I did this exercise for Montana, which was my home state until 2009, but I have this data for all of the lower 48 states. It was assembled by Bob Tisdale from NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. As Tisdale says on the cover of the book, Extremes and Averages in Contiguous U.S. Climate, this is a “Book that NOAA Should Have Published.” NOAA, however, is a participant in the climate scare scam so even as its scientists and bureacrats are doing real and valuable work, it is not being published. We have to go get it ourselves.
The Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) is a means of measuring dryness. The numbers on the left, or Y Axis, are a span used by Wayne Palmer, with zero being a normal year, and -4 a severe drought. Having lived in Montana from 1950 to 2009, I experienced the majority of this weather. For instance, the red arrow points at 1988, the year of the massive Yellowstone Park fires. Before my time, the 1930s, see how dry it was! That was the Dust Bowl era, and the PDSI for Oklahoma, not shown, reflects this.
In most of the Lower 48, the trend in droughts is down (up on the PDSI scale), meaning fewer droughts and more moisture. Climate alarmists are lying about that fact.
1928 and 2011 appear to be our wettest years. Montana experienced severe forest fires in the early 1900s (Tisdale starts the PDSI in 1918), the 1930s, 1988 and the early 2000s. Forest fires are a product of drought, not much else. Timber companies like to say that fires are a result of poor forest management (i.e., not enough logging). It appears that God is the manager. Complain to Him.
This graph is Montana temperature data for the last 100 years. The top line, orange, is the monthly high temperatures during that time, virtually a straight line. The increase, .075 degree F per decade, is hardly noticeable on the skin.
However, night time temperatures are a different story. There the increase in monthly lows is .47 degree F per decade. Tisdale found this trend throughout the county, and attributes it not to climate change, but rather, to encroaching civilization, larger cities and towns, which are heat sinks, and more golf courses, which hold a lot of moisture, and are therefore warmer.
Note the average trend, in the middle, .206 degree F per decade, is not something to get alarmed about.
I had to scan these pages on to my computer, as Tisdale has not made the work available online. This is because he would rather we purchase his book, which I am glad that I did.
Piece of Mindful 