Heat

Having lived 4 of the last 5 years in San Francisco I got used to the relative boringness of Bay Area weather which consists mostly of non-seasonal coolish weather year round, with a mix of fog and sun wherever you go. The difference between day and night is 10-15 degrees and so is the difference between summer and winter.

Philadelphia has been a wildly different story so far. Last summer was like the European Mini Ice Age with highs cracking 90 only one week in August that I can remember and a pretty consistent track of cool temperatures and steady doses of record-setting rainfall. This continued in the winter with the all-time record setting 10 feet of snow that we got in Center City. And why stop there, thought Mother Nature, before besieging the city with it's hottest summer in a decade and the 8th hottest since regular temperature recording began as a second act.

Critics of global-warming would point to the 10 feet of snow and say, look, proof that the temperature isn't rising. Hah Al Gore!

But all that is anecdotal evidence and at that it may even be evidential support of the data. All we know is that we're putting more energy into the system and what that brings in the local experience of global warming is unpredictable, but more frequent and violent extremes, mood swings if you will, is a likely outcome.