TheClimateChanger

Is the 62" at Arlington plausible? Taunton reached 45" and Ashburnham 48" at the same time. How about the 60" at Washington 2 in 1963? Snow depth reached 4 feet at West Cummington at the same time. Also, two locations (Hoosac Tunnel and Adams) reached 50" depth in 1947. I knew 1947-1948 was a doozy, but I guess 1946-1947 was quite harsh as well. The most recent 50" depth was at Boxford 2.4S - a CoCoRaHS observer - in 2015. A number of 40"+ depths were recorded that winter, including 45" at Blue Hill Coop.

Here are the candidates for highest snow depth in Massachusetts. The first three are data entry errors and can be excluded. The next three are legitimate, in the sense that they are what was reported in those winters from those locations, but they could be other than data entry errors.

Isn't the more likely explanation that the snowfall totals were underdone and only given as change in depth?

Looking at the numbers, map looks pretty accurate. For the period since December 15, Omaha had it warmest mean high temps (by more than 2F!). With Des Moines in 4th place by the same metric: Moline officially in 13th place by this metric, but 4 of those years predate the start date of IEM's analysis. So 9th warmest since 1893.

Updated through today: The commentary on the original post is kind of funny. FFS, how much hotter do the Iowans want? Not every period needs to be record breaking, does it? Source: IEM :: 2026-01-07 Feature - Quite Warm Three Weeks

Nice. I wanted to bring up the insects I've been seeing but I figured I'd be accused of lying, so it's nice to see others are seeing them in their homes and backyards. I had a massive moth fly in last week (thought it was a bat - lol), ticks on the Christmas decorations and, yes, a mosquito tonight as I let the dog back in. And there were dandelions in the lawn on Christmas day. "BuT iT's ThE cOlDeSt WiNtEr EvEr"

Wow, they need to expand that y-axis. We're not seeing the full ensemble mean spread for late summer because it's cutoff by the current y-axis. Some of those individual model runs must be at or near BOE criteria as well.

CFSv2 forecasting a "blue ocean event" for this summer:

Same story in the District, where the 10-year period ending 12/31/2025 narrowly beat the 10-year period 12/31/2024. I wonder if 2017-2026 will outdo 2016-2025 and 2015-2024. Will be interesting to see. At least 22.2" is needed to avoid a new record - a very solid tally for the District.

While we watch the digital snowfall totals pile up and hope some of that comes into fruition, I thought it would be a good time to take a look back at the historic 10-year snow drought. Very impressive numbers, and we will need some fairly hefty snowfall in 2026 just to keep pace - especially at Baltimore, where nearly three feet (35.1") would need to fall just to prevent 2017-2026 from being even less snowy than 2016-2025. To put that into perspective, only 18 calendar years at Baltimore have seen more than 35.1" of snow!

As our historical snow drought enters yet another year, I thought I'd take a look at the numbers at Philadelphia. Very impressive, with the most recent 10 years checking in as the least snowy on record. 2026 will need at least 27.5" of snow during the calendar year to avoid a new futility record. That's a respectable tally, so it's possible that 2017-2026 could be even less snowy than 2016-2025. Stay tuned!

The post was referring to CONUS temperatures. While Alaska is part of the US, Canada is a separate country and has not, in fact, been annexed as of 1/2/2026. If we are going to include other countries, might as well tack on Mexico, which has been scorching. Or just do the entire Northern Hemisphere, which has been consistently running more than 1C above the 1981-2010 mean. http://www.karstenhaustein.com/reanalysis/gfs0p5/ANOM2m_mollw/ANOM2m_f144_mollw.png

Ice advancing quickly now. Erie more than 1/4 ice covered, as of today, which is 9% higher than the 53-year mean. The thaw next week should trim that back.

Mesoscale discussion #1 of 2026: