Calendar Year 2014 First Year On Record Temperatures Never Dropped Below Zero In Anchorage, Alaska; Random Update On Building Permits For Dickinson, ND; January 3, 2015

The Dickinson Press is reporting building permit statistics for 2013.

The city issued 314 building permits to date as of the end of November, down slightly from the 366 issued by the same time last year. A total of 381 permits were sold in 2013; final numbers for 2014 aren’t yet available.

So, I guess we can wait for another news story when the final 2014 data is in. More:

Almost 270 single-family structure permits were issued, compared to 277 by November last year. Meanwhile, 68 commercial permits were issued in 2013, compared to just 32 in 2014.  

Dickinson has yet to beat the record for permit values set in 2012, when the 783 permits issued totaled $389 million. As of November, permit values stood at just over $205 million, behind the roughly $309 million at the same time in 2013, but well ahead of the $123 million in permit values seen in 2011 near the start of the boom.

Dickinson wasn’t the only Oil Patch city to see some slowed growth over 2013.

In October 2014, according the most current data available online, the city of Williston issued 91 permits with a total value of $29 million, compared to October 2013, when the city issued 142 permits totalling $42 million.

As Don noted, the boom must be over. LOL.

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Global Warming

Anchorage Warming

The Washington Post is reporting:

The coldest it has been on this day in Anchorage, Alaska, since 1954 is 20 degrees Fahrenheit below zero. The coldest it has been on New Year's Eve in that same time period is even colder: -25. But this year, the lows are expected to be 33 and 27 degrees respectively -- meaning that 2014 will be the first year on record that the temperature didn't drop below zero in Anchorage, Alaska.

This was a front-page story in today's Los Angeles Times which also noted, without sourcing, that polar bears were also decreasing in number.

Chicago is the new Anchorage. Weather.gov is reporting (a dynamic link): Chicago will drop below zero degrees on Tuesday.

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At Least It's Hard To Catch

9:08 p.m. Pacific Time -- Tweeting now: American health worker exposed to Ebola in Sierra Leone to arrive Sunday at Nebraska Medical Center to undergo observation; patient is not ill and is not contagious, hospital official says - @NebraskaMed