Detroit blows hot, cold on warming thesis

Detroit blows hot, cold on warming thesis

The weather seems so topsy-turvy in recent years, its patterns more erratic than in the old days, which seemed more stable. The recent warm winter and summer in Metro Detroit have fit right into this pattern. We’ve come to expect not average weather but deviations. Extremes have become the norm.

This perception has been capitalized on by Vice-President Albert Gore to promote his unverifiable global-warming hypothesis. He contends that energy-based technological progress has created such an output of so-called greenhouse gases that the atmosphere is warming. As it does, greater fluctuations occur in atmospheric dynamics, so the weather gets wilder. He even asserts that the El Nino phenomenon, first identified more than 400 years ago, is now more extreme because of technology-based human prosperity.

Thus, according to Gore, the Senate must ratify the United Nations’ Global Climate Treaty to limit U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases and stifle our economic growth.

Before we accept Gore’s premise, let’s examine some actual weather extremes. You remember the brutal winter of 1976-77, its viciously low temperatures and deadly winds (back then the concern was about global cooling).

Well, let’s keep thinking back. In ’76, the ice in the Detroit River was already a foot thick in December. Mid-month gales piled up river ice and snow into a scene like Antarctica. A month later, in mid-January, a snowstorm paralyzed the city. But early February produced extraordinary warmth. Then on March 20th, Detroit was hit by heavy snowfall accompanied by lightning that set off the City Hall bell.

This record, however, occurred not in 1976-77 but in 1876-77. And talk about extreme fluctuations. The temperatures a year later were soaringly warm — the first ice did not form on the river until Feb. 9, 1878, and the winter’s first snow fell on Feb. 11. Then that summer became torridly hot. For a week in July the temperatures ranged up to 100 degrees.

More extremes followed. All through January and February of 1879, the temperature stayed above freezing. But a frost occurred on June 17. On Aug. 1, a thunderstorm produced walnut-sized hail.

The turbulence of that era was remarkable. The Detroit area in April 1868 experienced six snowstorms, the last on the 25th. A heavy snowstorm hit the area a year later on April 13, then the next autumn produced another one on Oct. 23. The ensuing winter was so bitter that piled-up ice in the St. Clair Flats was still 10 feet high on April 26, 1870.

The next year frosts occurred on Aug. 17, 18 and 19. Little rain fell all summer, and the severe drought led to the great forest fires of September and October 1871.

On Jan. 29, 1873, the temperature ranged from 18 below to 35 below (global cooling again). In 1874, ice formed on May 7. But the next month the temperature hit 98 degrees (global warming again). And by the way, in 1875, after a bitterly cold winter, a tornado roared through Detroit on June 27 killing two persons.

But things were just as unsettled more than a half-century earlier. In 1816, ice formed every month of the year. In 1822-23, the weather was so mild (global warming) that flowers bloomed in mid-winter and a ship arrived from Lake Erie on Jan. 13. But on May 1, 1824, there was a foot of snow on the ground.

The warm winter of 1826 (global warming for sure) saw grass grow a foot high in January. More drought with more forest fires hit in 1828. On Jan. 8, 1835, the lake steamer Robert Fulton arrived from Buffalo, and in 1845 steamers visited Detroit every month of the year (technology-induced global warming?). But then global cooling set in again in 1859, when the area experienced frosts every month, including heavy ones on July 3 and 4 that ruined fruit and vegetable crops.

Perhaps "normality" occurred earlier, or did it? The winter of 1779-80 was so cold that hundreds of horses and cattle died in the woods outside Detroit. The spring and summer of 1782 brought torrential rains. Then in 1784-85, the snow depth reached six feet and was still four feet on March 6, 1785. A mile from shore on Lake St. Clair the ice was three feet thick in March. The last of it did not melt until May.

And notice this — acid rain. Dense black clouds hovered over the city and dropped sulfurous-smelling precipitation dark enough to be used as ink. That happened in October 1762, with not a coal-fired power plant in sight.

Generalizing from a narrow range of weather data may be politically useful. During the Texas heat wave, Gore exclaimed last Tuesday that "We’ve got to do something" to halt what he insists is climate change. True believers will ardently agree. Many of us, taking a longer view of climate history, remain skeptics.

Daniel Hager is a Lansing free-lance writer. The above weather data were collected from "History of Detroit and Wayne County and Early Michigan" by Silas Farmer, published in 1890.