Perspectives and laws on a number of issues, including global warming – now climate change, will take interesting turns after January 20, 2017. Indeed, president-elect Trump has held meetings already with Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio. Both are high-profile, heavy investors in climate change politics and business.

Therefore, to study national weather patterns is relevant, looking first to Missouri, home of the Enterprise.  Farmer’s Almanac website facilitates searches of daily temperatures by zip code, that the National Climatic Data Center has recorded since January 1, 1945.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report, Climate in Missouri:

All of Missouri experiences “extreme” climate events and such events must be considered part of the normal climate (http://www.crh.noaa.gov/Image/dvn/downloads/Clim_MO_01.pdf).

Warsaw holds the record for the coldest temperature recorded in Missouri with -40°F on February 13, 1905. Along with Union, Mo., Warsaw also experienced the hottest recorded temperature of 118°F on July 14, 1954.

Because of their greater populations and the broader impacts of extreme events (albeit ‘normal’ for Missouri), data on three major cities on January 1st – St. Louis in east Missouri, Kansas City in the west, and Springfield in the south, is highlighted for this study.

Recall that in January 2006 Al Gore warned that global warming and greenhouse gases left unchecked would destroy the planet within a decade.

Some consider his work suspect. January 22, 2016, Investors.com, published an article entitled: “Five Ways We Know Al Gore’s Been Running A Global Warming Racket.”  (http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/al-gore-runs-global-warming-racket/).

Others proclaim that Gore has finally been taken seriously. Wired.com’s article on May 24, 2016 claimed: “10 Years After an Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore May Actually Be Winning”  (https://www.wired.com/2016/05/wired-al-gore-climate-change/).

Nevertheless, the charts below tell their own story, at least the part of it about changes over the past 16 years in this part of the country. Not only is the data between and among years useful for detecting trends over time, but the daily temperature changes between high and low are sometimes extreme.

Part II will look at temperature records for the same time period on the East Coast; and Part III, on the West Coast.