TheClimateChanger

While some like to pretend nothing happened before 1979, never forget that the Arctic sea ice was once FAR, FAR more prolific, encircling Iceland year-round in colder years.

New daily record low sea ice extent:

How's the weather looking in Ann Arbor on Saturday? Hearing rumors of snow for The Game?

Storm of the century raging 75 years ago today, with winds gusting up to 100 mph in New York.

Meteorological winter less than 1 week away!

Interesting. At least at looks to be moving through at a pretty good clip, so might just be a temporary excursion in Phase 8.

Could be a case of delayed, but not denied, as JB often says. I wouldn't throw in the towel just yet. Suspect we'll see some more SE ridge mischief as we head into the month of December.

Thanks for the update, Don. This looks similar to the wintertime pattern I got when I ran the warmest CONUS Novembers forward, with cold in the Upper Midwest and Pacific Northwest. Warm south and east, with a stout SE Ridge. Hoping the ridge is underestimated a bit and milder air is able to infiltrate the Great Lakes region as well as we head into mid December.

Yes, it should break eventually. Not sure about cycles though... I think humans have a tendency to see/hallucinate cycles from random variation. This one might be done, however. I suspect that February 2010 storm may have been our last best chance of breaking this one; however, despite over 20" of snow, it was split fairly evenly over two days, keeping the calendar day total under one foot. Definitely can see each period getting longer... records began in 1880, first streak ends in 1884, then 1890, then 1901, then 1902, then 1913, then a long break ending in 1942, then 1950, then 1960, then 1966, another long break ending in 1993 (Storm of the Century) and none thereafter. If it is the last calendar day with one foot of snow in Pittsburgh history, fitting for it to be the March 1993 Superstorm.

The default setting is no missing days, so it treats any missing date as ending the streak. You have to allow some number of missing days to avoid that.

Incredible stuff, with NHEM anomalies pushing up towards 2C above the 1981-2010 mean as we head towards the end of the month. This has been one heck of a hemispheric heat wave over the last month or so.

Record warmth prevailed across Minnesota yesterday, with record highs of 56F at Minneapolis-St. Paul and 55F at St. Cloud. Fargo reached an incredible 60F, setting a daily record and making yesterday the 3rd latest date in the calendar year on which that temperature milestone was reached or exceeded.

If not for that piddly 0.2" on April 9, we'd be near our longest stretch without measurable snow on record right now, as that was the only measurable snow after March 8.