The Three Day Cold Snap in the Interior West (2022) - Was it Climate Change?
A couple cold days in Colorado and the internet lit up with new westerners positing the cause, all of which signal a big shift in our cultural memory of what's normal in the West's environment.
The whole country just experienced a cold snap where many of us got snow, and the American south most definitely lost their buttered minds over low temperatures of around +20°F. Here in the American West, we had a whole different comedy, most of which played out in the comment sections on the internet. As our media sources revealed their abject illiteracy when it comes to climate science, even the National Weather Service (NWS) got in the mix to dither the message on the difference between “weather” and “climate” for a public already struggling with science literacy. Yeah, things got really, really stupid. And the root of the problem is far more interesting than most appeared to notice.
Skirting all of the meteorology jargon about bomb cyclones and the polar vortex, this weather boils down to a couple of interesting details here on the Front Range of Colorado. The first is that we had a temperature drop of over 45°F in under an hour. The second interesting detail is our low temperatures near -25°F, as measured at Denver International Airport (DIA). Definitely interesting, and definitely something to know if you’re sleeping out on the streets or caught unaware in shorts and sandals.
As media sources such as the Denver Post and most of our news stations started talking about the forecast, the first thing that happened were the climate change comments. Queue the now-expected bilateral idiocy – “It’s climate change, idiot!” and “So much for global warming! More like global cooling!!!” The internet acted as its usual conduit for both sides of the U-shaped idiot-parabola that illustrates the propensity of the mass public to speak up and take a hard-line position about something they fully do not understand.
In some of the more interesting comments, I noticed many people declaring their position as speaking from the platform of science – and relying on the data! In these cases, the weather hadn’t arrived yet and they had all declared their position on whether this was a climate change-caused weather event.
While the various staphylococcal-infected fat folds of the internet were booming with discussion about this weather event being climate change (or not), some of us sat back and watched the comedy unfold, quickly spotting the misinformation spinners. Also, as expected, those wrong were often the fastest and most prolific commenters.
The most interesting one I tortured myself with was one on a regional newspaper article about the rarity of this event, and someone with a climate-related username (omitting that username and source to not bring light to spreaders of misinformation) who declared it a climate change-caused event, with the ensuing hegemonic pile-on of like-minded ideologues. Their position was that this temperature change was the biggest shift in history and is clearly evidence of climate change. Then, they proceeded to go after any dissenter who commented anything else.
Not at all to say the commenter may not be right – it could be a climate change-caused event. But there’s an inherent problem with these kinds of declarations from a scientific standpoint; It takes significant time to determine if a weather event is influenced by a changing climate, or if it falls into the range of normal. Also, the forecast had not yet come to fruition, so the event didn’t even have the chance to become climate-relevant data.
Perhaps most importantly, this weather event was within the range of normal temperature for this region and time of year. And the science behind the measurement methods and history was entirely glossed over by the news sources, NWS outreach communicators, and the vigilante commenters of the internet back-alleys.
The most fascinating misstep across the entire reporting, commenting, and science outreach landscape was the total absence of any discussion about temporal and spatial measurement capabilities and how those have changed in recent years. After all, they were talking about a weather event having totally new dimensions in history. Take a quick pause on that word – history - it’s a statement of temporal scale.
Climate data barely becomes useful on five year scales and at minimum tends to need good data on scales more like 10, 25, and 50+ years, with every day typically being only one data-point. As with most sciences, the more data points (or “sample size”) the better. Larger time (temporal) scales provides more potential data to analyze and lends to a more solid understanding of the phenomena (in this case, weather and climate).
The single most interesting thing about the disjointed discourse on this weather event was that everybody took a position, but not a single source, commenter, or science reporter asked or discussed how recently the weather stations started being able to take highly reliable measurements and recording them automatically with a very high temporal resolution.
Temporal resolution is the frequency a data sample is taken over time. As in, an instrument might take a reading once a minute or once a week or even month. Similarly, spatial resolution is the same thing over a geographic area – how many places do we have on the ground that can take measurements. Combined, you have data gathered over time and space to help inform what’s happening on broader scales, which varies by the need and capabilities of the instrumentation.
The capabilities of NOAA and the NWS to take high resolution measurements in time and space for things like local area temperature are barely old enough to fit into a viable climate dataset. They have high-tech satellites, the weather stations are state of the art, and there are more and better ground-based weather stations than at any point in history. Which makes our understanding of today’s weather very different from our ability to understand what’s normal in relation to the complete climate of a region.
The weather instrumentation at DIA was the one used for all of these declarations in Colorado about this being a climate change-driven event and record. Which is hilarious because the weather station in question was installed no earlier than 1995, which at the time of writing is only 27 years. That weather station has undoubtedly undergone multiple iterations and upgrades, allowing it to gather a higher resolution time-series with greater precision than ever before.
The wildest part of all of this is that prior to minute-by-minute data gathering, our understanding of scientifically-viable data on temperature may have only been minimum and maximum per day, and has increased over time to allow for remote, minute-level data to be gathered for quick recognition and analysis. In essence, before this technology was available, we don’t know how quickly temperatures have dropped in the past – even the NWS can only make these declarations on scales of a day.
The weather change was undoubtedly fascinating – experiencing the temperature change so quickly was definitely memorable. But it wasn’t outside the realm of normal. It was so not outside the realm of normal, the NWS registered Denver’s low temperature as 8th lowest since viable measurements started in the 1870s.
In fact, the only truly weird thing about this event that will register for our local climate science is how we seem to be having fewer of these types of dramatic temperature shifts.
Take a look for yourself – click the “Coldest Temperatures” tab on this NWS page:
Now that we have the science out of the way, including the highlight of a pretty clear gap in the critical thinking capabilities of the herd, let’s talk about the public response.
The public’s response to this weather shift was abject insanity. The only thing more ludicrous was the buying of toilet paper due to the COVID-19 pandemic. My partner’s coworkers were genuinely concerned for her and suggested that she take some time off to go out and get supplies. Really …
The news stations were also talking about the weather change “dumping large amounts of snow” - their words. The snow they’re talking about was 4-9 inches along the Front Range of Colorado. As in, under one foot of fluffy dry powder snow that you can shovel off your driveway in a matter of minutes … without back pain because it’s so light you can move it with a broom. Most of us don’t even start to wonder if we should drive in it until it’s at least 24 inches deep.
Observing this whole situation unfold should cause all rooted Westerners to pause and wonder what the hell is going on. All of the news stories broadcasting a message of fear were entirely crafted and delivered by transplants. I checked. The Denver Post, a once alright regional newspaper, is now spreading perspectiveless misinformation about weather events … as something to fear. We should fear the “dumping” of two to nine inches of snow in Colorado? We should fear temperatures dropping into the range of normal? Really?! We should fear what’s normal here …
Dissection of every dimension of this three day weather event where our temperatures dropped into the range of normal for this time of year and offered very mild snowfall, reveals that the environment here is no longer culturally ingrained in those occupying the West. Not to mention the total breakdown of reason at every level. The news fueled the internet troll commenters, and provided an opportunity for even the NWS to spread fear-born and perspectiveless messaging. How did we get to a point where something that is entirely normal, is something that so many misunderstand, misconstrue, and misconceive?
The great point of interest on this subject is how normal a weather event like this is here in the interior West. Those of us rooted here have been aware of the possibilities since birth, and our parents’ taught us how to live well among these conditions. The absence of minute-resolution temperature data for longer than about 25 years makes the local and traditional knowledge on the subject pretty much the only data we have to fill in the gaps in the precise and automated weather records. And, even then, not many people are able to say with any certainty how quickly the temperature dropped that one time in 1936 – because it wasn’t measured in minutes.
Whether someone falls on the side of the idiot parabola where we call every unfamiliar weather event “climate change,” or they’re on the other side where climate change is denied, those in the middle should be scratching their heads on this one … how did the information about this incident get so out of hand? Everyone from the NWS to our local newspapers to residents lost their minds. Nobody even once stopped to recognize that these types of weather events are not just normal in this region – they’re frequent.
Let’s take a moment to recognize how so much traffic and feverish response to a weather event that falls within the range of normal in the West is a sign of a cultural paradigm shift. I was raised knowing that the temperature could and would shift quickly on a regular basis — I was acculturated to this. I inherently know that snow could start falling unexpectedly, in part because weather forecasts has never been able to adequately understand the complexities of the geography and climate of the interior West to provide a clear and accurate prediction. I’ve always carried a sleeping bag in my car, a spare camp stove, and water – because I know this environment is vastly more unpredictable than the flat-lands those now in political and discursive power in our region came from seem to understand.
Don’t believe it’s pretty normal? Take a look at these records from the NWS — there are so many days with a 55°F temperature shift in a single day, they don’t even list anything below that, with temperature shifts topping above the 80°F range. That’s a direct result of the interior West being an interior-continental environment, which experiences vastly more variability than that of the ocean-temperature regulated coasts.
https://www.weather.gov/bou/denvertemperaturechanges
The drop in temperatures and snowfall we experienced between December 20th and 23rd, 2022 resulted in only making the third most rapid temperature decline in a day in recorded history (since 1872), and the recorded low is tied with four other events, putting it in the 8th to 12th place on lowest temperatures in Denver since 1872. The only dimension of this event worth a deep dive on is how odd it is that we haven’t had many of these really big temperature drops more recently, and why almost all of the records happen to be from the late 1800s and early 1900s, with very little in the way of record matching or exceeding since. Even then, let’s leave that level of analysis to the scientists who are studying our regional climate, rather than the comment sections of the internet where even intellectual indigents have a voice.
The Fleeting West is written by a rooted Westerner with an ingrained understanding of the western environment and a long history in the environmental sciences — and no patience for misinformation and broken discourses.