells off all of my weather influence to China…
Yeah, it is called “Mother Nature” she does what she wants, no regard for what is normal and predictable kinda like you murcowski!
Just plain whacked out, don’t know when she is going to do the totally opposite of what is right!
Given the recent ‘dog-n-pony’ show during these confirmation hearings, I think most reasonable people conclude the real issue is “Cold Hearts” in DC.
I have a collection of my grandfather’s 35mm slides, some of which were taken in the mid-50’s here in Anchorage. Several of them are very specific to what’s being chatted about here. These slides were taken at the starting line of the Fur Rendezvous dog sled races around 1954, one year before a record snowfall. The kids are wearing rain boots and the only snow is a thin, gray, slushy strip in the middle of 4th Avenue where the dog team is ready to take off. The weather was in the mid-40’s (that’s attainable if you do a search) and, the population of Anchorage was extremely low thus, carbon emissions weren’t an issue. The point being… people consumed by climate change fear and paranoia place way too much importance on themselves, man’s impact on the planet and, man’s ability to do jack sh-t about it. No amount of money will correct it. There’s an industry based upon this whereby vast amounts of U.S. money is sent to countries worldwide, some of whom are the worst offenders. And do you emember Solyndra? Obama’s $500,000,000 stimulus recipient that produced… nothing. Now THAT’S net zero.
And here we go (climate change ). It’s always been changing, it’s never stopped. If it stops changing we got a problem.
Lisa your buddies in California just dumped more crap into the atmosphere in 1 week than we pump in 20 years.