TheClimateChanger

Feels pleasant out there today after yesterday’s chill. Up to 47F at PIT.

Quick, somebody get the "Summer Wheeze" to put him out of his misery already.

2250? That seems rather optimistic.

Holy cow! 62F now at BTV, an astounding 13F above the 130-year-old daily record high.

This looks intense. Not seeing any warnings though. Burlington is up to 58°F, which is 9°F above the 130-year-old daily record high.

Quite mild today. Fort Wayne, Indiana reached a record of 55F, while Detroit fell 1F shy of its record, topping out at 53F. Several other locations were within a couple of degrees of daily records.

The crazy thing is since they switched all the airports at the same time, you wouldn't even notice a problem [except relative to your personal station] unless you compared to cooperative station data. If you only compare to other airports, it looks legitimate. PIT is similar to AGC in both months, and warmer than BTP and AFJ. But if you look into the data, you notice PIT/AGC went from warmest by far to middle-of-the-road. BTP and AFJ went from warmer half of the distribution to among the coldest sites.

This is even more egregious, and it's been like this month after month. The airport sites (WBAN stations) were uniformly the warmest until the switch and now they are not. Notice especially PIT goes from the warmest station in the entire climate district to middle of the road, dropping from about 3F warmer than the nearby Moon Township NWS office site last December to only about 0.5F warmer this December. Note that the Emsworth site had a lot of missing data in 2024, and that's the only one warmer than the two airports. That's an unexplained 2.5F variance at the first order site versus a reliable cooperative station with no change. It's been like this every single month since the change.

Well, I don't have exact numbers. As far as I can find, no analysis was performed before the change. Some sort of pre-switch testing, but no systematic analyses like they had done back in the 1990s. Just very suspicious IMO. Why are all of the airport stations (with the exception of Islip-Macarthur) so much cooler this December (so far) relative to last compared to the cooperative stations? Upton NWS office used to be the coldest by far... Shirley Brookhaven AP was always significantly warmer, now they are almost the same? Westchester even colder now?

Don, I don't put as much stock in the temperatures from the first order sites since the transition to the Vaisala sensors earlier this year. They have consistently been running between about 1-2F cooler relative to cooperative stations in every month since that change.

Low 50s in northern Maine is record/near-record warmth this time of the year. How much hotter does it need to be to qualify for a torch?

BIG changes underway. That snow and ice doesn't stand a chance.

Certainly a big change. International Falls, commonly known as the Icebox of the Nation, soared to an astounding 50F yesterday, obliterating a 112-year-old daily record by 7F. That was the latest 50F reading on record there. For those hoping the snowpack might blunt the coming warmup, that's not a positive development.

Wow, that's a lot of rain on top of the ongoing flooding in the Pacific Northwest.

Looks like the "high water mark" for the cold, so to speak. With upcoming pattern change, final December numbers should be rather ho-hum.

A little dated (from the spring), but I chanced upon this today and I think it's quite relevant. This lines up with what I've been seeing - the common adage "the wet get wetter" just doesn't seem to be accurately reflecting the conditions on the ground. We've now had several years in a row east of the Rockies (the last couple extending all the way to the coast) with fairly extensive drought. While annual precipitation numbers might not be too far from historical means, enhanced evapotranspiration seems to be drawing down surface and ground waters.

Brutal timing for that west coast trough --> central US ridge.