TheClimateChanger

Even 3-4 degrees of warming in a continental influenced, mid-latitude is insufficient to cause that, because the internal variablity / standard deviation is so much greater.

I think the explanation is much simpler. The standard deviations [i.e., internal variability] is substantially lower in those locations due to being at low latitude and being surrounded by water. A couple degrees of warming in the Caribbean or Florida is all it takes to get into a new climate regime where EVERY single month is above historical normals and where any given month in a regime favoring warm anomalies is likely to be the warmest on record. We are in that universe.

It will be interesting to see if this month will come in below the normal mean temperature. Two days in and it's a bit below normal, which will likely reverse over the next 3-4 days. However, both the 6-10 day and 8-14 day outlooks favor below normal temperatures. So looks like decent odds that it will be below normal on the whole through mid month. June 2023 was the last below normal month officially at KPIT. Some of the other climo stations may have managed a below normal month somewhere in that period.

But then again, I saw some boomers on Facebook comment that "it didn't feel that warm" to them. So maybe we ought to sort by people's feelings, instead of actual data.

On a similar note, the NWS often posts misleading graphics like this one. It claims that 1998 & 1918 were warmer in the Wheeling thread, and 1998, 1944, and 1919 were warmer in the Morgantown thread. In fact, 2024 is the warmest spring with full data. At Wheeling, 1918 is missing the entire month of March. The mean returned is just the average of April & May. 1998 has data for all three months, but March only has 4 days late in the month which happen to coincide with a 2012-esque heat wave showing a ridiculous 68.3F monthly mean. In this case, utilizing the March data is even more misleading if averaged by month, because the actual monthly mean was undoubtedly 20 or more degrees less than that. So it's artificially tacking on at least nearly 7F to the spring mean [dividing the surplus by 3]. Below, I sorted by daily average to mitigate this to some degree. At Morgantown, 1998 and 1944 are missing data for the entire month of March. The averages reported are based only on April & May. 1919 is missing the entirety of both March & April. The average reported is simply the mean for May. In fact, it's 0.1F BELOW the current normal for May at Morgantown, and 4.4F cooler than May 2024. MGW HLG Undoubtedly all of these years would fall below 2024 with full data. The only comparable springs across all sites are 2012 & 1921, which in most cases are generally cooler. For context, 2024 averaged 62.6F in April & May at MGW, and 61.7F at HLG. This is well above all of the months listed without March data. Heck, the April-May average at Morgantown was even higher than the May alone average from 1919.

Depends on if it's sorted by averaging monthly averages or averaging daily averages. The latter is more accurate, but I think the former [i.e., averaging by monthly averages] is often superior since it mitigates the problem of missing data [which is common especially in the early years in most locations]. For example, if you are missing several days from March or June [which tend to be cooler], then averaging by days would tend to produce an exaggerated temperature for the seasonal mean since March or June is not being weighted equally since fewer data points are available. Averaging by months makes sure each month is equally weighted in its contribution. I always select monthly averaging for this reason unless there's no missing data. In this case, it's kind of a moot point since both 1921 & 2024 have full data, so averaging by days is fine and more accurate. Although technically, 2024 did edge out 1921 by a fraction of a tenth of a degree, but with rounding the two are equal.

Sorry @Typhoon Tip, I'm not seeing the suppression in latitude. It was the warmest meteorological spring of record in a large number of locations.

But how did they get to Wisconsin? Thats 1,000 miles from the track of Idalia. It would have been quicker for them to just fly home. And where did the one in New York come from? Are you telling me it overwintered in North America, because that would be even more bizarre?

I must have missed the tropical storm that this specimen got mixed up in. Just like I missed the hurricane in Wisconsin last summer.

Wonder what they’ll blame this one on? I remember last summer when they showing up in the north, the experts were blaming it on some tropical storm.

Yes, warmest and second wettest meteorological spring on record.

It was a passage I had found in a 19th century US climate book, quoting a person who witnessed it.

Here's my little climate tidbit of the day. We can't even imagine how cold it used to be. There was so much ice in the upper lakes following the absolutely frigid winter and spring of 1836-1837, that the Saint Clair River closed to navigation in June as it was flowing downstream.

On June 1, 1837, the St. Clair River between Lake Huron and Lake Saint Clair closed up with ice. The schooner New York became caught in the ice at Recors Point and was carried downstream. In the same year, ice was harvested from the river until July 4th.

First of all, the digits are Tony's rankings, not percentages. In fact, it looks like 82-83 percent of stations have reached 80F. But more importantly, this is a meaningless statistic for a number of reasons. It's affected by the average elevation, latitude, urban character, etc. of the station mix. If there's a higher percentage of stations in high latitudes and/or higher elevations, you would expect a lower percentage to have recorded an 80F day before the end of May [also, I doubt all of May 2024 has been included in the data -- the month is just now ending]. Further, it's affected by equipment changes. It's well established that a lot of the automated stations report somewhat lower maxima than traditional LiG thermometers housed in a shelter. Even ignoring all this, it's not really meaningful. It looks like pretty much every year at least 80 percent of stations have reached 80F by May 31. There's only about 15 percent or so of stations that vary in a given year - many of which are probably in the same general area [somewhere in the northern US]. Many of these places probably don't see 80+ until late in the spring, so all it would take is a cool spell in May to keep them from reaching that temperature. Meanwhile, the rest of the country could be baking... and even the places that fail to reach 80F might have been way above normal for the majority of the year.

Oh we’re you saying “too long, didn’t read” - I thought it was some sort of city or county abbreviation but couldn’t figure out what it could possibly be.

What? I don’t know what TL or DR means, but those monthly anomalies would result in one of the hottest summers on record surely.

I must have missed all the nukes flying when the NordStream 2 blew itself up.

Overall, an interesting post. Had to truncate the end due to lack of upload space. Must say I'm not sure what all the relevance to Trump is, some of these people just can't post anything without blabbing out Trump. Apparently, a Mormon Mitt, Nimrata Randhawa Haley, Dick-less Cheney, "Dubya" or Ronnie Reagan Republican party would have been so much better.

Umm, no. Retaining the tree rings for that era makes the warming more pronounced. But even the very selection of start date was carefully crafted to minimize the warming. Take a look at this interesting Reddit post from user u/TuneGlum7903:

It's more about projecting strength than anything. Sometimes the carrot on the stick doesn't work, and you have to be a little more aggressive.