TheClimateChanger

How's the severe risk looking today? I see a tornado watch has been issued for parts of Ohio and other nearby states.

You just got to laugh when these so-called experts say it's warmed 1.8F since preindustrial times, and you run the numbers yourself and it's up like 5F in 30 years.

Yeah, but Nashville International Airport is a notorious heat island, whereas Toledo Express Airport is in rural Swanton Township. Nashville's normal January temperature as recently as 2000 [using the 1961-1990 mean] was 36.1F, but has since risen 3.5F over the past 30 years. It's not really representative of most of metro Nashville, or certainly not of central Tennesee in general. So Toledo's temperatures this February are right on pace with what was considered normal in Nashville in January just a little over two decades ago.

Probably boring everyone with the climate information, but there's not much more to talk about. But anyways, with the recent warm weather, with 5 days remaining in the month, this is currently the warmest mean high temperature for February on record. Today's high will go down in the books as 49, and the rest of the month looks like 40s and 50s so I suspect this holds. Also, the daily range [difference between high & low temperature] has been 22.5F this month. That is the largest range on record by a significant margin for the month of February. In fact, running this through Excel, I could find only 4 other years at 20+ in the entire threaded record - 3 of which were exactly 20.0F. 2023 22.5 1990 20.5 1906 20.0 1884 20.0 1876 20.0

This winter has been so bad, we haven’t even had anything to track other than the glorified Arctic front just before Christmas.

My 1949-50 analog has worked out well so far

I thought that was the case, but if you go to the NWS PBZ snow page, it shows the numbers below. In hindsight, I think the monthly numbers do sum to 44.1". Looks like they just inadvertently left in the 1981-2010 average for the annual snowfall in this graphic. Either way, no real trend in snowfall yet. Granted, there's been some changes in procedure over that timeframe that could somewhat complicate the analysis.

This also got me thinking about snowfall. Since 1952, there have only been four years with less snowfall through today's date than this year [1989, 1974, 1991, and 1980]. Including the AGC records, only 6 years since 1936 have had less snow [4 above plus 1949 & 1950]. For the record, PIT has averaged 43.5" of snow annually since records began at the airport in 1952, which is actually slightly higher than the current 30-year normal of 41.9". For the 16 years where official records were kept at AGC, the mean seasonal snowfall was 37.9" - which, honestly, sounds about right. I would expect that part of the metro area to average 5-6 inches fewer than Moon or Findlay Township. In both cases, the median is somewhat less [41.1" at PIT and 34.7" at AGC], which is to be expected since the means are bolstered by some heavy snowfall years. And, of course, the AGC figures themselves should be taken with a grain of salt being based on significantly less than 30 years of data.

Well, I doubt the 5 missing days would make a huge difference. The bigger problem is it's not directly comparable to modern temperature records. I had previously analyzed the records from the city office station from 1952 through 1979, when they overlapped records at KPIT [until the city office records ceased] and it averaged about 2.6F warmer than PIT. Which, to be quite honest, is about what I would expect from the combination of the lower elevation [probably a good 400 feet, which itself can probably explain up to about 1.5F of the difference], somewhat further south location, and the city urban heat island effect. From 1999 to 2022, KAGC [which was the official observations from 1935 or 36 until September 15, 1952] averaged about 0.6F warmer than PIT, although lately it's been running a good 1-1.5F warmer. Pretty reasonable given the two sites are at about the same elevation, but AGC is off to the southeast and in a somewhat more densely urbanized area. From 1936 through 1951, the city office averaged 1.9F warmer than AGC. Which jives with the numbers above, and suggests they're pretty robust at least back to the early 20th century. However, the 19th century records have some other issues. I know the first few years of the Signal Corps, it was common for the thermometer to be housed in the window; so, they really should be taken with a grain of salt.

Mean average temperature about the same placement as mean maximum temperature. Currently in 12th place, but there's a three-way tie for 9th that's just 0.1F warmer. Should climb up substantially in the last week, and finish around 7 or 8th place on the threaded record, and again the warmest since records began at PIT. Can definitely say this is the mildest winter of any of our lifetimes.

With 7 days left in meteorological winter, the mean maximum temperature has been 44.1F, which places it as 9th warmest in the threaded Pittsburgh climate record. Of the 8 years ahead of this one, the top 5 were at the city office. The 1889-90 figure is insane, probably still the warmest winter in Pittsburgh history but on steroids due to location, siting and equipment changes. Numbers 6 & 7 were recorded at AGC. And Number 8 was recorded at PIT. We should surpass 2016-2017, given the forecast, making this the warmest winter since records began at PIT. In regards to the two years on the list which were observed at AGC (1948-49 & 1949-50), it's worth noting this winter has been about a degree warmer than those winters at AGC. So while those years show up as slightly warmer than this year in the threaded record, it's actually been somewhat warmer this year. That's obviously the case for the earlier city records as well but there are no modern observations there to compare.

Looks like a dissipating smoke plume near the Pennsylvania Turnpike not far from the state line. Not sure if there was a brushfire.

Elkins, West Virginia is the craziest to me. Elkins averages nearly twice our annual snowfall and has nearly 5” fewer and it’s already bad enough here.

The initial derailment was late on the 3rd, which also sparked an intense chemical fire which burned to varying degrees over the next couple days.

Saw this posted in the New England forum, and I just thought it’s classic Pittsburgh. Major winter storm in 2014 up and down the eastern seaboard and we appear to be under an Air Quality Advisory

The “controlled burn” of the 500 tons of vinyl chloride which produced the apocalyptic toxic waste plume was on the 6th, but you think it would be gone either way.

Erie, PA is down 158.1" over the last 4 years, or an average of about 40" per winter. 2019-20: 67.6" (-36.7") 2020-21: 64.3" (-40.0") 2021-22: 61.4" (-42.9") 2022-23: 41.0" (-38.5")

Probably just smoothing, looks underdone in Cleveland. Cleveland 2019-20: 33.8" (-30") 2020-21: 51.9" (-11.9") 2021-22: 53" (-10.8") 2022-23: 17.5" (-26.5") Cumulative departure: -79.2" Toledo 2019-20: 25.6" (-11.8") 2020-21: 40.2" (+2.8") 2021-22: 30.8" (-6.6") 2022-23: 9.5" (-17.2") Cumulative departure: -32.8"

For the period 2/1 to 2/16, this was the 2nd driest on record, the 2nd least snowy, and 3rd warmest for average high temperature. Due to the change from downtown to the airport, average low temperature was only 30th warmest and dominated by records from the old city office. The cooler lows make this only the 13th warmest period by mean temperature. Precipitation 1 1934-02-16 0.11 0 2 2023-02-16 0.15 0 3 1941-02-16 0.19 0 4 1904-02-16 0.29 0 5 1906-02-16 0.32 0 6 1978-02-16 0.35 0 7 1969-02-16 0.38 0 - 1954-02-16 0.38 0 9 1902-02-16 0.39 0 10 1878-02-16 0.40 0 Snowfall 1 1909-02-16 0.1 0 2 2023-02-16 0.2 0 - 1918-02-16 0.2 0 4 1938-02-16 0.3 0 - 1921-02-16 0.3 0 6 1959-02-16 0.6 0 - 1949-02-16 0.6 0 - 1884-02-16 0.6 0 9 1946-02-16 0.7 0 - 1927-02-16 0.7 0 - 1887-02-16 0.7 0 Average High Temperature 1 1884-02-16 52.4 0 2 1990-02-16 50.9 0 3 2023-02-16 49.1 0 4 1887-02-16 48.9 0 5 1927-02-16 48.3 0 - 1925-02-16 48.3 0 7 1876-02-16 48.1 0 8 1938-02-16 47.9 0 - 1890-02-16 47.9 0 10 1999-02-16 47.1 0 - 1882-02-16 47.1 0

This is the cumulative departure for the last 4 winters (2019-20, 2020-21, 2021-22, and 2022-23 to date).

https://twitter.com/NWSWPC/status/1625965869732954129?s=20

Ever since that gigantic toxic waste plume passed through western Pennsylvania, every storm system just seems to fizzle out overhead. Not sure if there's some sort of program of cloud seeding upstream to cut down on the acid rain until it dissipates more?

I feel like, as we enter into a new climate regime, it's going to be difficult not to see our snowfall decline precipitously. Pittsburgh is just too far south and low elevation to see much snow in a warmer climate. I think most places at similar latitude and altitude see less in the way of snowfall already, and many of our bigger storms are already nailbiters here. So I would expect more of the precipitation from those events to fall as rain.

Zone area forecast for Allegheny has less than an inch tonight and 2-4 inches tomorrow.

That's like February 1998. I was shocked to learn there was a storm early that month that dumped 18.5 inches at Cincinnati - at least at the airport in northern Kentucky, and 20-24" from Louisville to Lexington and even into southern West Virginia. Beckley had two 26" storms within two weeks - one in later January and then one in early February.