TheClimateChanger

Some of this data is wrong for the record-breaking winter of 1935-1936. While many of the lowest hourly dewpoints on record at Des Moines did occur during that winter (including the all-time low of -40F on January 29, 1936 & February 14, 1936), it was not lower than -60F with those huge daily swings shown.

Also has daily minimum and maximum dewpoints, which can be downloaded as a .csv file.

IEM [Iowa Environmental Mesonet] is the easiest for monthly data, but it generally goes back no further than the 1930s or 1940s [or the earliest date on which a newer station opened].

Here is 1930. Let's just say I'm a little skeptical of this temperature distribution. But man, 50s for a mean low in July isn't too shabby. You wouldn't need air conditioning at night, because you can just open the window and use a fan. In that regard, I guess I disagree with most of you. I do not believe only high temperatures matter in judging summer warmth. In fact, I would argue low temperatures and humidity are the two most important factors when it comes to cooling demand. As a child, we didn't have air conditioning and it really wasn't needed. That's not the case anymore.

Hmmm? Doesn't strike me as super hot compared to recent decades. There were some warm years in the mid to late 1930s, but nothing like recent years. 1920-1939 2000-2024 And if you're really curious. The historic data [pre-1968] comes from the cooperative weather observation at the Lancaster City WWTP, not at Millersville University at all. It obviously wouldn't benefit from the pristine siting and monitoring of MU's meterology department, and isn't directly comparable. Moreover, the WWTP site is about 250' versus 380' at MU. And the extreme thermometers were reset at 5 pm daily in the historic observations, versus midnight to midnight at MU. Factoring these in, the change in elevation would tend to make Lancaster about 0.4-0.5F warmer than Millersville [average drop is about 4F / 1,000 feet]. The TOBs bias adds about 1F to the reported mean temperature - that is, resetting the thermometer at 5 pm versus midnight adds about 1F to the temperature as a result of the 5 pm temperature being warmer than the actual high the following day [but attributed as the high for that day] and the loss of midnight low temperatures, which happen fairly frequently in the summertime. Despite these warming advantages, all recent years at Millersville are warmer than the historic observations at Lancaster.

Looks like some very hot weather in New Orleans in the wake of Tropical Storm Debby. Current forecast would suggest 3 straight days of around 100F heat. I would suggest the all-time record could be at jeopardy, but that appears unlike due to last summer reaching 105F. Still only 14 years since 1946 have reached 100 or better at New Orleans. And this is quite shocking. I didn't see much in the news about this. But last summer looks like it was totally insane there. From 1946 to 2022, there were a total of 20 days at or above 100F. Last summer alone had 17!

I can assure you there will NEVER be sea ice off the south coast of England so long as humankind reigns.

The CNN article implies sea ice to the southern coast of England. That's a load of rubbish.

There is no magical thermostat on earth. It will continue warming regardless of what the AMOC does, probably even speed up. Parts of Europe might see a modest cooling. No ice age. No little ice age. That's a bunch of nonsense. Sorry to rain on everyone's fantasies. The Gulf Stream Myth (columbia.edu) The Source of Europe's Mild Climate | American Scientist

Burn scar? Was that supposed to be in there?

The 4.19" of rain since midnight (eastern standard time) currently ranks this as the 8th wettest day on record in the Akron area since 1896. Radar shows more heavy showers and thunderstorms slowly pushing into the area, so additional rainfall is likely.

So far, the rain today has stayed just to my north, other than maybe a few sprinkles. Been hearing thunder for about an hour. Not far outside of our area, Akron-Canton Airport had 4.07" of rain in 1 hour and 25 minutes, between 10:20 and 11:50 am. So these storms are very capable of torrential downpours and flash flooding.

In 1 hour & 25 minutes [10:25 - 11:50 am], 4.07" of rain was observed at Akron-Canton Regional Airport in Ohio. Storm total up to 4.18" as of 12:30 pm.

Have we gotten an all-time record eighth day at BWI yet?

Yesterday's 90F reading at Bradford Regional Airport was the sixth so far this year, leaving 2024 just 2 shy of the calendar year record set in 1988. Still 152 days to tack on some more. 3 of the last 5 years have reached 90F at least once, which might not sound too impressive. But historically, the vast majority of years have not had any days at or above 90F.

Humidex has probably been off the chart the last few days with these dewpoints as high as 77F/25C. Toronto Pearson International Airport Weather History

Plenty of high heat in that region this summer. Today was the 14th day above 86F/30C at Buffalo (the 13 indicated below is missing today's high of 88F). Only 7 years since 1873 had more through August 1. I guess it's just somehow missed Pearson International Airport. The mean temperature of 72.2F at Buffalo is 4th highest on record for the first two months of meteorological summer since records began in 1873.

Looks like another 91F high today.

Another thing to keep in mind is how they define normals. They keep jacking the so-called "normal" value up and up, especially in the summertime. Really the should be called climatological abnormals. In looking through the old records, I noticed the July normal mean temperature has been raised a full 3.6F (2.0C) for both Erie, Pennsylvania and Toledo, Ohio, since the 1980s. For these locations, the NWS now says a normal August is about 2F warmer than a normal July 35 years ago, and a normal June is nearly as warm as a normal July 35 years. At what point are they going to start telling us its normal for September to be warmer than a normal July in the late 20th century? Just took a look at LaGuardia, and it's not up quite as much, but still +2.8F from the 1980s. Curiously, the July mean at Newark is only up +1.4F since the 1980s. It's an odd dynamic. A normal July at EWR was considered to be 0.4F warmer than a normal July at LGA in the 1980s. Today, a normal July at EWR is considered to be 1.1F cooler than a normal July at LGA. But if you look at recent years, it looks like EWR is again the warm spot among the two in the month of July. Not sure why they would bounce around like that, but I would expect EWR's normal to be increased precipitously in another 7 years.

I, for one, am really looking forward to getting some more years under our belt in this new climate regime to see what it's really capable of doing from an extreme weather standpoint. This is one thing I've thought about in the past. The "extremes" we've seen might just be slightly off the norms for the climate, the true extremes of natural variability in this regime might not yet have come close to having been realized.

Looks like CPC is on board with a cooler period next week, so today might be the last opportunity for a 90F for awhile, although Sunday and Monday might be close but right now look like mid to upper 80s. We're sort of on the edge of the cooler than normal area, so it might not be super cool but 90+ weather certainly looks unlikely during that stretch.

Nice. Your area looked like one of the jackpots on radar. The CoCoRAHS site in Saxonburg had 2.96 inches, I think.

Close. Current base period is 1/1/1991 through 12/31/2020. Also, it’s not an exact average. Historically, it’s smoothed and normalized to prevent chaotic jumps throughout the year. And - I’ll probably get in trouble for bringing this up - but I noticed in the most recent iteration, some sites had normals higher than the means would suggest. Perhaps, the NWS was beta testing some sort of new global warming factor to see if it would produce a more equal number of warmer and cooler years by adding a certain amount to the 30-year means.

16th on the year. 19th most in the threaded record for the YTD [i.e. through July], but most of the higher years were from the 19th century when the thermometer at Pittsburgh was doing "special" things. Tied with 1931 for ninth highest since 1901. Continues to trail only 1988, 1966 & 2012 at the airport site. One higher than 1999 & 1991.

Yup, 90F as of the 2:51 pm observation.