cmillzz

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

Idk, we've had plenty of very warm months since then. Feb 2024 featured similar anomalies to March 2012 actually in parts of the Midwest. Fargo had a +17.5 departure and broke its previous warm Feb record by like 3 degrees, which is 2012-esque.

LOT sticking with their guns, smart move imo.

ORD just tagged 60. Should be near freezing there by midnight though

LOT generally agrees with you. Seems like they're not really buying into the high totals the Euro has for the western suburbs too.

The AI models handled this storm very poorly, kind of disappointing tbh.

Guidance has also backed off on the blocking a bit.

never said otherwise, but it’s especially important for this event. Good thing that doesn’t look to be the case here (with the first band anyhow), though seems to be setting up a bit farther south than modeled, so the heart of the TC metro may miss out on the biggest totals.

lol, so bad

Honestly so much bust potential with this though. If the defo band fails to materialize, going to bust hard in many spots.

Last Feb was actually a better winter month overall for NE IL/SE WI, but for the entire winter I guess you can make the argument that last winter was worse. Not setting the bar very high here though.

Going to be a nowcast event it seems. Still sticking with my call though.

Like you said, day 10, so who knows. Feels like it makes sense to lean warmer though unless there ends up being a massive Greenland block.

Chicago hit 87, just one degree off the all-time monthly record. Can also guarantee that isn’t happening either, but another string of 60s and 70s would be nice.

You can see the huge temp gradient in Wisconsin as a result of the big snowstorm, though I wonder if it’s being overdone to an extent because it should melt relatively quickly.

Yeah, it’s been almost as bad as last winter for N Illinois. Chicago barely saw an inch of snow in February, kind of pathetic tbh.

I never really root for another March 2012 because it did result in an agricultural disaster as we got some cold shots the following April. From a pure meteorology standpoint, however, it was awesome.

There was a study done on the March 2012 heatwave and I believe they concluded that it was a 1 in 4,000 year event at the time. I still think it ruined some people’s perceptions of how a normal spring is supposed to look, even to this day. Then on the flip side you have Feb 2015 which was one of the coldest months in modern history. Not quite as anomalous as March 2012, but still a very impressive month.

The ridge should flex itself eastward at times allowing for brief periods of very mild weather around here, but obviously not as sustained as the west.

Looks right on the money.

For the Midwest, depends how much blocking there is. AI isn't as aggressive with it as the OP Euro, but neither of them have had very stellar performances in the long range as of recent.

GFS did quite a decent job at sniffing it out early, not too shabby at all.