This past week, it's been too hot for most and the newspapers and TV newscasts have been filled with weather news. We've seen non-stop stories about the record heat wave and tips about how to deal with the record heat wave and stories about how the record heat wave kidnapped the Lindbergh baby.
I typically try to avoid these stories as reading about the weather seems pointless to me. I know what the weather was like yesterday and the fools that pretend to be able to predict it are seldom right more than 12 hours or so in advance.
I did, for some reason, read this story in the St. Paul Pioneer Press which concludes with this beauty:
Temperatures also hit 100 degrees twice during the July 1-6 period, which is rare. Since 1873, the year reliable records were first kept, it's happened only 64 times.Really? 64 out of 139 years (46%) in weather circles is considered rare. The Minnesota Twins have a winning percentage a little bit south of that but I would hardly consider a Twins win this year "rare".
Even more remarkable is that the way this sentence is written, you would have to believe that nearly every other year we see temps hit 100 degrees twice in the first six days of July which, from my experience, is patently untrue.
Clearly, this was an egregious editing error as nobody in their right mind could consider something that occurs nearly half of the time a rarity. On the other hand, global warming fanatics tend to misuse statistics to support their half-baked theories all the time. If they can get enough people to believe that "record" heat means temperatures that happen every other year there's no stopping them.
