TheClimateChanger

DuBois also reached a record of high of 64F on the 15th as well. Looks like today will come up short. Current temperature is 61F with rain knocking on the doorstep. Record is 67F.

Same story in Martinsburg! One of the hottest and driest years ever recorded, and it can only muster a measly D1 on the drought scale. Northern Berkeley isn't even in drought, only abnormally dry (D0)!

It's incredible how difficult it is to get a drought in this region. At Hagerstown Regional Airport, it has been the 4th warmest and 3rd driest on record (less than a quarter of an inch from driest on record). Needless to say, this is about as hot and dry as it gets. Yet if you look at the map, HGR is roughly on the border between D0 and D1. You'd think these conditions would correspond to D3 or D4, given that there has never been this combination of heat and lack of precipitation recorded in Hagerstown prior to this year. Can only imagine how dry it must be in those D3 zones in Virginia.

Absolutely astounding. "Abnormally dry" supposedly correlates to conditions that are expected to occur about 1 every 3 or 4 years. I don't know how they are determining it isn't abnormally dry. If we exclude downtown data, and look at all data from the two airport sites, this is the sixth warmest year on record to date [of 88 years]. And the ninth driest of those 88 years, and only about an inch from 5th place on this list:

PIT's low of 34F was a whopping 7 degrees below the low temperature observed at AGC, and even 1F lower than BTP (that's pretty rare). Yet no complaints about the accuracy of those readings. Go figure.

The funny thing is these are conservative, because they are based on past winters. The climate is not static, it's warming. Therefore, their predictive power is lessened moving forward. If you want a better approximation of what the next decade will look like, you can probably add another half zone across the board.

The US Department of Agriculture released an update to its plant hardiness zones this morning. Most of south central PA is now in Zone 7A, with southeast Pennsylvania moving up to Zone 7B. Zooming in, I even spotted a small area of Zone 8A in southern Delaware County near the river. Looks like most areas increased at least one half of a zone since the last release. Based on these updates, most areas should expect annual minimum temperatures to average between zero and 5F. Of course, that's an average, so there can still be years where the temperature drops below zero. USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map | USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map

The US Department of Agriculture released an update to its plant hardiness zone map this morning. Shows portions of southwest Pennsylvania, along the Monongahela and Ohio Rivers, including downtown Pittsburgh, as Zone 7A for the first time. This corresponds to an average annual minimum temperature of 0 to 5F. The rest of southwest Pennsylvania was bumped to Zone 6B, corresponding to an average annual minimum temperature of -5 to 0F. USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map | USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map

Fascinating. When I brought up plant hardiness zone changes recently, I had no idea USDA was publishing a new update today. I took a look and it has some areas of 7A now in western Pennsylvania along the Ohio River, with a more substantial area extending into southern Ohio. If you compare that to the 2012 map, there were only a few isolated areas of 7A in the lower elevations of southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. The solid 7A zone was way down in central and southern Tennessee, so that is a remarkable northward shift over a decade. Would expect it to continue marching northward into northern Ohio by the early 2030s, and probably extending along the lakeshore even further north. I think in the 1990 map, the boundary of Zone 7 was in northern Alabama, perhaps far southern Tennessee. So in just 30 years, we have seen Zone 7's northern terminus shift from northern Alabama into south central Ohio.

Special Weather Statement National Weather Service Pittsburgh PA 728 AM EST Wed Nov 15 2023 PAZ007>009-013>016-020>022-029-031-073>078-152300- Mercer-Venango-Forest-Lawrence-Butler-Clarion-Jefferson PA-Beaver- Allegheny-Armstrong-Washington-Greene-Westmoreland- Higher Elevations of Westmoreland-Fayette- Higher Elevations of Fayette-Indiana-Higher Elevations of Indiana- Including the cities of Sharon, Hermitage, Grove City, Oil City, Franklin, Tionesta, New Castle, Ellwood City, Butler, Clarion, Punxsutawney, Brookville, Aliquippa, Beaver Falls, Ambridge, Monaca, Pittsburgh Metro Area, Kittanning, Ford City, Washington, Canonsburg, Waynesburg, Murrysville, Greensburg, New Kensington, Lower Burrell, Latrobe, Monessen, Ligonier, Donegal, Uniontown, Champion, Ohiopyle, Indiana, and Armagh 728 AM EST Wed Nov 15 2023 ...ELEVATED RISK OF WILDFIRE SPREAD THIS AFTERNOON... A combination of dry and windy conditions this afternoon will create an elevated risk of wildfire spread across western Pennsylvania, including Allegheny National Forest. Minimum relative humidity values will range from 20 to 30 percent accompanied by wind gusts between 15 and 20 mph. Residents are urged to exercise caution if handling any potential ignition sources, such as machinery, cigarettes, or matches. If dry grasses and tree litter begin to burn, the fire will have the potential to spread rapidly. For more information about wildfire danger and wildfire prevention and education, please visit the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources website at http://dcnr.pa.gov/Communities/Wildfire. $$ TC

Ballsy as hell. Would be the most since 2002-2003. In fact, there's only been two other winters within a foot of that amount over that timeframe (2020-2021, 54.3; and 2003-2004, 55.5).

This is interesting. Talks about Buffalo as a "climate refuge." To me, this is somewhat surprising given the deadly winter storms there just last winter. I would think there are cities better protected from climate hazards than Buffalo. This city rarely reaches 100 degrees. It is now considered a 'climate refuge' | CNN

It's certainly been an excellent year for palm growing in the MKE area. Looking at average mean temperatures through November 13, this year is in third place, just 0.2F below 2021 & 2012 in first place. By mean minimum temperature, it has been the second warmest on record and just 0.2F below the record set in 1921. By contrast, we can see the mean minimum temperature over the same interval in 1875 was more than 12F colder than this year (and only a couple degrees above freezing): Looking at the coldest years, we can find several where the mean average temperature was lower than the mean minimum temperature this year: One thing that always strikes me when looking at this data... we can see it's warmed about 12 degrees from 1875 to 2023, yet they are always claiming its warmed 1 or 2 degrees. The math just isn't mathing for me. You have to do a whole lot of smoothing and poor fitting of data to come to that conclusion.

48 years to the day since the infamous wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, popularized by the Gordon Lightfoot (R.I.P.) ballad. Much calmer today over the Great Lakes.

Unbelievable. A world that is 2C warmer than pre-Industrial era is a world in which mid-latitude continents are 3-4, maybe 5C warmer. And still we have useless bureaucrats claiming we can stay under 1.5C. I want whatever they are smoking.

I think when I last checked the last decade and a half or so in Detroit was running about the same as Cincinnati temperature-wise in the mid to late 20th century [1961-1990 average]. So probably just a couple more decades before the same is true there, should current trends persist unabated.

Looks legit.

I didn't start the discussion - funny, how I'm the only one disciplined.

Just for the record, my post was not gentle trolling. I think if we continue business as usual, hardy palms like sabols and windmills will certainly be cultivatable without protection in much of the Great Lakes region. Models indicate up to 6C of globally-averaged warming, with climates in the Great Lakes approaching those of the southern US by the end of the century. If your position is hardy palms could not grow in the Great Lakes on a business-as-usual trajectory, I'm going to have to disagree as that would require ignoring what the models depict. Obviously, the pictures of coconut palms are trolling. With the added impacts of what essentially amounts to an inland sea, I would expect wintertime minima to be even more moderate than those observed in the southern U.S. in past history. My wife is from the United Kingdom, and there are plenty of hardy palms there and that's even further north. While an oceanic climate, it wasn't too long ago that the U.K. was much colder than it is today (see frost fairs on the River Thames during the Little Ice Age). I would expect the Great Lakes to have a similar wintertime climate given the moderating effect of the lakes. I do agree with the second part of your last sentence (regarding crop failures), which speaks towards the likelihood of continuing on a business-as-usual path, and not towards the likelihood of palms growing in the region should we persist on that path. I would suspect the powers that be would rather block out the sun than let us enjoy a subtropical paradise here in the Lakes.

Agreed. Continental drift (in terms of latitudinal change) is only a small part of those past climate regions - it takes many eons to make a huge difference. Bigger changes to local climates come from uplift of the surface, formation of mountains, etc. During the Cretaceous, there was a shallow ocean covering much of the middle of the continent known as the Western Interior Seaway. Uplift of the Rockies led to a depression in the continental shelf over the interior that filled with waters from the ocean. The continent was essentially split into two mountainous islands (Appalachians on the east). I'm sure the shallow inland ocean and the lower altitude of much of the continent played a big role in the moderate climate of North America in that era, in addition to the relatively high levels of carbon dioxide.

Today says hold my beer.