NWS science officer Steve Zubrick says 138 years of average daily temperature data for Baltimore show warm spikes around Jan. 7 and 22. The fabled "January thaw"? A 2002 journal article says no. The popular notion of a predictable spell of mild weather amid the year's lowest average temperatures just did not hold up to statistical analysis. And there's no known weather mechanism that would explain it. Instead, the apparent spikes in the local data, and the weather lore, seem to be built on chance.

> Read Frank Roylance's blog on MarylandWeather.com