Whew! Sure, it was hot in July as new U.S. records were set in some of the lower 48 states, but some newspapers --- via their reporters’ writings --- made it appear as a major sizzling advance, finds Grumpy Editor.
Reports on hot July appeared every day so far this month.
The Wall Street Journal yesterday, for example, placed a two-column reference to an inside story near the top of the front page. It teased: “July was the hottest month on record in the contiguous U.S., blazing past 1936…”
Average temperature for the lower 48 reached 77.6 degrees in July, edging the previous record of 77.4 degrees set in July 1936, at the height of the Dust Bowl, based on figures from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
That’s a tiny increase of 0.2 tenths of a degree.
The Washington Post, among some other publications, however, reported Wednesday that the new record was 0.2 degrees (note the s) hotter than the previous record set in July, 1936.
Copy editors missed the s. By noting temperature that way, rather than 0.2 tenths of a degree, the Post made it appear 10 times hotter for July, 2012, compared with 76 years ago.
Weather writers often do this with rainfall, too, citing a storm brought 0.24 inches of rain rather than 0.24 of an inch.
Some reporters worked in July temperatures “reached triple digits” in Arizona and Nevada.
Well, that’s normal. No sea breezes in that region.
For those who stress global warming, the July average temperature in the lower 48 also reached 77 degrees in 1902 when Theodore Roosevelt was president, long before industrialization of America and decades before “greenhouse gases” entered weather discussions.
Strangely, the Weather Channel’s Website did not mention the degrees in a “hottest month on record” report comparing July, 2012 with July, 1936. However, it liked the line, “July, 2012 was the hottest of more than 1,400 months that we've gone through since 1895.”
Pass the lemonade.
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