TimB

The obviously very scientific iPhone weather app has me finally reaching 73 by next Thursday, but of course by then 73 is normal. Barring a pretty serious forecast bust, today will be day 7 of not reaching 60, meaning we’ll join 1989, 1960, 1954, 1929 and 1917 as the only years where we’ve gone a full week in May without hitting 60. Looks like a 25-30 year event to me.

Of course it’s always better when it’s the Euro showing the weather you want, or in this case everything but the GFS. I’d guess it will still fall short of 80 next Thursday afternoon but I’d probably put money on it not being 44.

I think you’re in luck: ...but maybe this is still a possibility:

And therein lies the problem. Most non-weather people (and especially anti-science people) won’t even notice that there is less severe weather in the Midwest than there used to be, let alone see it as an effect of AGW. Even if they do, this particular issue isn’t one that will make people say “we MUST do something.” On that subject, we’ve been fortunate not to have heatwaves like the one in Europe in 2019 literally frying people to death, but sadly it’ll probably take a few of these in quick succession to really get Americans on board with doing our part to stop AGW (and even that might not change a lot of people’s minds), and by then it’ll be way too late.

Ah, and that’s the problem. We all know when this pattern flips it’s going to flip hard and we’ll get very few days in that optimal range.

It’s probably the standard-bearer for cold in the second half of May in recent times. There were 4 consecutive days (5/18-21) where the temperature didn’t get above 52, we dropped to freezing on the 19th, 21st and 22nd and had a trace of snow on the 21st. I’d say one of those rare once or twice in a lifetime events and almost certainly not going to happen this month - the GFS has already joined the camp of most other models predicting things to go back to normal or even above by the second half of next week. Also, we hit 90 degrees 24 times in the summer of 2002, so a cold snap in May is meaningless.

On the one hand, I can get behind that. On the other hand, moving the goalposts cheapens the value of the increasingly rare colder than average month.

Think 2002.

Pittsburgh +2.7

We also know there’s at least somewhat of a seasonal component to this thing. South Dakota has similar leadership in a cold climate that actually has seasons and has failed miserably with covid. You just don’t hear about it as much because South Dakota is an afterthought to the vast majority of Americans.

Any evidence to back up your claim that Florida’s case numbers are in any way tied to “northerners”?

Plot twist: below average in number of days that don’t reach 90. Just watch how hard this pattern flips when the heat arrives.

Purely for entertainment purposes because this is: 1) the 6z 2) GFS 3) at hour 312 4) on May 23rd But lock this in, please.

You lost me with this ridiculous, nonsense insinuation by the WSJ that we use the term “climate deniers” in a deliberate attempt to equate people who don’t believe in climate change to Holocaust deniers. On second thought, one could successfully make the argument that both are equally wrong, detrimental to society, and sociopathic, so if the shoe fits.

Also one of only three dates in May that has never hit 90. Statistical anomalies are one of the (many) things I enjoy about weather. Speaking of, it looks like we will set a daily record today (precip).

A high of 43 (if we don’t get any higher before midnight) for the 3rd time in the past two Mays after going 54 years without a high that cold in May is a little shocking, but I’m on the list of people who will take it. Of course I think one of those days last year was sunny and beautiful in the afternoon and the other was hardly a washout either.

May 9th has some of the hardest May records to break from both a cold and snow perspective. Record snowfall of 3.1” is much more than any other day in May, the record low max of 40 has been reached twice on the 9th and never on any other day in May, and 3 of the 4 times the May record daily mean temp of 35.5 has been reached have occurred on the 9th (including last year). But yes, we did get oh so close to that perfect setup to get a rare measurable snowfall in May for the 7th time on record.

CPC’s 8-14 day outlook seems to give us a shot at getting back toward normal for the month.

I could make a case for either one being logical and am genuinely curious where the meteorological community stands on that one.

Relative to 1991-2020. -1.9 relative to the 1981-2010 normals that were in place at the time. Regardless, we had a very warm back half of the month which is of course no guarantee this time.

Remember last year? We sure made a run for it and ended up less than two degrees below average despite the 2nd coldest first two weeks of May on record. And through one week of May we’re running 4.5 degrees ahead of last year. Today is warmer than last May 8th and tomorrow will be warmer than last May 9th, so I think below average is still more likely than above average when it’s all said and done, but never say never. Edit: of course that was a -1.9 anomaly against the normals that were in place at the time. Would have been a -3.0 anomaly against the new normals, since May is one of the months that warmed the most. This cold snap will be remembered maybe not for being brutally cold, but for its longevity. Even in that brutally cold first half of May last year, we never strung together three consecutive days where we didn’t get to 60. Today is day 4 of that streak. But we had some record cold last year and we’ll fall way short of that this year (though Wednesday’s record low of 33 is fairly soft and I wouldn’t rule out getting close to that).

Some runs of some models have us soaring into the 60s in the warm sector tomorrow night just before midnight (I’d bet on that based on climo). Otherwise I got nothing.

Probably accurate. Pittsburgh hit freezing on the 19th, 21st, and 22nd that year (only that late or later in 1963 and 1956, which I didn’t experience).

18z HRRR paints a nice localized but very impressive accumulation west of Chicago... Edit: and across northern Indiana into Ohio.

But it’s been 85 and sunny on several days already in a few places in this subforum. In my mind, cutoff low -> 80 and sunny -> cutoff low -> 80 and sunny -> cutoff low is not one but several pattern changes. There’s post after post about how dry it’s been in many locations this spring. That certainly doesn’t indicate a pattern of constant cutoff lows.