michsnowfreak

If I'm understanding the question from @mitchnick, I think he's asking if you forecast a DJF departure of +10, not just if any one location somewhere had a +10 month. I'm no forecaster but I personally think for most (especially my area/Great Lakes) there will be one month that's a real dud and one month that's a lot of fun.

DTW had another 33 this morning. This year will technically be the latest first freeze on record (Nov 15) even though it is nowhere near the latest first 33 (Nov 15) and likely wont be the latest first hard freeze of 28 or lower (Dec 4). My opinion is that DTW is not so much UHI as it is airport runways. But we still use the phrase UHI lol. Is the thermometer/ASOS in a properly maintained, enclosed, grassy area? Absolutely. But the airport has grown exponentially the past few decades and there is so much more concrete there than there used to be. There's no other way to slice it. There's been multiple 20s in most suburbs this Fall, and I'm not just talking the most rural ones either. Thermometers in Romulus (the city DTW is in) JUST outside the airport property have been in the upper 20s on these 33° mornings.

Very nice, detailed work!

It was Nov 11/12, 2019. November 2018 was snowy with lots of small snowfalls but nothing big.

Yes. Either 2-4 or 3-5".

This part struck me "These kind of winters have a reputation for bucking the prototype Nina evolution (I.e oftentimes Jan-Feb is colder than Dec in these years)". Most seasonal models (regardless of their overall departures) have shown Dec as the mildest of the 3 winter months for quite a while now. Way back when we first started talking Nina I was looking at December as being the "star" month for a change, as it happens so often in a Nina. But clearly that would go against most trends as of now.

5 years ago today we were digging out of Detroits biggest November snowstorm on record (9.2") and would then fall to 7°, the earliest single digit temp on record. The winter of 2019-20 ended up being a mild winter.

There are people who literally had to have amputations due to cold in Kansas City during an NFL game in January. I actually went out for a winter walk one day in mid-Jan and turned right around because it was too cold for me, someone used to cold in MI. Yes, in the insanely warm winter of 2023-24 we had a big arctic blast. Why bring this up? Because this winter will not be anywhere near as warm as last winter in many places. I feel people get WAY too caught up in the projected MONTHLY and SEASONAL anomalies and fail to remember that the weather changes on a near daily basis often times.

Weeklies definitely got colder in december.

Omggg. A chance to relive the most severe winter on record? Sign me up!

I don't think this winter is going to be wall to wall warm at all. Especially here but even on the east coast. Do I think the east coast ends up with a warmer than avg DJF? Yes. But do I think there's more than a few periods of opportunity? Yes.

I dont live on the east coast so ill just say it. The problem is if/when those deviations occur, a few of the posters who have those warm biases will simply dismiss them or ignore them all together.

I honestly don't think that's why the maps are flawed. What the reason is, I don't know. But NONE of the other maps show these flaws, and WB has a lot of long range maps.

I would love for a wintry/snowy Thanksgiving. The last snowy one was 2013. Since then we have had numerous early/mid November snowfalls, snow on Halloween, and more recently some nice Thanksgiving weekend snowfalls (2021, 2023). Might as well pull a 1975 (very warm November then a Thanksgiving snowstorm).

Same. I did renew my yearly membership last april because it's so handy for winter, but they raised their price I think in May or June so don't think I'm renewing again.

There are tons of products on WB, and the cfs is the only product with a noticeable flaw.

I bookmark both and check them both. While the WB version does have the cold flaw, it should be noted that regardless the cfs changes quite frequently.

Just to be clear, Don posted C3S (euro) not CFS.

Seems like the first legit rain in ages lol. Puddles pooling around leaf piles in the street.

It's definitely been warmer relative to climo on the east coast than here. But another thing we ALL have to remember...is everything is relatively to any specific areas averages. For here, I look at torch winters as disasters, but pretty much anything else, ranging from colder than avg to milder than avg, is really more dependent on the pattern itself to dictate how much snow fun I will have lol. On a more longterm basis, summers have warmed more than winters here. Yet we don't get the extreme max temps at all. It's more about a summer full of warm low temps with a few cool nights thrown in.

Agree. We had our most severe stretch of winters on record 2007-15 while the west was parched in drought. Is the planet warming? Yes. Will we still have cold winters? Yes.

Milder than avg winters will outpace colder than avg ones, but 5 of the next 100 winters colder than avg? I'll take the over. While we've only had 2 colder than avg winters since 2015-16, we had quite a few from 2000-2015.

Detroit had some questionably "warm" lows in October. Particularly October 27, when the low was 33 when just other thermometers right near airport were upper 20s.

One of the more impressive winter records that has yet to be broken at many stations in the midwest/Lakes is the all time high temp in January. Jan 25, 1950 (Detroit was 67, Ann Arbor 72). Of the winter months here, December has warmed the most and January the least (hardly at all).

Very interesting for that latitude. Even here, 1972-73 was one of the "coolest" strong Ninos youll ever see, but did have a mild Jan & warm Mar. That is even more likely here, which is why I always talk about how precip/patterns are more important here than actual temp departures (of course temp departures make a much bigger difference early and late in the season). I always want a season of good snowcover, but if im stuck with mild, no reason we cant have an avg snowfall season. Its become much more common recently as well. Top 5 lowest snowfall seasons at Detroit & avg DJF temp 1.) 1936-37: 12.9"....30.0F (30th warmest) 2.) 1881-82: 13.2"....37.0F (1st warmest) 3.) 1948-49: 13.7"....31.3F (17th warmest) 4.) 1918-19: 15.2"....32.2F (14th warmest) 5.) 1965-66: 15.4"....28.5F (43rd warmest) Pretty much avoiding top 5-10 warm winter is ALWAYS preferred, but anything colder than that is a crapshoot for snow. Ive lived through our most severe winter on record, I hope to never have to see our least severe lol.