“It’s like, ‘Jesus, thank you for this wonderful weather,’ ”: NY Times writes about a "postcard-perfect" warm winter day in Kansas City

Temperature Swings Not Uncommon in Kansas City, Missouri - NYTimes.com

KANSAS CITY, Mo...Last week the temperature here dropped to 8 degrees, a low for the month. On Monday, the mercury topped out at 74, breaking a 96-year-old record high for the date.

“It’s like, ‘Jesus, thank you for this wonderful weather,’ ” Larry Newell, 58, said as he sat shirtless on a swiveling exercise chair in a park.
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Naturally, extreme weather and temperature shifts stoke concern over climate change and global warming. While temperatures have risen globally, Mr. Eise said, there are no definitive studies to suggest that the temperature swings in Kansas City are getting worse or that they are the result of climate change.
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As of Sunday, the average temperature here for January was 32.5 degrees, nearly three and a half degrees above the normal January average. But it was nowhere near the all-time-high January average of 60.5 degrees, which happened in 1909, 1944 and 1967. The largest single-day temperature swing on record in January in Kansas City was 57 degrees on Jan. 15, 1953, when the high was 64 degrees and the low was 7.

Around here, where “global warming” can be a bad word, most people seemed to shake off any notion that their postcard-perfect day was part of an ominous, larger climate trend.

“There’s no point in freaking out over every little scientific discovery,” Ms. Blakeman said. “You enjoy these days while you have them because tomorrow it’s going to be negative 20.”