Friday, 4/6

I seem to write this post every April. Only this year, I think we really need it.

Spring seems to not want to, well, spring this year. For the third or fourth year in a row we had a (fairly, for us) mild January and February, only to be followed by a brutal March & (so far) April. And if you look at an extended forecast it doesn't appear as if it'll let up any time soon. However, I have hope that one day soon—before the end of the month—we'll be treated to spring or even summer-like temperatures.

Science says so.

I have a secret to share. I know a dork who, for some reason, has been keeping track of April temperatures for 17 years now. I have no idea why, but this dork noticed that the final day of April 2001 was hot, and ever since has been keeping track of temperatures during the month. I'm not sure why; I think maybe   I   the dork I know needs something better to do with his time. But it's because of this dork's habit that I feel quite confident that we'll see at least one day of 70 degrees before the end of the month.

It's a statistical probability.

Now, the dork's list contains high temperatures for the city of Marquette for each April this project has encompassed. And for almost every single year since 2001 (except for the very cold years of 2004 and 2014), we've had at least one day during the month that the temp hit (or drastically exceeded 80). Don't believe me?

April 30^th, 2001--84 degrees

April 16^th, 2002--84 degrees

April 14^th, 2003--83 degrees

April 18^th, 2005--83 degrees

April 19^th, 2006--75 degrees

April 22^nd, 2007--86 degrees (!)

April 24^th, 2008--72 degrees

April 17^th, 2009--72 degrees

April 16^th, 2010--76 degrees

April 14, 2012--75 degrees

April 12^th, 2015—73 degrees

April 17^th, 2016—80 degrees

April 8^th, 2017—70 degrees.

And those were temperatures in the city of Marquette, not temps away from Lake Superior, where it may have even been warmer. So the dork's list proves two things—one, that the weather were living through right now will not last forever, and two, that someone has to be a special kind of strange to collect the data to put that list together.

I'll let him know the next time I see him.

So keep your fingers crossed. Despite what it's like outside right now, odds are that we're gonna get real warm, real soon. Science and probability say so. And as you can probably guess, for some of us it won't come a day too soon.

Stick those warm thoughts in the back of your mind. This weekend, you may need them!

(jim@wmqt.com)