Here's what climate change looks like

In case you're curious as to just what climate change is going to look like when it really gets cranked up in a few years, here's a sneak preview:

These two maps are from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center. This first one shows the location of each of the 129 daily low temperature records set or tied in the contiguous U.S. in January (the blank circles indicate where a previous record was tied; the circles with an 'X' inside are where a record was broken):

...and this one shows the location of each of the 3,078 daily high temperature records set or tied in the contiguous U.S. in January: There are a few small locations lacking in dots, as you can see--near the Great Salt Lake, southeastern Colorado, northern Illinois, upstate New York, much of Maine--but for the most part, the nation was pretty well saturated with a record number of record high temperatures in January. In fact, some areas were over-saturated: that dark shading in the upper Midwest is where records were so frequent and so many that they're piled one atop another, a thick mound of bizarre, record-breaking midwinter heat.

3,078 highs, 129 lows. That's lopsided. That's startling. And that's what climate change looks like.