As I was watching the British Open (golf) last week.....

being held at Royal Birkdale Golf Course in Central England --- I couldn't help but notice the golfers were all bundled up in jackets instead of polo shirts, wool pull down caps instead of baseball caps, and the fans were even wearing scarves. Highs were in the mid-fifties to low sixties. Summers weren't that cool when I lived there 50 years ago..... especially mid July!

Then today I noticed this article from the Anchorage Daily News:

Gloomy summer headed toward infamy
CHILLY: Anchorage could hit 65 degrees for fewest days on record.

By GEORGE BRYSON
gbryson@adn.com

(07/24/08 00:10:35)
The coldest summer ever? You might be looking at it, weather folks say.

Right now the so-called summer of '08 is on pace to produce the fewest days ever recorded in which the temperature in Anchorage managed to reach 65 degrees.

That unhappy record was set in 1970, when we only made it to the 65-degree mark, which many Alaskans consider a nice temperature, 16 days out of 365.

This year, however -- with the summer more than half over -- there have been only seven 65-degree days so far. And that's with just a month of potential "balmy" days remaining and the forecast looking gloomy.

National Weather Service meteorologist Sam Albanese, a storm warning coordinator for Alaska, says the outlook is for Anchorage to remain cool and cloudy through the rest of July.

"There's no real warm feature moving in," Albanese said. "And that's just been the pattern we've been stuck in for a couple weeks now."

In the Matanuska Valley on Wednesday snow dusted the Chugach. On the Kenai Peninsula, rain was raising Six-Mile River to flood levels and rafting trips had to be canceled.

So if the cold and drizzle are going to continue anyway, why not shoot for a record? The mark is well within reach, Albanese said:

"It's probably going to go down as the summer with the least number of 65-degree days."

MEASURING THE MISERY

In terms of "coldest summer ever," however, a better measure might be the number of days Anchorage fails to even reach 60.

There too, 2008 is a contender, having so far notched only 35 such days -- far below the summer-long average of 88.

Unless we get 10 more days of 60-degree or warmer temperatures, we're going to break the dismal 1971 record of only 46 such days, a possibility too awful to contemplate.

Now, I ain't no meteorologist, or even a local weatherman - but it sure does make Ole' Pecoz wonder where all this whinin' about global warming comes from when two locations of about the same longitude 10,000 miles apart are suffering from some of the coldest July weather in years. But I'd bet a nickel to a horse droppin' that if I posed this question to Gorebot or some other carbon crazed zealot - they'd just look at me and say something brilliant like: "See, there's proof that automobiles are screwing up the worlds weather"!, or somethin like that.

What do you think, Pilgrims?