August, 2011 has been hot in Meeker, Oklahoma – the closest USHCN station to Oklahoma City. The average high temperature has been 102F.
But August, 1913 was much hotter in Meeker. USHCN raw high temperatures averaged 106.5 degrees.Temperatures were also much hotter and drier during the Dust Bowl, as everyone who has read Steinbeck already knew.
Hansen wrote this in 1999 :
Empirical evidence does not lend much support to the notion that climate is headed precipitately toward more extreme heat and drought. The drought of 1999 covered a smaller area than the 1988 drought, when the Mississippi almost dried up. And 1988 was a temporary inconvenience as compared with repeated droughts during the 1930s “Dust Bowl” that caused an exodus from the prairies, as chronicled in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.
