Tallahassee has four seasons, and sometimes they offer extreme variations.
Despite a myriad of dripping faucets, a lot of properties around the Big Bend had busted pipes during last weekend’s deep freeze.
Then, many utility customers received alerts in error from the City of Tallahassee about water meters showing 24 hours of continuous use. The City apologized, and fortunately the power stayed on. That’s one of the topics of the Speaking Of Radio Hour.
"We've got our generating units operating the way we need them to, and our staff is prepared to handle these situations," says City of Tallahassee Electric & Gas General Manager Tony Guillen. "While there are obviously risks with the high loads...we have plans in place in case things occur so we can recover as quickly as possible."
"We hit our fifth highest all time usage on Sunday morning," Guillen says, followed by the seventh highest usage on Monday morning.
Now there's word of more freezing temperatures on the way. Can we hope for flurries again?
"There are some models that continue to show this cold, unsettled pattern remaining over the eastern United States," says Florida Public Radio Meteorologist Andrew Wulfeck. "It's going to depend on where those storm tracks are. If they are further down towards the south, then yes, we will be on the edge of that rain-snow line."
"Meteorological winter runs from December 1 through the end of February," Wulfeck says, but he offers a caveat. "In Tallahassee and in the panhandle region, we've set more records for record highs so far this winter than record lows."
That's what FSU professor and climate scientist Jeff Chanton is observing as well.
"The climate is very noisy. There's a lot of variation in the climate, and variability is a really hard thing to measure," Chanton says. "We still have cold extremes, but those cold extremes are not as cold as they used to be or as long as they used to be."
"I always tell my classes for environmental data, you really have to have a long term record because it's hard to tell the signal from the noise," Chanton says. "So the weather that we're experiencing now, that's noise. But the trend is still warming... When you take the overall mean temperature of the planet, the warmest three years have been the last three."
Click LISTEN above to hear the full conversation.
