cmillzz

and the torch did indeed verify with back to back 80s possible today and tomorrow. Chicago should finish the month with a monthly mean max around 55.3, which would be a tie for 5th warmest on record. A few cool days does not negate the fact that it's been objectively very warm overall.

South bend is on track to having a top 10 warmest March this year (7th warmest overall), half the days this month have been 60+ there, wow. It's been an impressively warm March for most, especially with respect to daily maximums. Third very warm March in a row now.

3 degrees off the mark atm, def got closer than you were expecting.

And the vast majority of days in Chicago (ORD anyhow) will be >50° going forward, so I’m not sure what the problem is exactly.

AI GFS did a damn good job here with these temps as the high was indeed in the lower 60s for Chicago on the 19th with 70s in Iowa and 50s in Detroit, very impressive given the lead time. And of course, the cold shot ended up being confined to just the 18th, unsurprisingly.

Think the EPS is getting too carried away with the eastern troughing again on day 5-10, seems over amplified. It’s been doing this for some time now, only to correct warmer once we get inside of hour 120.

March 2023 was very cold in the west though, so completely different patterns.

he’s implying we’re going back into a cold and wintry pattern, which isn’t true at all aside from a couple brief, seasonal cool shots.

not really

My guess is DTW finishes March around +5. Not quite as warm as last year, but I'd still consider that to be a borderline torch.

Damn, even warmer than 2012? That’d be extremely impressive

Seems like they're all clueless to varying degrees.

And it's already been solidly above average over halfway through the month. Quite a different pattern from what we saw this winter with parts of the Northeast actually experiencing the greatest temp departures from normal in the lower 48.

It’s already been a torch month for virtually the entire CONUS and aside from the brief early week cold shot, will continue to torch (except for the far northeast perhaps). Doesn’t need to be 2012 to be defined as a “torch”.

Really wouldn’t be that absurd if it did tbh, especially given how torch days in early spring tend to overperform. I’d say 75+ is certainly in play anyhow.

80 on Sat?

Going to be a huge temp gradient setting up this week between WI and IL

Looks like Green Bay had their second biggest snowstorm on record with 26.1" being the final tally, not too shabby.

I think most people in the east are in spring mode (or should be) at this point after such a great winter that ended on a spectacular note.

Easily warmer than that.

Kind of a yikes here by the Euro, no idea why it was so off-base with this event (though some other models were pretty bad too).

There’s been all this talk about the warmth out west (and rightfully so), but funnily the eastern half of the country has actually been warmer relative to average than the west this month, though that’s going to change soon obviously.

There was a now deleted blog post which talked about the standard deviation and return rate of the event itself being up to 4000 years at the time, which honestly isn’t too far-fetched when you look at some of the records broken. Chicago for example recorded eight days of 80°+ during the event, which has only been done once in APRIL let alone March, and before the heat wave Chicago had only seen like ten 80°+ March days in recorded history. I will say that March has trended quite warm since then, especially in the 2020s where virtually ever March has been warmer than average, and this year is no different.

Not a bad call it appears

Been some questionable trends for sure