Washington, D.C.’s low of 15 degrees was its coldest since March 3, 2009. New York City dropped to 11 degrees and both Baltimore and Philadelphia plummeted to 12 degrees, their most frigid low temperatures since January 24, 2011.
In one breath the WaPo writer talks about "the coldest readings in years." In the next, he states that Washington had colder temperatures 4 years ago and that New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia had colder temperatures 2 years ago.
Technically he's not wrong, but when one says colloquially that a certain event hasn't happened "in years," it usually implies a large number of years, not merely two or four.
So the point here is that this guy is exaggerating the historic significance of the low temperature - consistent with the lefty MSM's pronounced tendency to make a big deal out of something relatively ordinary. The flip side of that is short shrift that the WaPo and its sister "news" outlets will often give to very important stories, of which we can list many. Call it perverted priorities.
If G-d keeps this up, they’ll start talking about a coming new ice age, just like they were in 1977. “In years” is meant to spin some credibility into global warming. It’s a good thing this method of climatology isn’t applied to stock and commodity investing. If all fluctuations are regarded as long-term trends, investors lose everything.
sportscasters do the same thing,i.e. X team hasn’t made the playoffs in YEARS when it turns out to be three years. When *I* say something hasn’t happened ‘in years,’ I mean and have started to just say ‘in decades.’