Winter II: Reversal of Fortune

Now

Blustery, turning colder. As if on cue, precisely halfway through meteorological winter, circulation patterns have shifted to bring an abrupt end to the extended warm spell. It's not a mirror-image of the winter's first half, but the upcoming week will be much closer to the "normal" Washington January. After a high of 64° near 2am, temperatures leveled off in mid afternoon near 45°, then resumed the decline, heading toward the 20s tonight and the first non-trivially below-average day of the year tomorrow.

CapitalWeather.com chart from NWS data, photo © Kevin Ambrose

Tonight and Tomorrow

Variable clouds, breezy, cold. Readings will continue to drop this evening through the 30s, reaching morning lows from the upper 20s downtown to near 20 in 'burbistan. Tomorrow will feature variable cloudiness, northerly winds, and highs around 37°

For the outlook through the rest of the week, scroll on down to Jason's post below.

Attention Science Teachers

As reported here previously, your national organization NSTA may have declined to participate, but RealClimate.org reported yesterday that 50,000 free copies of "An Inconvenient Truth" are available on request for classroom use. You must sign up by Thursday to be eligible, however. AIT in the Classroom also has a blog for discussing educational use of the film.

Update: The Seattle P-I reported recently on how the film screening was handled in Federal Way, an outer suburb of Seattle. Apparently Situational Science is indeed alive and well.

Situational ScienceMan courtesy of Sunday's Doonesbury Flashback, originally published June, 2005.

Political Science

The British press, including the Guardian, reported over the weekend that the State of the Union address would contain a policy shift on global warming, but that was quickly denied by anonymous Administration sources.