TheClimateChanger

What a way to send off what will almost certainly be the warmest winter on record nationally!

All-time monthly and seasonal record highs being set all over the place in the Midwest yesterday and today - in some cases, by several degrees (and on multiple consecutive days). What a way to cap off what will surely be the warmest winter on record nationally!

This is like the winter equivalent of March 2012 or July 1934.

What an absolutely historic day in Michigan! Traverse City is 70F -- that's a whopping 4F above the prior monthly record maximum and prior winter seasonal record maximum. Incredible. Likely to rise even more. Total obliteration. Alpena at 65F, tying monthly and seasonal all time maxima.

The current temperature at both Flint and Saginaw is 69F, setting new monthly records and all-time winter seasonal high temperatures for both sites.

The current temperature at Lansing is 70F, setting a new monthly record high and tying the all-time winter seasonal record high temperature set on December 31, 1875. Records date to 1863.

The current temperature has reached 70F at Grand Rapids, Michigan, setting a new monthly and winter seasonal all-time record high.

Also, only the third time on record in which it reached 70F during meteorological winter. The all-time December high is 69F, and January 67F.

All-time monthly maximum, dating back to at least 1874.

The current temperature at Detroit is 70F. This ties the February monthly record maximum. Prior to this year, the only other dates on which it reached 70F are 2/24/2017 & 2/11/1999.

The current temperature of 71F at Toledo ties the February monthly record high temperature. Still plenty of time to exceed that value. It previously hit 71F on 2/24/2017, 2/26/2000, 2/11/1999, and 2/26/1944.

Minneapolis has now set two outright monthly record high temperatures in the last 5 months (with records dating to 1872) - 92 in October, and 65 in February. Additionally, only one year exceeded the 98F reading from September (1931 - 104, on 9/10; and 99, on 9/8), and the 55F reading in January has been exceeded only twice (1/25/1944 - 58F; and 1/24/1981 - 57F). Honorable mention to August - the 98F reading has only been exceeded in 9 years (5 of them by just one degree).

Actually ticked up to 65F later in the day.

And before @michsnowfreak chimes in, I'm not saying those weren't mild winters. From the data I've seen they were all warm winters. That period had some weird ups and downs with some colder winters interspersed with very mild winters, but clearly with 5 of the top 6 [prior to this season] from that era, it's being affected by the location and exposure of the observing station.

The official station for Chicago has moved around a lot. At the time, it was downtown and near the lakeshore, with a rooftop exposure. You can see the locations here from the 1947 annual climate data publication. You can see the thermometers were situated 70-75 feet above ground in the 1870s and 1880s, and then from 140 to 240 feet above ground until the move to the university. Looks like they were properly sited 7 feet about the ground there. Probably exaggerates the urban heat island effect since rooftop measurements tend to run warmer than ground temperatures. The downtown station at the Courthouse anyways did tend to run about 2-2.5F warmer than Midway Airport during the winter, and a degree or so warmer than the University of Chicago site. The yearly means at Midway and University of Chicago were similar, with downtown about 1-1.5F warmer.

INL set a monthly record high last month, but will come short of the February record high. Still one of only a handful of years in which it reached 50F or better in February.

MSP up to 63F. All-time monthly high of 64F from 1896 in jeopardy. All-time seasonal high of 68F from December 1998 appears to be safe.

Made it all the way up to 68. Beautiful spring day.

Up to 64 on my weather station.

Same table with years with missing months filtered out.

At International Falls, limiting the analysis only to years with data for all months (of course), 2023-2024 is 1F warmer than 1920-1921 & 3.3F warmer than 1997-1998. Most of the early years in this list are missing multiple cold season months - i.e., the 33.0F in 1926-1927 is the mean of the fall only and is 0.6F colder than the mean of fall and winter this year.

Prolific, long-lasting warmth. The mean of the preceding 6 months at MSP is 2.2F warmer than any prior year of record over the same period.

All in all, we've done incredibly well with snowfall this winter with only 6.5" less than Erie to date, per the official observations.

Sorry, had to include March 1 since it doesn't accept February 29th as an end date. Good chance for 3 more in 2024. Certainly a long-term uptrend, but not a huge change since the 1990s. Bigger upswing since 2015, however.