TheClimateChanger

Well, I don't think I chased them to Discord. It was one of the last posts in the thread, because they had already moved to Discord.

Good thing this is the banter thread. It looks like 40N has been the cutoff between huge drops in seasonal snowfall south of that line, and much smaller changes north. @MikeB_01 got me playing around on xmACIS again. And, man, some places not too much further south have been absolutely hammered over the past 50 years. Charleston, WV St Louis, MO

Shows -5 to -25 percent for annual snowfall for Des Moines. Mostly smoothing, I believe. Even using the annual numbers, DSM shows a slight positive trend [almost flat]. But most locations in the midwest show a much stronger negative trend over that period. But yeah, definitely a much higher percentage of snow is falling in meteorological winter - and particularly, January and February - than prior decades, in most locations.

Keep in mind that data is subject to smoothing, and there can be variances. The linear regression at PIT over that interval is actually positive, with a slope of +0.05" (or a gain of about 2.5" over 50 years). But most locations around us are negative, and substantially so. Cleveland, for instance, shows a negative slope of -0.29" per year (or a loss of about 14.5" over 50 years). So it's sensitive to start and ending dates - 1973-1974 was a historically bad winter for Pittsburgh, but not as bad elsewhere.

I didn't even bring up climate change, to be honest. I thought it was interesting. It's not some random record for consecutive days above a random temperature... it was noting that, hey, 2/3rds of the way through met. winter and this has been the warmest of any of our lives. We have all lived through some real clunkers, I think it's noteworthy when, with one month remaining in meteorological winter, we are warmest of record at KPIT and warmest overall in the threaded record in 74 years. I think some are just frustrated. For the record, just factoring in yesterday's blowtorch, brings the two-month average up to 37.4F. I mean that's not exactly ideal for winter weather. Hell, the warmest at KPIT from 12-1 to 1-31 currently is 36.4F, set in the winter of 2001-02 so we could potentially blast by that by a full degree.

The data for PNE are also made up. The real chart is the one @chubbsshared.

He’s popping the champagne to celebrate his forecast. Interesting way to verify a forecast. Instead of using the climatological normal of 11.7 inches, use the significantly lower moving 10- and 20-year averages. Also the 10-year average is 8.8 inches, not 8.1. And the 20 year average doesn’t actually include 20 years as there were no snow observations for much of the 2000s at AVP. And just ignore temperatures altogether. They don’t matter. And forget the entire month of December. Just toss that into the trash.

The infamous winter of 1931-32 is well within striking distance for MKE. Can it succumb to the super Nino?

Great weather for the Milwaukee palms this winter, where it has been the second warmest to date and one of only 4 years with a mean temperature above freezing for the 12-1 to 1-24 period. Last year being one of the 4.

How did we manage to do it at the same time?

Highs in the mid 40s, with lows barely below freezing, are cold for early February in Chester County?

You would have thought we just went through the second coming of January 1994 with all of the media hype, yet everybody is having a top 10 warmest winter so far (with even warmer temperatures occurring now). In fact, record breaking warmth across the north country.

Winter to date temperatures below for some selected sites in the midwestern United States. Looks like 2023-24 will be moving up on these lists through at least the beginning of February. Detroit (9th warmest) Cleveland (10th warmest) Toledo (10th warmest) Fort Wayne (9th warmest) South Bend (8th warmest) Lansing (6th warmest) Mansfield, Ohio (10th warmest) Marquette (NWS) (warmest) Green Bay (2nd warmest) Minneapolis/St. Paul (2nd warmest) International Falls (warmest)

Noted northeast Pennsylvania meteorologist Mark Margavage on X/Twitter predicted lots of cold and snow for the region with a polar vortex warning. So far, this idea has not worked out. This has been the 6th warmest winter to date in the Scranton/Wikes-Barre area, and looks poised to climb over the next week.

With a big warmup ongoing and looking to have some staying power, here is where we stand temperaturewise for winter to date at some climate locations in central Pennsylvania. DuBois (warmest) Bradford (2nd warmest) Williamsport (5th warmest) Harrisburg (6th warmest)

If the mean stays the same over the next week, we would move into 9th place (and warmest in KPIT records). But looking at the forecast, I think the mean actually goes up this week.

To date, it has been the 11th warmest winter in the threaded record. 2nd warmest observed at KPIT, slightly behind 2007. Will be interesting to see where we stand with this big warmup. Obviously, some of the warmest winters at the city station (1879-80, 1889-90, 1931-32) aren't going to be eclipsed anytime soon, but we really aren't too far off from a top five position in the threaded record.

The temperature is still climbing on my weather station is still climbing. 52 now.

Probably not quite as bad as officially recorded, but still bad no doubt. Lots of "traces" - in fact, a lot of trace depths with only trace accumulation. Don't really see this today. Suspect a lot of these would be small accumulations today (0.1-0.3"). On top of the fact, that most bigger snowfalls are inflated by about 15-20 percent with 6 hourly measurements versus once daily: Snowfall measurement: a flaky history | NCAR & UCAR News

Hmm, well, at least in the case of 1936-37, xmACIS appears correct, and not the local NWS office. I calculate 12.9 inches, not 13.4.

Looks like Josh is using xmACIS with a small adjustment to 1881-1882. NWS Detroit amounts are similar, but a little higher for some of the early years. I'd probably assume the local NWS numbers are more accurate. I believe a lot of this data is retrieved through automated means and it sometimes makes mistakes - especially with snow. I noticed similar discrepancies in the Pittsburgh records, and when I compared to the actual records (where available - some of the earliest years aren't available), the local NWS numbers were correct, not xmACIS.

It's even worse than Toledo, which Josh always likes to pretend gets completely different weather patterns. Note that the 5th lowest at Toledo is 16.0" versus 15.4" for Detroit. 10th lowest is 18.4" versus 18.0" for Detroit.

Yeah, this is what I was getting at. Detroit's record snowfalls are very low, because it's often in a snow hole. Just look when compared to locations further south in Ohio: Akron/Canton Cleveland Mansfield Youngstown