TheClimateChanger

You know what they say, there are lies, there are damn lies, and then there are statistics. Here's how to manufacture a massive cooling trend from a trendless data. Move the station further and further away from the lake and present with no adjustment or even proper context. In fact, falsely claim the cooling should be even more pronounced if not for the ever-growing UHI effect. Chicago "thread" [Mean winter temps from 1926-27 to 1993-94] University of Chicago [Mean winter temps from 1926-27 to 1993-94] We can see using a fixed site (in this case, the University of Chicago), the 1960s and 1970s were somewhat colder than the preceding decades, but not to the extent shown on the threaded record. By the 1980s and early 1990s, temperatures had recovered and were already exceeding many of the past decades. Overall, a flat trend over that interval with a cyclical cooling and warming superimposed on the trend. Much more in line with the NOAA values for Cook County.

I was updating the post from last week.

I will acknowledge you can see that 2015 anomaly on this graphic as well that @Typhoon Tip mentioned. Not really sure what was going on there. It was like mother nature was trying to fight back or something but failed.

And anyone saying I'm being alarmist, look at the data yourself. For the first 30 years of this dataset, there is only one zone 7 year (1964), with a few others right at 0 [cusp of 6/7]. 6 of the last nine years have been zone 7, with one of those being zone 8 conditions. What used to be exceptionally rare, is now the norm and characteristic of the climate of Cleveland. All I'm doing is extrapolating the trend, which I find to also be consistent with my understanding of prior similar climate regimes.

This has always been my premise. When you look at similar ancient climate regimes with large inland bodies of water, you always find very warm subtropical flora and fauna well up into the mid and high latitudes. If you look at Cleveland, you can see traditionally it was zone 5 to cold zone 6, but now is firmly zone 7. 2023 was the first year [since 1960] with Zone 8 conditions. I don't put a whole lot of stock in the pre-1960 numbers due to a variety of reasons. Moving forward with these trends, it's reasonable to expect Zone 8 conditions to fully envelope this region by the latter half of this century. If warming continues, zones 9 to 10 look likely for next century. I've never seen a valid rebuttal to this. Only, oh shut up, Cleveland won't look like Miami. You are trolling.

Departure down to -0.6F as of yesterday. With a high temperature of 58F earlier, today should push it into the positive range for the first time this month.

Surprised there was less talk of this. CLE picked up 3.8" yesterday, which appears to be the third snowiest calendar day dating back to February 13, 2022 - a period of about 2 years and 10 months.

Interesting. Just checked and it's showing 7-8 inches for the city. I haven't seen anything that would lead me to believe that's a likely outcome.

I think the biggest question on everyone’s mind is whether PIT may see its first below normal month since August 2023. Through the first ten days of the month, December is sitting at -1.2F. My inclination, however, is no. The month will probably finish above normal. We shall see.

Would be a fitting end to what should go down in the record books as the warmest year on record just about everywhere.

It's little wonder they caught him at McDonald's.

The real crime is a man named Luigi winding up in a town where this medigan crap is called pizza.

Which one of you was it?

I mean such a sprawling area of a foot in a west to east area, not along a north to south band. There are no instances of any storm since 1974 that produced a foot of snow in Pittsburgh and Detroit, and pretty much everywhere in between. Since 1974, there have only been six unique [eliminating duplicated days from the same storm] storms that produced 12"+ at Detroit and at Pittsburgh, none of them were from the same storm. Both cities had storms of more than a foot in January 1978, but they were different events.

That's amazing. Looks like it's the heaviest snow storm on record at Akron, although official snowfall records only go back to 1948 for some reason. Pittsburgh had 14.8" of snow December 1-4, with 14.3" falling from December 1-2. Detroit had 19.5 inches from the 1st to the 3rd, with 18.4" falling on the 1st. Can't really think of any recent storm that has had such a widespread area with over a foot of snow.

Not to toot my own horn, but certainly some of us were noting this possibility 10+ years ago.

Wow, that 1886 storm is mighty impressive. Unfortunately, the records for Asheville, North Carolina are missing that month, or it would be their biggest snowstorm of record. Easily the biggest snowstorm on record at Knoxville, even today. The 14.3" storm total at Chatanooga [actually 14.5" if you include the 0.2" from 12-3] is second biggest behind the March 1993 Superstorm, which dumped 20 inches. Second highest single day snowfall at Chatanooga, and third highest at Knoxville.

Actually, I looked into the 1892 numbers. It seems "snow depth" back then was just a running count of how much snow had fallen during the month, so yeah that's nonsense. But even tossing out the first handful of years, the trend is down there. No idea why they stopped observing snow depth in 2004, or the trend would probably down even more.

Color me a little skeptical of the NOAA numbers, when these are the trends in snow cover. 1892 had 137 days with 1" or more snow cover, and 80 days with 6" or more of snow cover at Boston. Yet they claim only 50.5" fell that year. 50.5" in 1892 is not equivalent to the same amount in 2024. To quote the sitting president, c'mon man.

Just think of all the times in history to be alive as a snow lover, and this is one we get. Unreal. Boston just had its 3rd least snowy 2 year period ending in 2021, which, of course, is almost certain to drop into 4th barring some late month nor'easter magic.

Boston is in need of 17.1" of snow by the end of the month to avoid its least snowy 2 years on record. Will be interesting to see how this plays out. If December is mostly snowless, then this record could be blown out of the water. Likely a snow drought unlike any other in the city's long and storied history.

If we consider instead any 24 month period without regard for the calendar year, but ending at the culmination of a month, then the least snowy 2-year period is the 2 years ending January 31, of this year. Only 7.0" of snow fell at Central Park in that interval. Definitely a snow drought without parallel in the history of the city.

The Big Apple is in need of 7.7" by the end of the month to avoid the least snowy 2-year period in its long and storied climate history. Odds of a record?

Will be interesting to see where we end up on these futility lists? Currently, many areas are undergoing a 2-year snow drought without historical precedence. Toledo needs 12.9" or more of snowfall by the end of December to avoid the least snowy 2 year period on record. Mansfield needs at least 14.7" to avoid the least snowy 2-year period on record [among 2-year periods using a very liberal 300 missing days limitation]. There are quite a bit of missing days for the second and third place years. Typically, if it's a multiple of 30/31, it's because they simply didn't record snowfall in the summer and early fall, and it's being interpreted as missing data [even though it obviously didn't snow]. But these are not multiples of 30/31, suggesting some data quality issues. They would need 20.1" to beat last year, which is the lowest 2-year period with no missing data . Canton/Akron Airport requires a whopping 22.0" the rest of the month to avoid the least snowy 2-year period on record. Simply amazing.