Wednesday, January 30, 2019

In the record books!

Today's low temperature (-11°F) is officially as cold as it's ever been on January 30th in Indianapolis. It's only been colder than this twice since I've moved here. We saw twelve below back on 1/16/09 and fifteen below on January 6th, 2014.

It's still a ways off the overall record low, which was set on January 19th of 1994: -27°F.

The noteworthy thing about today is that the daily high is still predicted by some sources to top out at -2°F. If the high temperature doesn't make it to zero degrees Fahrenheit, that'll only be the seventeenth time since they started keeping track in 1880. The last was on that January day in '94.

At least there's no snow to speak of, because I'd hate to be out shoveling in this.

A lot of the Boomers on social media are griping about all the weather talk. "Bah! It barely got above zero in July when we were kids, and we didn't call it any kinda 'polar vortex'! We called it 'winter' and went skinny dipping in the old liquid methane swimming hole!"

I'm just tickled to see people talking about something other than politics...although a surprising number of people can turn even idle chatter about the weather into political tribal signaling.
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