Hottest year ever update: "In January, Moab’s temperatures never rose above freezing for the entire month. With pipes freezing all over town, many old timers had never seen anything like it"

Weathering Change: Global Warming or Global Weirding?

...“As far as I can remember, it’s the coldest spell we’ve had in a long, long time,” says Ron Pierce, Moab’s weather historian.

Jayne Belnap, a scientist at the Moab research station of the Southwest Biological Science Center, says she is not surprised that there is local “colding” in the midst of global warming. “It was freezing cold this year. What do you mean, global warming? And so, there’s education about that. But I think part of the problem with desert environments is we live in extremes. I talk about it as global weirding.”

That is the weird thing about climate change. As the planet is expected to heat up over the next century by 4-7 degrees Farenheit, it is also expected that local microclimates will change in unexpected ways.

Fluctuations in weather will require communities like Moab to adapt to their own specific challenges. “If our temperatures are going to continue this direction, we need to come up with new standards that cover a colder temperature climate,” says Jeff Foster, Moab’s public works director.