TheClimateChanger

Interesting. What happened to the urban heat island that people always complain about at MDT?

Very impressive snowfall rates, with rapid accumulation. Watch out for that coating.

Snowing quite heavily here. Looks to be about an inch or so of new accumulation. Wasn’t expecting much this far northwest.

Not much of anything here. Minor coating earlier, snowing lightly again now with a new light coating.

This solar maximum effect is looking to be little more than hocus-pocus at this point, no? This has been the coldest winter in years and, given the forecast, looks like it has a decent chance of being the coldest winter since, well, the last solar maximum. The last cycle peaked in 2014 and was bookended by some of the coldest winters in decades (2013-2014, 2014-2015). Maybe there's a small global warming attributable to solar maxima, but the link between solar maxima and warm/mild mid-latitude winters seems to be tenuous at best.

Hype? I’m correcting a comment from earlier that appears to be claiming greenhouse gases make the sun’s rays stronger?

That’s not how greenhouse gases work. They absorb long wave radiation. They don’t amplify solar irradiance.

And yet this is the coldest winter in years. The last solar maximum (2014) was bookended by some of the coldest winters in decades (2013-14 & 2014-15), the likes of which haven’t been seen since.

Some ground confirmation of heavy snow showers:

Looks like some heavier snow showers moving into eastern Ohio, per radar. Will be interesting to see if these hold together. Could pick up another inch or so.

Is it just me or do we get way more snow than they say? My flat picnic table in the backyard clearly has over a foot of snow on it, but they say only a foot has fallen all month? So nothing has melted, sublimated or blown off the table in two weeks?

The most recent GFS run suggests around an inch of snow on Saturday, with temperatures no higher than the mid 30s. 10:1 ratio even higher, but probably unrealistic given thermal conditions.

While snowfall to date is right around normal (see below) at PIT, we have already eclipsed last winter's total of 16.3 inches and are sitting just 1 inch shy of the 17.6" total from the winter of 2022-23. We will likely eclipse that winter on Thursday.

Still here. Been busy with work, traveling, kids and watching football. For context, 2024 was the warmest year on record by a full degree - including downtown observations. January has been cold so far, but its only 25th coldest on record. A bit of a difference comparing a cold two-week period versus beating a 12-month annual record by an entire degree. With the cold next week, no doubt we will climb up the list and perhaps make it into the top 10 or 15 coldest starts to January. But there is still more than half the month left. And for further context, meteorological winter to date is about as "normal" as it gets. Tied with 3 prior years for 71st chilliest [of 151 years].

I don’t think most people can grasp how warm recent years are compared to the rest of the Holocene. Not sure how else to read this, but this would seem to imply even if global temperatures were sustained 1C below the most recent decade for an extended period, there would marked changes in glaciation and vegetation, given how much we have overshot natural variation.

Some more paleoclimate talk. Deniers have been using this to make it seem like the Altithermal was much warmer than today. Of course, that’s not true. These alpine forests formed over thousands of years with relatively warm global temperatures driven mostly by the Milankovitch cycles. Certainly interesting that this forest has been hidden by glaciers for 6000+ years. I would surmise that they must have remained locked in ice even during the multiple centuries long Roman and Medieval warm periods. Obviously disingenuous to use this as evidence it was warmer during the Altithermal, when it’s one point on the globe and you are comparing a millennial scale warming versus the unprecedentedly rapid warming since the Industrial Revolution coming out of a relatively colder period.

Another way to visualize 2024, courtesy of the WMO.

What a game there for THE Ohio State University. Unreal.

They got some good pressure on that last one, that’s for sure.

Cross post on the deadly tornados of January 9, 1889, that struck Pittsburgh and Reading. The exact death toll is hard to determine, looks like estimates from Reading ranged from 17 to 60+, and at Pittsburgh from 7 to 14+. Tornado damage was also reported in York, Carlisle, Sunbury and Williamsport, in Pennsylvania, and elsewhere across the state and region from Ohio to Brooklyn, New York, where a strong tornado struck in the evening. In all, about 20 distinct tornadic circulations were uncovered during the outbreak, which is probably an undercount given the lack of satellite and aerial imagery and low population density. A suspension bridge at Niagara Falls was also toppled, but apparently due to straight line winds gusting to near hurricane force. The worst disasters were in downtown Pittsburgh, where a building under construction on Diamond Street was toppled by the winds, killing and injuring numerous construction workers, and in Reading, where the Grimshaw Silk Mill was destroyed by the storm. 250+ people, mostly young women and girls, were working there at the time. As I note, this serves as a stark reminder that tornados can and do form at any time of the year in this part of the world. Here is a photograph of the carnage at the Grimshaw Silk Mill site following the disaster of January 9, 1889: