Overcast with thick storm clouds, coupled with a gusty wind this early Wednesday on California’s north coast. Supposedly, we’re in for a good-sized drenching sometime today and to continue on into Thursday — and snow, too, maybe two-to-five inches at some higher elevations.

Despite it all, once again we’re cooking — via Climate Central: ‘This January was the warmest January on record by a large margin while also claiming the title of most anomalously warm month in 135 years of record keeping. The month was 1.13°C — or just a smidge more than 2°F — above normal. That tops December’s record of being 1.11°C — or just a smidge below 2°F — above average.’

And maybe more ominous: ‘According to NASA, temperatures in some parts of the Arctic averaged up to 23°F above normal for the month. No, that’s not missing a decimal point.’

(Illustration above found here).

Some details:

The first half of February has continued the trend of pronounced heat in the Arctic with no signs of it letting up soon.
The western U.S., which was also a hot spot in January, is continuing to see abnormal warmth this February as is the East Coast after a brief cold blast this weekend.
Global heat is somewhat a symptom of El Niño.
The climate phenomenon of warm water in the eastern tropical Pacific might have passed its peak, but is still providing a little boost to global temperatures.
The big driver, though, is human-caused climate change, according to a Climate Central analysis.
With January off to record heat, it reinforces the likelihood that 2016 could be yet another record-setting year.
The U.K. Met Office has already released its forecast for 2016. It expects the globe to “be at least as warm, if not warmer” than 2015, according to Chris Folland, a Met Office research fellow.
If 2016 sets another global temperature record, that would make it back-to-back-to-back years of record setting hot temperatures.
That’s never happened before.

Really…absolutely amazing, in a bad way — more from Mashable:

The data, which is subject to adjustment as scientists refine their analysis, shows that the combination of accelerated manmade global warming from the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal and oil, is combining with a record strong El Niño to bump up temperatures to never-before-seen levels since at least 1880.
…
This makes it the first month to exceed 2 degrees Fahrenheit above average.
December’s global average temperature came in just under this, at 1.11 degrees Celsius above average, which translates to nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit above normal.
…
The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), which is another agency that keeps tabs on global average surface temperatures, also found that January 2016 was the warmest such month on record.
…
The El Niño event in the equatorial tropical Pacific Ocean is playing a role in boosting global temperatures, since the presence of unusually mild waters across such a vast and strategic expanse of the Pacific acts as a heat pump, effectively transferring back into the atmosphere some of the excess energy that has built up in the oceans due to global warming and natural processes.
Lest one pin all the blame on El Niño, though, it’s noteworthy that no past El Niño year — not even years with El Niño events as strong as this one (the only comparable event occurred in 1997-98) — have come close to the temperature anomalies seen during the past several months.

Most-likely humanity’s biggest problem ever, at least in all of our so-called recorded history — climate change. The horror is it’s a two-fanged animal, one the actual, physical reality, and the other, a hampering, way-wide range of this kind of shit (CBS): ‘In the first nationally representative survey of public middle- and high-school teachers in the United States, only 30 percent of teachers said they emphasize that humans are causing climate change by burning fossil fuels. Another 12 percent said they don’t mention human causes, and 31 percent said they “teach the controversy” by telling students that some scientists think climate change is human-caused, while others disagree.’

Yeah, three-percent — 97 percent say we’re fucked…

Right now — close to what you’d call ‘late morning,’ and there’s a flowing gusty wind across the coastline. Cloudy and rain-looking, though, big, clear blue-spot-openings allow an occasional few minutes of way-bright sunshine.
Melodramatic ambiance, weather-wise…