This post is chronologically inaccurate, but the order in which you are reading this material is possibly more interesting.
I took this picture a few minutes ago. This is my front sidewalk. In a way, it is a remarkable image. What you see is water between the snow banks. This is January 6 in Grand Forks, North Dakota. According to the Weather Underground, the average high for the day is 15. The temperature at 3 today was 41. My little story would have been more spectacular if this was an all-time record, but alas this was not the case. In 1990, it made it to 43. I was here for that day as well.
I purchased An Inconvenient Truth from the iTunes music store before Christmas. I own an iPod Touch and the plan was to watch the movie while on the road over break. I finally watched most of the movie today while I worked out. This documentary is very compelling and I highly recommend it. I would like to say it was enough to get me to move from the powered elliptical to a self powered stationary bike, but this would not be true. I have written on the topic of this documentary before, but each time I am exposed to the information I feel the need to comment again (see this TED talk). I guess it was the connection between the content of the documentary and the view out the window of the health club that prompted this post.
Of course, any single event offers little proof of a trend. However, it seems to me that I have experienced a large number of record temperatures. The data are there. As I looked for the records for the day (43, -31), it occurred to me that student projects might be derived from these data. For example, I wonder how many record temperatures were set in the past 5 years.
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