TheClimateChanger

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.

You can see the impact of that rain event here. Many areas were on track for one of the driest months on record, but wound up just a bit below normal.

Also third driest on record. I suspect it would have been the driest on record (possibly of any month) up until the last 24 hours when many areas in the middle of the country picked up 1-2” of rain.

At this rate, we're going to be wishing each other "mele kalikimaka" in our Hawaiian shirts and shorts, sipping margarita out a coconut.

One thing I'll say is I think the drought is artificially cooling these numbers. You can see around Pittsburgh, it was an absolute blow torch with high temperatures more than 6F above normal. But the overall ranking is unimpressive, because low temperatures were so much colder. I suspect this was the case in a lot of places. I do wonder what an analysis of maximum temperatures only would show.

Only 3rd warmest? Even Tony Heller's fraudulent analysis has this October as 2nd warmest. As you can see, his analysis shows a cooling trend when, in fact, there's been a sharp warming trend in the actual data. So if he has this as 2nd warmest, surely it must be the warmest on record by a long shot.

Ok, weird how much hotter Purcellville & Staunton were then everywhere else.

As user @Dark Starnoted in the NY & NJ forum:

At Columbus, October 2024 was the 8th driest month on record [6th driest October]. Was just 0.02" above 5th place [3rd for October]. It was the driest of any month in 61 years. The period from June 1 continues to run as 2nd driest on record behind only 1930.

In the last 3 months, Zanesville, Ohio had its 5th and 7th [which would have been 6th prior to August] driest months on record. Will be interesting to see what November holds. Interestingly, although perhaps not too surprisingly, despite being 7th driest of any month, October 2024 was only 4th driest October on record. August 2024 was the driest of any month since October 1924, and only August 2024 and October 1963 were drier than October 2024 since that date.

It certainly looks like winter is on the wane for east Tennessee.

Wow, weird how much hotter it was in Staunton than everywhere else in 1919!

You can keep saying it but you're wrong. The 2:56 pm observation is a METAR report, not a raw 5-minute report [which are reported every five minutes beginning at the top of the hour]. The raw readings are based on the temperature rounded to the nearest degree Celsius, and then converted to Fahrenheit, which is why they can vary +/- 1F from what is reported. METAR observations, on the other hand, report the temperature to the nearest decimal degree Celsius. In this case, the actual [non-rounded] temperature is 27.8C, which converts to 82F. If you still want to persist in your folly, I will bet you $1,000,000 that the high for the day at MDT is at least 82F.

The 82F is from the 2:56 p.m. METAR report, which isn't rounded.

It's at least hit 82F. That's the actual METAR temp, not a rounded, raw output from the ASOS.

Well, then, you should stay in your own lane. I literally posted actual data proving my statement was not outlandish. In fact, if you review the table, the 12-month running average at Pittsburgh is not only warmer than the late 20th century 30-year mean at Tri-Cities Airport in Tennessee, it's only slightly cooler than the warmest year observed there in those 30 years. For context, the elevations of these sites are approximately: TRI - 1500' ASL PIT - 1200' ASL BNA - 600' ASL SDF - 500' ASL If you want to compare BNA and SDF, then you should use data from the city of Pittsburgh. Unfortunately, it hasn't been collected since 1979. I can tell you it averaged 2.6F warmer than the readings at PIT airport [with every overlapping year falling between 1.1 & 3.8F warmer]. I'll let you do that math there to figure out approximately what the temperatures have been like in the City.

Yeah, ok. Sure, there was zero snow in Marquette in 1965, and very little in all of the 1960s [even though that was a very cold and snowy decade - as you know, more than most!]. As Joe Biden would say, c'mon man! Those early snow totals in Marquette [which lead to the extreme positive trend] aren't even remotely believable. And it's completely irrelevant. Your winter climate is much more similar to that of Toledo or even Columbus, than Marquette. Get real.

Exercise caution out there tonight, folks. Especially in costumes.

The leaves fall in Nantmeal and suddenly it's warmer than the tarmac at PHL. As JLP would say, ah-mazin'.

Amazing. All we needed is the trees to drop their leaves and Nantmeal would suddenly be warmer than the Philadelphia heat island. It struggles to hit 80F in July in that jungle.

Interesting. I assumed that the fall patterns must have had some similarities, since we also had widespread drought that year. How did such disparate fall patterns each produce a widespread CONUS drought? In fact, if you look at the weekly drought monitor, this week had the least amount of area not in D0-D4 since the map began being published at the beginning of 2000 [25 years]. It narrowly beat out 2022's peak, almost to the exact same day of the year.

Yeah, it looks like the 3" figure cited above was only from December. Maybe they didn't have an observer the rest of the winter? It looks like snow days have been supplemented though in the official records. This is the January 2002 snowfall from xMacis: