michsnowfreak

I wonder how they can tell that? Unless they are going by a specific tree or something. It just seems very hard to figure out something like that since everything does not always bloom at the same pace as everything else. Some trees are more susceptible to the weather when they bloom than others are.

When it comes to severe weather I'm weird. I love a good wicked looking sky. And deep down I always wanted to see a funnel cloud. But I don't want so much as a twig to be snapped of any of my trees, let alone lose power. So I guess in the end...im fine with it lacking. That said, severe weather has been far far FAR more lacking here than winter weather and it's not even a contest. Through about 2004, we seemed to always get several instances of severe weather yearly. As snowfall increased the number of strong or severe storms just tanked. I am not sure about regionally, I'm just talking locally. And unlike granddad who for centuries has been falsely claiming winters of his youth were tougher, I have the written proof (and pictures). I've been keeping daily records since 1995.

My mom last night "Dave rexroth (local TV met) said we might have snowflakes Thursday!?" me "yes. that's April 15. the same day we had 1.5" last year. then 3.5" April 17. Then 0.7" May 10. And many flakes in between" mom "I remember but I thought this spring would be different" me *snickers*

Today was a perfect example of how Spring can be pretty but it still overall annoying as hell with its allergies. I want to say the flowering trees are 2 weeks ahead of normal but I don't even know what normal is anymore. They haven't been flowering till early May in recent years but I know thats late. Last year around this time we started diving right into a Winter pattern which pretty much halted any Spring production.

It is my understanding that the cold season is November 1st to March 31st.

"cold season" stats are often overlooked but I became interested in them years ago. They can often look different than just the DJF rankings. Most notable here was 2013-14. 8th coldest winter on record but 3rd coldest cold season.

Didn't thermometers have a Max/min weight on them though?

Years ago when I visited the national weather service I looked at some of the old climate books from the 1800s. It was absolutely fascinating to see how detailed they were in their old quill pen writing down the weather data for Detroit. Even wrote summaries of the day, noting things like depth of snow drifts or in the summertime they may note on a hot day that a thermometer in the sun read 120ﾟ or something like that. If anything they took more care of their weather data back then than they do now. The problem is you had your big cities and that was it. I am sure there were weather watchers but not a lot of documented data. Nowadays we have data documented everywhere so you see all the ins and outs of what goes on between the climate sites.

We have been going quite off topic so to bring it back to April discussion, whenever a billowy overcast with multiple shades of dark gray like today I think of November.

*local post* I use that timeframe as a shift locally as well, but not necessarily for temps. That is around the time that severe weather started to go down and snowfall started to ramp up. There actually was less notable summer heat in the 2000s over the 1990s before getting much hotter in the 2010s. Snowfall in the 2000s went way up over the 1990s, then in the 2010s went up yet again. It also got wetter. The period that seems to be warming the most is late spring to early summer, with winter temps basically remaining steady, though with more extremes (a watered down version of the 1880s). Despite all the pomp and circumstance over every tenth of a degree, the extremes of both hottest and coldest temps have remained pretty steady here. In fact, there are far more cold temperatures and less hot temperatures than there were in the 1950s. Heatwaves were worse & winters were less wintry in the 1930s-50s than they are today, but springs/falls were cooler.

I cannot think of anyone who enjoys old weather data as much as me lol, the last thing I would do is a disservice to observers of the past. My only issue with that is there was a lot and I mean a lot less weather observations back then than there are now. So many gaps to fill in so to speak. im not at all surprised that the warmest winters show up in the late 1870s to the mid 1880 's I referenced earlier, but i am a little surprised at the hotter summers of the 19th century. Then again, what data goes into the graphs? i know the upper Midwest has warmed more than the lower Great Lakes.

It will be interesting to see if the areas do get any meaningful snowfall down the road, these are usually the type of patterns that can definitely produce systems that "make their own cold" . I look at it 2 ways. On the one hand, it's been quite a few years in a row now that we've seen some crazy late accumulating snows in this region. Seems to be the new thing. On the other hand, you can look at that as we are due for a year to not have any meaningful Spring snows.

I agree, my point was to show that it's not necessarily a sudden warming when you look at the last 90 years. Some of the early days data can certainly be suspect in ways but I still think it's a great clue as to what was going on. The 1880s featured some of the most outrageous extremes we've ever seen, particularly in Winter. We seemed to have a seesaw effect of an extremely brutal Winter followed by an extremely warm Winter for about 6 years running. In fact the warmest Winter on record 1881-82 is a record that I honestly think may never be broken. I am fortunate to own David Ludlum's books which discuss winters since the 1600s. They are fascinating and While there were some very harsh winters back then there were also some very "open" winters back then.

That sort of thing happened last fall. It was an extraordinarily long color season because the color started much earlier than normal but then caught up and stayed on the trees to normal time. After many late Spring green ups the past decade this appears to be the earliest since 2012. It's funny, I would consider 2012 record early, 2017 and 2021 very early, and most other years since very late lol. Have not really had much in between that I can recall.

I've said over and over that are winters have not really gotten any warmer they've only gotten wetter and snowier, and the most notable increase was in summer temperatures. Even then, all we are seeing is temperatures on par with what they were in the hot summers of the 1930s-50s, nothing unprecedented yet. And to be honest itll be interesting what the 2020 's feature overall. Will it be another decade of many extremes of all types?

30-50 years ago DTW nighttime temperatures would be anywhere from 3 to 10ﾟ warmer than Detroit city. Now they are very similar, often plus or minus a degree or so. DTW area itself is still fairly rural but obviously the airport is full of concrete. On a good radiating night temperatures will always be several degrees colder on the South side of the airport than what the official observation indicates. And in extreme air masses is even more extreme. On Feb 20, 2015 The official low was -13ﾟ however as I drove to work literally passing the south airport property my car read -22 around 7:30 a.m. We must not be looking at the same chart if you think it shows a steady 3 to 5ﾟ increase with everything lol. I will say it again, I do not understand how using the coldest averages of whatever decade should be considered baseline. If we use that same logic, I guess the increase in snowfall is catastrophic for winter haters since the 2010s were the snowiest decade on record. Here is the same chart over the last 90 years. The only notable increase as a whole has been may, ironic after the 2020 started with cold and snow records in May.

good point. I'd place my bets on urban development mostly. fwiw since we've been talking average, here is Detroits monthly max/min avg (rounded to nearest degree) per decade. will show you where the trends are.

I hardly doubt that overall we will see any difference in our winters. keep in mind climate does tend to goes in cycles.

Keep in mind, in the case of ORD & DTW in the 1960s and 1970s, it was the "perfect storm" of urban heat island being pretty much nonexistent in those areas so they radiated like a magnet and then of course you add in the fact that that was pretty much the coldest period of winters on record following the warm winters of mid 20th century. In the case of DTW, the area still radiates excellent on the South side of the airport due to terrain but that is not where the thermometer is located, it is located on the warmer North side. One of my biggest pet peeves in the weather is when people use the coldest winters on record as baseline. FYI here is Chicago's official averages by decade for Jan. Obviously in the early days when the thermometer was near the Lake it's going to give you kind of a falsely high reading but that is also no different as the days when it was rural and gave a falsly low reading at night. But really it does not matter what site you use for the actual specific numbers, there was a huge change from the warm winters of the 1930s-50s then the cold winters of the 1960s-80s. 1890s: 30/18 1900s: 32/19 1910s: 32/18 1920s: 32/18 1930s: 35/22 1940s: 32/17 1950s: 33/18 1960s: 30/16 1970s: 27/12 1980s: 30/14 1990s: 32/17 2000s: 32/18 2010s: 31/17

UHI is annoying but it's hardly catastrophic.

Using the raw data from xmacis, here's the full 1981-2010 to 1991-2020 breakdown for annual normals at DTW: Biggest takeaways: ~1980s DTW was a radiating magnet, the 2010s UHI rapidly increased (and i mean rapidly, altho it has leveled off in recent years and seems pretty steady) ~Both precip and snowfall are increasing, one note on precip: though its getting better, sometimes asos is still terrible in dry or windy snowfalls, and those amts are not always adjusted by the nws. In the 80s, a standard rain gauge was used. Take away...realistically you can probably add a bit of precip to the winter months ~The warm months (May-Oct) are the main increases in temps. 1981-2010/1991-2020 Max: 59.0/59.5 Min: 41.3/42.1 Mean: 50.1/50.8 Days Tmax >=90: 12/13 Days Tmin <=32: 124/120 Days Tmin <=0: 4/4 Precip: 33.45/34.29 Snow: 43.0"/44.6" Days >=0.01" precip: 135/136 Days >=0.10" precip: 73/73 Days >=0.50" precip: 21/21 Days >=1.00" precip: 6/6 Days >= 1" snowdepth: 46/47 Days >= 5" snowdepth: 15/18 Days >= 10" snowdepth: 3/5 MONTHLY BREAKDOWNS 1981-2010/1991-2020 TEMPS -- PRECIP -- SNOW Jan: 25.3/25.8 -- 1.98"/2.23" -- 12.8"/13.9" Feb: 27.9/28.1 -- 2.01"/2.08" -- 10.5"/12.2" Mar: 36.9/37.3 -- 2.28"/2.43" -- 6.8"/6.2" Apr: 49.0/49.0 -- 2.90"/3.26" -- 1.6"/1.5" May: 59.4/60.4 -- 3.38"/3.71" -- T/T Jun: 69.2/70.1 -- 3.51"/3.26" Jul: 73.4/74.1 -- 3.37"/3.51" Aug: 71.8/72.5 -- 3.00"/3.25" Sep: 64.2/65.1 -- 3.26"/3.22" Oct: 52.2/53.1 -- 2.52"/2.52" -- 0.1"/T Nov: 41.3/41.3 -- 2.78"/2.57" -- 1.5"/1.9" Dec: 29.9/31.3 -- 2.45"/2.25" -- 9.7"/8.9" Annual: 50./50.8 -- 33.45"/34.29" -- 43.0"/44.6"

What the trees budding rapidly and some flowers being out I would say we're 2 weeks ahead of normal but about 4 weeks ahead of the last several years

(FEBRUARY 2021 continue) 2-17-21 a brisk -5F to start the day 2-18-21 gray skies as another snowfall moves in 2-19-21 another cold sunrise 2-20-21 now...a cold sunset 2-22-21 when deep snow begins thawing....its time to build things MARCH 2021 - Trace 3-1-21 piles and drifts dwindled away the first week of March, and only a trace fell all month APRIL 2021 - 4.5" 4-1-21 snow showers fell all day, dropping 0.1" both here & DTW but 1-3" in spots. Quite an Opening Day!

(JANUARY 2021 continue) 1-20-21 discarded Christmas trees with a fresh 1.3" of snow 1-31-21 we continued the theme of "inch at a time" snowfalls the 2nd half of January FEBRUARY 2021 - 22.7" 2-4-21: blinding snow with near zero visib dropped 3" in 1.5 hours. The quick hitting storm dropped 4.2" here & 4.1" DTW 2-5-21 cold sunset on fresh snow as deep winter descended on the great lakes 2-6-21 cold but sunny winter day 2-9-21 snow seemed to fall continuously in Feb, and this 1.6" fall glistened like diamonds 2-10-21 gray winter day contrasts the ice art of the Detroit River with the regular white landscape 2-16-21 near blizzard conditions and a very drifty snowfall on Feb 15/16 dropped 11.0" here & 10.4" DTW

Ive done it every year since the heyday of this board...so why not keep it up. Season total snowfall of 44.9" at DTW & 47.0" imby is slightly above avg...yet as always...it came in a non-avg way. Nov/Dec had average snowfall which was also perfectly timed, despite mild temps. Jan was a snow disaster despite nonstop gray skies and marginal temps (not warm, not cold). As is often the case anymore, Feb was this winters darling month, dropping lots of snow and featuring lots of cold. The snow melted rapidly as Feb ended and while March saw hardly any snow a late season April snow gave astounding winter scenes. NOVEMBER 2020 - 3.3" First flakes were Nov 1st (the first year in many that there were none in Oct), but 0.2" on Nov 17th started us on the board 11-22-20 a wet, scenic snow dropped 1.7" here and 1.9" DTW DECEMBER 2020 - 10.5" 12-1-20 the storm which began on Nov 30th ended up dropping 4.3" here and 3.9" at DTW, a great start to Dec 12-16-20 a long duration light snowfall made for great holiday scenes, by the end of the 17th over 3" had fallen 12-25-20 Waking up Christmas morning to fresh snow on what was bare ground is just perfect. By nightfall, 3.6" fell here with 3.0" at DTW. JANUARY 2021 - 6.0" 1-1-21 New Years was very icy