TheClimateChanger

Mostly just a result of the fact that they added about 1.5F to the calculated mean for each month in the 1991-2020 normals for Toledo. The 1991-2020 mean for October is 53.1F for both Toledo and Detroit, so if they had just used the average, it would be +3.4F at Detroit and +3.1F at Toledo. If you look at the data, you'll notice a disconnect began in late 2018. What I think happened is the TOL ASOS was reporting too high during that period. While the normals are often thought of as averages, they are not. They are smoothed and normalized, but NOAA also makes adjustments based on pairwise homogenization. So I think the normals for Toledo got incorrectly adjusted upwards based on the warming in the last couple of years of the climate base period, which I believe was likely just due to a bad sensor or perhaps a problem with the fan/aspiration. The adjustments make sense if they are based on a change in equipment, change in location of the observation site, or a growing urban heat island effect, but can be unrepresentative if the changes result from an equipment problem that is corrected after the fact. In the case of TOL, the ASOS was down for much of the month of August. It's clear that since that change, it's been reporting temperatures more in line with surrounding locations.

Same here. I’m out in the woods. So eerie for November, when you’d typical expect it to be like 40F at this time of night.

Surprised it wasn’t even higher. It was 85F at Dunkirk, New York yesterday. That’s hot for there for anytime of the year. Nearby Buffalo has seen 4 years where the temperature didn’t even reach 85F, and 5 others where the maximum reading was 85F. Thought that superheated airmass descending over the mountains might be able to reach 90F.

85F in Dunkirk, New York. Wow, just imagine how hot this superheated airmass in the Coastal Plain. Maybe some 90s tomorrow?

85F in Dunkirk, New York today, just off Lake Erie. That’s warm for July.

UAH in at +0.73C for October 2024. Dr. Spencer also announced a new version 6.1, which truncates data from the NOAA-19 satellite starting in 2021. This imparted a small chilling effect to recent data, which he says brought the dataset more in line with RSS and NOAA.

It has reached at least 86F in Huntington, West Virginia. I wonder if the coastal Mid Atlantic could see 90F tomorrow as this superheated airmass descends over the mountains?

Impressive numbers all across the Buckeye State. Just across the river from the far south, Huntington, West Virginia has reached at least 86F (30C). That matches a monthly record.

Records falling all over. The 82F at Zanesville matches the November monthly high. The 80F at New Philadelphia, Ohio is the latest 80F+ on record and only the second observed in the month of November... the monthly record is 81F from November 4, 1961.

Record high of 81F today. Also matches 1948 for the latest 80F+ reading on record at Pittsburgh.

He could be right and it still wind up as a crappy winter. 2022, which he cites as the last time this happened, has been bandied as a possible analog to this winter - and obviously that was a terribly (warm) winter overall but there was a bout of extreme cold and a bit of snow just before Christmas.

It was obviously a joke. Just commenting on the absurdity of 80F in November, which is much closer to heat advisory criteria of 100F than it is to extreme cold advisory criteria of -10F.

Nearing 80 here in Pittsburgh. Unreal. At this rate, we're more apt to have a heat advisory than an extreme cold advisory this winter.

"What happens in November, the winter will remember."

Lol, no I did say I saw your point in the BOS snowfall data - assuming you were referring to the time from the 1980s to early 2000s.

Your neck of the woods looks similar, although I can kind of see what you mean. There was a bit of resurgence in the 1980s and 1990s, but less than the 1930s and 1940s at Logan. It's only in the last 15 years or so where it's always a shutout.

I don't know about that Tip. Looks like Novie used to serve up way more cryo events in the distant past. 1950, of course, was the grandaddy of them all.

More pictures from the Youghiogeny River Lake.

Low rivers and streams in western Penna too. That bridge is typically submerged by the reservoir.

Mostly a myth. The Gulf Stream is not a significant factor in the climate of Western Europe. Europe has a mild climate because it is an oceanic climate, and atmospheric wave trains (dictated largely by topography and continental location). The same phenomenon is noted on the west coast of North America where cold currents are present. There would probably be a modest cooling more than offset by radiative warming. In any event, it is unlikely to come to a halt anytime soon. I think some people like to talk about this because they think it might save winter. Sorry not happening. An AMOC slowdown is just going to concentrate even more heat off the coast of eastern North America, and lead to even more warming. https://ocp.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/gs/#:~:text=The Gulf Stream Myth&text=A few times a year,coming years or even stop. https://www.americanscientist.org/article/the-source-of-europes-mild-climate https://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/will-the-gulf-stream-really-shut-down/

Fortunately, we won't need to warm 5F per decade to reach Floridian levels in New York. If we look at Tallahassee, we can see the average from 1957-58 to 1987-88 was 51.9F, so about a degree a decade for the next 13 decades should do for NYC. That would put the Big Apple at Floridian levels by the middle of next century. But that doesn't tell the whole story. By minimum temperature, the last 9 winters have only averaged about 7F cooler than Tallahassee in the mid to late 20th century. Since vegetation is largely affected by minimum temperatures [and cold extremes], I would anticipate that to change more rapidly than might be implied by a mean temperature analysis.

PRISM had this as 3rd warmest and 3rd driest on record for the CONUS (tip of the hat to Brian Brettschneider on X). I suspect it would have been the driest if not for the rainfall in the central US over the last 24 hours or so of the month [i.e., if October only had 30 days]. Also, the 3rd warmest was by average mean temperature. Bucking recent trends, maximum temperatures were significantly warmer than minimum temperatures across the CONUS. So it very well may have been the warmest by average maximum temperature. He did not break down the PRISM temperatures by maximum and minimum, so we'll have to wait until NCEI releases its data [usually around the 11th of the month] for those figures.

@BigJoeBastardi on X was recently discussing 1950 as a potential analog. I personally don't think it is a good analog. 1950 was a very cold year for the CONUS as a whole. Indeed, it had been the coldest year in the CONUS since 1929, although it was surpassed by the following year (1951). And it's only been surpassed by a handful of years since, and of course nothing even close in recent decades. I do wonder if the massive Chinchaga firestorm had something to do with the chill. The intensity of that fire could have easily lofted aerosols into the stratosphere, as we've seen with some recent fires. The winter of 1950-51 remains the snowiest on record at Pittsburgh.