TheClimateChanger

You have to admit it's weird. It's like some automated quality control tool came in and completely wiped out the entire storm as though it were a data error.

Oh wait a second!!! They literally deleted all of the observations between 4:51 and 9:51, and from 9:51 to the end of the day. I think they are missing a good chunk of data. May have gotten pruned by some sort of automated algorithm designed to eliminate faulty data since it was so bizarrely out of whack with September climatology. I wish there was a way to get some one to look into this to see why the official records show a modest 52 mph wind gust at PIT and many hours of data are simply stricken.

Maybe this is a Mandela effect? I swear to God in my timeline, Ike was 60+ mph wind gusts. And that's borne out by the newspaper articles of the time. But if you go back and try to pull up observations from the day of Hurricane Ike at the various airports around Pittsburgh today, they are like 40 mph wind gusts maximum observed. I'm so confused.... this is completely baffling? Any insights on this? THIS IS NOT WHAT HAPPENED! WHAT IS GOING ON? ime Temperature Dew Point Humidity Wind Wind Speed Wind Gust Pressure Precip. Condition 10:51 PM 76 °F 68 °F 76 % S 8 mph 0 mph 28.59 in 0.0 in Cloudy 11:51 PM 76 °F 68 °F 76 % S 7 mph 0 mph 28.57 in 0.0 in Mostly Cloudy 12:51 AM 76 °F 67 °F 74 % SSW 9 mph 0 mph 28.56 in 0.0 in Partly Cloudy 1:51 AM 75 °F 67 °F 76 % SSW 10 mph 0 mph 28.55 in 0.0 in Partly Cloudy 2:51 AM 74 °F 67 °F 79 % SSW 8 mph 0 mph 28.54 in 0.0 in Partly Cloudy 3:51 AM 73 °F 67 °F 81 % SSW 8 mph 0 mph 28.53 in 0.0 in Partly Cloudy 4:51 AM 73 °F 66 °F 79 % SSW 6 mph 0 mph 28.53 in 0.0 in Partly Cloudy 5:51 AM 72 °F 66 °F 81 % SSW 7 mph 0 mph 28.53 in 0.0 in Partly Cloudy 6:51 AM 72 °F 67 °F 84 % SSW 8 mph 0 mph 28.54 in 0.0 in Mostly Cloudy 7:51 AM 74 °F 67 °F 79 % SSW 9 mph 0 mph 28.54 in 0.0 in Partly Cloudy 8:51 AM 78 °F 68 °F 71 % SSW 12 mph 0 mph 28.53 in 0.0 in Mostly Cloudy 9:51 AM 79 °F 68 °F 69 % SSW 16 mph 21 mph 28.51 in 0.0 in Mostly Cloudy 10:51 AM 81 °F 68 °F 65 % SSW 16 mph 0 mph 28.48 in 0.0 in Mostly Cloudy 11:51 AM 84 °F 68 °F 58 % SSW 12 mph 0 mph 28.45 in 0.0 in Cloudy 12:51 PM 85 °F 68 °F 57 % S 13 mph 21 mph 28.41 in 0.0 in Mostly Cloudy 1:51 PM 87 °F 66 °F 49 % S 14 mph 20 mph 28.35 in 0.0 in Mostly Cloudy 2:51 PM 86 °F 65 °F 49 % S 17 mph 24 mph 28.30 in 0.0 in Cloudy 3:51 PM 85 °F 65 °F 51 % S 16 mph 28 mph 28.27 in 0.0 in Cloudy 4:51 PM 86 °F 65 °F 49 % S 17 mph 30 mph 28.24 in 0.0 in Cloudy 9:51 PM 72 °F 58 °F 61 % W 20 mph 41 mph 28.44 in 0.0 in Cloudy

The Hurricane Ike fraud goes so deep that they actually altered the official records for September 14, 2008 to show only a 52 mph peak gust. Unreal. It's no wonder people are skeptical of climate change when they can just go in and change the past like this. I lived in the city then and it was way higher than 52 mph. There were transformers blowing left and right. You can see from the articles several schools were cancelled - that doesn't happen at 52 mph.

With a very windy day on tap, let's take a moment to appreciate how the NWS continues to gaslight on Hurricane Ike. The wind gust records list a peak gust of 52 mph at PIT, which is laughable. See NWS Pittsburgh Records Climate Data (weather.gov), and click on Wind Gust Records [opens in separate downloaded file]. Luckily there's still a lot of residue from this era available on the world wide web. Pittsburgh area hit by remnants of Hurricane Ike - Pittsburgh Business Times (googleusercontent.com) STORM: Storm definitely from Ike (timesonline.com) At the time, the 67 mph gust was believed to be the all time record at the airport. They now claim there was an 83 mph gust in July 1992, and also since then there was a 75 mph gust in April 2020. But the 52 mph recorded on the records site is just laughable - I think sustained winds from Ike were that high. I bet there were 10 or 20 gusts on September 14, 2008 alone that exceeded the reported September record of 58 mph. What made Ike so dangerous is, unlike a brief heavy thunderstorm gust, this was hours and hours of 40+ mph sustained winds and gusts of 55-65+ mph. Anyways, third highest gust on record at the PIT airport, and it wouldn't surprise if the sustained winds from Ike were an all-time record. But they've relegated in the record books to run of the mill wind advisory conditions. Just complete gaslighting. Like we get it, your forecast busted. Time to get over it and report the actual observed winds.

In other news, the Euro suggests we may have something to keep an eye out for in about 10 days.

Yeah, I caught that after posting and swapped in the proper graphic. But the gist of the comment is correct. PIT has averaged 40.6" over the last 7 winters... and obviously this winter will drop that down some, unless we get a March 1993 Superstorm. 3 of the last 7 winters were above normal. Still have been relatively fortunate compared to some areas, granted I know places like Erie and Buffalo have had some record-breaking lake effect outbreaks over that stretch. And... actually with that correction, PIT has still beaten CLE 3 times in the last 8 years. The correct figure of 36.6" was still higher than the 35.2" at CLE.

We've been really fortunate as well. Cleveland hasn't had an above normal snowfall winter since 2014-2015, and PIT has beaten CLE in 2 of the last 8 years. The averages are basically the same the last 7 full winters (CLE --> 42.4" and PIT --> 40.6"). By contrast, the 1981-2010 normals were 68.1" and 41.9" respectively. The current normals (1991-2020) are 63.8" and 44.1" respectively. Note, negative "deficits" denote positive departure. Pittsburgh has been above normal for snowfall in 3 of the last 8 winters.

I'm not cherrypicking either. Look at Elkins, and this is at nearly 2000' mind you. 7 out of 125 years saw mean maxima 50+, 4 of them just since 2017. You can see that Super El Nino just completely obliterated the bounds of what was previously possible climatologically. Even 2020 and 2022 were just a bit shy of the 50F mark at Elkins. 50+ mean max months: 1925, 1976 --> starting to speed up here -> 1990 -> *cue This is Fine Dog on Fire Meme* -> 2017 -> all semblance of normalcy obliterated -> 2018, 2019, 2023

It could always be worse. You don't have to go too far south before you come across places where the mean monthly maximum this month was in the mid or even upper 50s. Clarksburg, WV saw a mean monthly maximum of 57.3F, which was nearly four degrees warmer than the record in 2018 (101 years of data!). There's no way to sugarcoat this. It is getting downright ugly just to our south. I don't think we're too far off from seeing occasional winter months in West Virginia where the mean maximum is 60+. You have to think this is going to push into SW Pennsylvania within the next couple of decades and probably get "superheated" as it descends into the Monongahela and Ohio River Valleys. Maybe we'll be seeing Februarys with 60+ average highs at some point. Clarksburg, WV

Looks like every threaded climate site in PBZ's warning area set a new monthly mean maximum high temperature record this month. These high temperatures were on par with what was considered normal under the 1961-1990 means in places like Chattanooga, TN and Oklahoma City in February. I just think we have to come to grips with the fact that western Pennsylvania is not a reliably wintry location anymore.

How's the severe risk looking today? I see a tornado watch has been issued for parts of Ohio and other nearby states.

You just got to laugh when these so-called experts say it's warmed 1.8F since preindustrial times, and you run the numbers yourself and it's up like 5F in 30 years.

Yeah, but Nashville International Airport is a notorious heat island, whereas Toledo Express Airport is in rural Swanton Township. Nashville's normal January temperature as recently as 2000 [using the 1961-1990 mean] was 36.1F, but has since risen 3.5F over the past 30 years. It's not really representative of most of metro Nashville, or certainly not of central Tennesee in general. So Toledo's temperatures this February are right on pace with what was considered normal in Nashville in January just a little over two decades ago.

Probably boring everyone with the climate information, but there's not much more to talk about. But anyways, with the recent warm weather, with 5 days remaining in the month, this is currently the warmest mean high temperature for February on record. Today's high will go down in the books as 49, and the rest of the month looks like 40s and 50s so I suspect this holds. Also, the daily range [difference between high & low temperature] has been 22.5F this month. That is the largest range on record by a significant margin for the month of February. In fact, running this through Excel, I could find only 4 other years at 20+ in the entire threaded record - 3 of which were exactly 20.0F. 2023 22.5 1990 20.5 1906 20.0 1884 20.0 1876 20.0

This winter has been so bad, we haven’t even had anything to track other than the glorified Arctic front just before Christmas.

My 1949-50 analog has worked out well so far

I thought that was the case, but if you go to the NWS PBZ snow page, it shows the numbers below. In hindsight, I think the monthly numbers do sum to 44.1". Looks like they just inadvertently left in the 1981-2010 average for the annual snowfall in this graphic. Either way, no real trend in snowfall yet. Granted, there's been some changes in procedure over that timeframe that could somewhat complicate the analysis.

This also got me thinking about snowfall. Since 1952, there have only been four years with less snowfall through today's date than this year [1989, 1974, 1991, and 1980]. Including the AGC records, only 6 years since 1936 have had less snow [4 above plus 1949 & 1950]. For the record, PIT has averaged 43.5" of snow annually since records began at the airport in 1952, which is actually slightly higher than the current 30-year normal of 41.9". For the 16 years where official records were kept at AGC, the mean seasonal snowfall was 37.9" - which, honestly, sounds about right. I would expect that part of the metro area to average 5-6 inches fewer than Moon or Findlay Township. In both cases, the median is somewhat less [41.1" at PIT and 34.7" at AGC], which is to be expected since the means are bolstered by some heavy snowfall years. And, of course, the AGC figures themselves should be taken with a grain of salt being based on significantly less than 30 years of data.

Well, I doubt the 5 missing days would make a huge difference. The bigger problem is it's not directly comparable to modern temperature records. I had previously analyzed the records from the city office station from 1952 through 1979, when they overlapped records at KPIT [until the city office records ceased] and it averaged about 2.6F warmer than PIT. Which, to be quite honest, is about what I would expect from the combination of the lower elevation [probably a good 400 feet, which itself can probably explain up to about 1.5F of the difference], somewhat further south location, and the city urban heat island effect. From 1999 to 2022, KAGC [which was the official observations from 1935 or 36 until September 15, 1952] averaged about 0.6F warmer than PIT, although lately it's been running a good 1-1.5F warmer. Pretty reasonable given the two sites are at about the same elevation, but AGC is off to the southeast and in a somewhat more densely urbanized area. From 1936 through 1951, the city office averaged 1.9F warmer than AGC. Which jives with the numbers above, and suggests they're pretty robust at least back to the early 20th century. However, the 19th century records have some other issues. I know the first few years of the Signal Corps, it was common for the thermometer to be housed in the window; so, they really should be taken with a grain of salt.

Mean average temperature about the same placement as mean maximum temperature. Currently in 12th place, but there's a three-way tie for 9th that's just 0.1F warmer. Should climb up substantially in the last week, and finish around 7 or 8th place on the threaded record, and again the warmest since records began at PIT. Can definitely say this is the mildest winter of any of our lifetimes.

With 7 days left in meteorological winter, the mean maximum temperature has been 44.1F, which places it as 9th warmest in the threaded Pittsburgh climate record. Of the 8 years ahead of this one, the top 5 were at the city office. The 1889-90 figure is insane, probably still the warmest winter in Pittsburgh history but on steroids due to location, siting and equipment changes. Numbers 6 & 7 were recorded at AGC. And Number 8 was recorded at PIT. We should surpass 2016-2017, given the forecast, making this the warmest winter since records began at PIT. In regards to the two years on the list which were observed at AGC (1948-49 & 1949-50), it's worth noting this winter has been about a degree warmer than those winters at AGC. So while those years show up as slightly warmer than this year in the threaded record, it's actually been somewhat warmer this year. That's obviously the case for the earlier city records as well but there are no modern observations there to compare.

Looks like a dissipating smoke plume near the Pennsylvania Turnpike not far from the state line. Not sure if there was a brushfire.

Elkins, West Virginia is the craziest to me. Elkins averages nearly twice our annual snowfall and has nearly 5” fewer and it’s already bad enough here.

The initial derailment was late on the 3rd, which also sparked an intense chemical fire which burned to varying degrees over the next couple days.