LibertyBell

The patterns are astonishingly similar, dryness on both the east and west coast and wetness in between. winter 1984-1985 was cold and dry too (until February when we warmed up very quickly after a frigid January with one of our strongest arctic shots in my lifetime.)

Wow Don, I see there's a lot of years between 1984-1985 and 2024-2025 even though the rainfall amounts were only off by about 2.5 inches. Was September 1984-August 1985 the driest such period during the 1980s decade?

Frost in the Poconos (MPO) Don?

Who had our coldest temperature this morning -- was it FOK or MJX? It's usually one of the two. MVY in SE NE is also very cold on such mornings.

This is very disappointing, downsloping flow is how we get our hottest summers (like 2010) but now it gives us tainted yellow skies and air pollution.

Are we more sensitive to drought now than we were in the 1980s? I feel like the kind of rainfall we are experiencing right now is similar to what we had back then but it's being taken more seriously now?

But yesterday was cool too, under 80 is good, below 70 not so much. Today is at or above 70 so it's okay but not as pristine as yesterday was.

Too cloudy, yesterday was much better.

wild I don't remember 2000 being so dry (or hot for that matter)

1999 and 2002 were two of my favorite summers, I don't mind yellow or brown grass, it feels nice and crunchy How does this summer compare for dryness to 2010 where you are Chris??

I'm glad to see we are going back to a drier pattern on the east coast, some of those high rainfall flooding years were truly unbearable

For our area specifically though, while the number of heatwaves might be getting higher, their average length is much shorter than it used to be. So we are getting 3-4 heatwaves of 3-4 days each in length in our hottest summers vs 2 heatwaves of 7+ days in length like we used to in some of our hottest summers (1944, 1949, 1953, 1955, 1966, 1980, 1983, 1988, 1993, 1999, 2002). The last of the type of summers that had multiple 7+ day heatwaves was 2002 here.

I don't mind maximum temperatures Don because using maximum temperatures removes urban heat island from the equation. Also it's useful to compare hot weather by maximum temperature only because higher amounts of humidity will also increase minimum temperatures, which is why H20 is considered a greenhouse gas even more potent than C02. An example: tropical rain forests are extremely warm because of their very high mean temperatures, but the extremity of hot can't hold a candle to the kind of extreme heat you get in parts of the Middle East or Death Valley for that matter. I find our biggest heatwaves occurred in the 1940s and 1950s, the 1930s did not have the kind of extreme and long heatwaves that years like 1944, 1948, 1949, 1953, 1955, etc. had. The total number of 90 degree days was eventually exceeded, but not until 1983 and then 2010 did this take place. Our climate for our local area anyway seems to warm in stair steps. The summers are getting hotter, but not a straight line. There is an extremely hot summer and then many summers below that threshold before the next big increase occurs. Meanwhile the length of heatwaves of a summer like 1953 has still not been approached. Or the number of 100 degree days for that matter (tied between 1953 and 1966 at 4.)

Records:Highs:EWR: 92 (1983)NYC: 93 (1983)LGA: 90 (1983)JFK: 85 (1997) Back in those days NYC was hotter than either EWR or LGA lol.

didn't we have over 2 inches of rain just a few weeks ago Chris??

wow 1983 truly was a historic summer, I miss that kind of sustained heat..... on the flip side, the cold of 1993-94 got started on this date. we did flip back to Indian summer in November with our latest 80 on record on the 15th, but it was just a blip in time for the NYC Marathon. The heat only lasted 2 days.

deep blue skies are the best!! tomorrow won't be as good with high clouds coming in early

High clouds coming in tomorrow morning so it won't be as nice as it is today. I noticed that SST have already started dropping and are in the mid to upper 60s now, even along the Jersey shore?

The funny thing is NYC and LGA bringing up the rear in temperatures. NYC seems to have the lowest temperatures no matter the wind direction lol.

Know why the 2 day snowfalls are not any different from the daily snowfall in the more recent period, Don? It's because we very rarely have 2 day snowfalls anymore =\ And especially not in November and April.

I wonder if this is caused by gravitational changes, the sun has an elliptical path around the center of the galaxy so when we pass through areas with a higher stellar density it could influence the tilt..... it could also lead to more ELE (period mass extinctions seem to happen every 20-25 million years or so.)

what causes changes in the tilt? is this a cyclic change?

Laki (1782), Tambora (1815) and Krakatoa (1886) also had something to do with it.

Volcanic eruptions might been a factor in some of those winters, but it doesn't explain the entire dataset of the 1800s being colder than what started happening during the 1930s either. The most notable volcanic episode was Laki in 1782-83, the winter that followed its eruption was likely the coldest and snowiest winter either North America or Europe has ever had. Washington kept quite the diary of that winter from Morristown NJ. I wonder what the temperature had to be to make the ink in his pen freeze? The lowest documented temperature from that winter that we have is -16 F from NYC just a degree colder than the -15 F that was recorded in February 1934. The 30s were a period of extremes.... Even more notable than the extreme cold was the over one dozen blizzards reported by Washington in our area in that historic winter.

Last year had widespread 80s in November, but I don't think it ever reached 85 did it Don?