michsnowfreak

1 hour ago, Stevo6899 said:

As if this shit doesn't suck enough, you gotta keep reminding us how sick in the head you are. Who enjoys this shit in may.

Since when does preferred weather make you sick in the head? I think its sick in the head to spend winter in a tropical climate, but I dont take to insults 

Gray skies, sweater weather and fall feels in late may. No complaints here!

1 hour ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

I guess I agree with him that the recent -NAO/+PNA periods haven't been producing, but I'm not sure he agrees with me that a flip in the WPO would largely remedy that...aside from some marginal events that are growing ever more difficult to tilt favorably in a warmer atmosphere. However, I think the storm track issue is largely tied to the +WPO/NAO. IOW, I'm confident we will get BM tracks if we could muster a -WPO/-NAO/+PNA.

All good points. There is way, WAY too much focusing by some on how much a temp has risen at any given location than there is to the overall pattern. The snow season spans a minimum of half the year for most northern locations, same as it always has. The key is the pattern, the indices, the storm tracks, the available moisture. Its actually gotten comical how some have tried to push the record snow from a decade ago as being in the far distant past or in a different era. 

Just now, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Wait until we near solar min in several more years.....get an apprciably strong Modoki El Nino and we'll do just fine.

I can't wait for one of those winters where the coldest anomalies on the globe spill into the US, giving a brutal winter and TCC and company will distraughtly be posting how warm it is elsewhere on the globe. 

2 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

It depends on the polar domain.........I don't think we will get a lot of help there, so we'd have to hope that the extra tropical Pacific continues to transition. You probably have more leeway than the east coast, but even you would want to see a -WPO take shape.

True. Hopefully the Pacific is more favorable. 

8 minutes ago, so_whats_happening said:

We have seen this back and forth so much recently I am not confident this holds at all but for the mean time yes we are still having a La Nina atmosphere, even while weak to non existent SST profile, still holding the helm. Slow fade into Fall to neutral/warm status and maybe even a quick flare up of Nino like conditions atmospherically. No guarantee but the way things want to try and setup it seems this is possible. 

The biggest tell tale right now is the lack of WPAC typhoons should hit the record with no issue. Thoughts haven't changed in that aspect. There is no doubt though the warm pool has largely shifted now comes if it rebuilds in any meaningful way or we have another episode of end of summer/ fall push again.

Yea I guess it will technically still register ENSO neutral but with a flare to Nino style is my current thought. We really may see the battle re establish again where we see a back and forth like last year. MJO is dead so it will be interesting if we follow a similar path as last year where a weak wave started moving again come end of June into July. 

Interesting. I have heard some hedge towards cold neutral and some warm neutral. For me, either is fine because anything from weak nino to weak nina usually can produce good winters. 

But since its so early, Im wondering what, if anything, we can put off the table? I remember in years past some were so hellbent for months on a strong Nino or nina but when it actually happened it was weak. So far, it seems to be nearly unanimous that a strong ENSO one way or the other isnt happening. Or at least thats the way Im reading into it haha. But what are the odds a strong or moderate event catches everyone off guard?

2 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Great, the climatechanger and Bluewave taking over the ENSO thread.....stand by for mass suicide attempts.

2 hours ago, PhiEaglesfan712 said:

In a warming climate, I think a 2009-10 type year in the future is going to be near impossible. We're never going to get a strong el nino produce such a cold winter in the CONUS. Just look at 2015-16 and 2023-24, which were record breaking warm winters in the CONUS.

If we are to get a cold winter in the CONUS in the future, it will almost certainly be a la nina year, and most likely a strong one (like 2007-08 or 2010-11).

I dont disagree that its almost unheard of to get such a cold winter from such a strong Nino, but "if" we get a cold winter in the conus is such a ridiculous statement, unless you mead CONUS-WIDE. Obviously cold winters will happen. And to be honest, outside of the rarity that was the late 1970s, if you live in the east you would usually WANT the west to be warmer than avg. It would likely create a greater likelihood of some good storms.

49 minutes ago, TheClimateChanger said:

Lol, calm down. Here is U of Mich - Ann Arbor coop site.

At U of M, the average increased from 25.7F in 1961-1990 to 27.9F in the most recent 25 years (+2.2F). That lends some credence to your theory; however, there is an uncorrected non-climatic bias in this data. The early data is based on an observation time [set max] of 5 pm, versus a standard 24-hour day (see, e.g., below). This results in a warming of about 0.5C/0.9F relative to a midnight to 11:59 p.m. day.

Also, here is nearby Toledo, Ohio. The increase is even more substantial than Detroit (+3.8F).

Let's play find the Urban Heat Island effect at Toledo Express Airport. It's surrounded by woods and farms, and shows even more warming relative to DTW.

 

 

 

You just dont stop. I know a met (used to post here, doesnt anymore like so many others) who worked for DTX from 1974-2010 and he always talked about the increasing UHI at DTW. You dont seem to understand that regardless of the surrounding area, when an airport expands and becomes a concrete jungle that it didnt used to be, it will affect particularly nighttime temps. Funny you didnt bring up Detroit City like you sometimes like to when it fits your theme. The avg min temp at DET is 1.0F warmer but at DTW it is 3.9F warmer for the two periods you unsurprisingly chose. But the max temp is identical at both- 2.4F warmer. Its been noted multiple times by people that actually live here and observer the weather how the lows at DTW were insane in the 1960s-70s compared to surrounding area.

Although, as I recall, before you hijacked this thread and veered OT into your routine 1961-90 circle jerk, the conversation wasnt about temps, it was about snow (remember, you incorrectly said 1990s were "way" snowier). Why did you not include the snowfall for those same periods? I guess I will have to. 

No site changes or observation measurement changes at DTW or FNT (cant say for ARB).

DTW snowfall
1961-1990: 41.5”
2001-2030: 45.8”

FNT snowfall
1961-1990: 48.9”
2001-2030: 54.8”

ARB snowfall
1961-1990: 42.3”
2001-2030: 60.8”

4 hours ago, so_whats_happening said:

Anyway here is the last month and a half of TAO data showing the increase in OHC GAWX just showed. This should still maintain a Nina-like atmosphere through at least most of the summer would not be surprised if we start to see some flare ups of Nino-like progression into Fall just not enough to flip the script.

So youre thinking that means we are in for an ENSO neutral winter of some sort?

1 hour ago, TheClimateChanger said:

For instance, here is Detroit:

1961-1990 average wintertime mean is 25.4F.

Incomplete 2001-2030 average is currently up to 28.6F (+3.2F over 1961-1990)

And here we go YET AGAIN highlighting the coldest stretch of winters on record. For starters, DTW wasnt even the official climate site for Detroit until 1966-67. It was so rural that as has been pointed out ENDLESS times it was often a cold spot in the region with amazing radiational cooling (similar to present day Ann Arbor)...its no longer the case. All you have to do is compare the difference in temps between DTW and several other sites from the 1960s/70s and then 2010s/20s and you will see the margin is much smaller now.

But these assertions about '90s winters lately are just WILD to me. The 1990s winters were EASILY the worst decade of winters of my lifetime, both the warmest AND least snowy (2020s TBD). 1980s, 2000s, and 2010s were far superior - and guess what, 2020s are only half over. I will comment on them in 2030 when they are over and given the same playing field as the rest.

As it stands now, of FULL decades, the warmest winters on record are the 1990s, followed by the 1950s then 1930s.

AVG DJF WINTER TEMPS & annual snowfall - Detroit
1870s – 25.2 (*1874-79)
1880s – 27.6F - 43.1"
1890s – 26.5F - 42.7"
1900s – 24.9F - 46.3"
1910s – 25.5F - 39.7"
1920s – 25.8F - 46.1"
1930s – 28.3F - 32.9"
1940s – 27.0F - 27.8"
1950s – 28.6F - 37.8"
1960s – 26.2F - 31.8"
1970s – 24.8F - 45.6"
1980s – 25.9F - 45.2"
1990s – 29.2F - 37.9"
2000s – 27.7F - 45.3"
2010s – 28.2F - 49.9"
2020s – 30.5F - 35.5" (*only thru '24-25)

7 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

wow I'm shocked 2010-11 and 2013-14 aren't on the coldest list, as they were pretty cold too.  2014-15 I understand because December to mid January was mild. 1995-96 had that three week thaw in January. 2002-03 was cold but more snowy than cold.

Going back to the 80s, I would have thought 1981-82 should be on there as it was an extremely cold winter that lasted into April!

It is surprising esp since its only since 1970 but again, that is for the CONUS. Here, 1981-82, 2013-14 & 2014-15 all rank in Detroits all-time top 20 coldest winters (not just since 1970). 

8 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

as long as the sun is out it will hit 70 here for Memorial Day.  The cold weather will come this week with the rain and be out of here by the weekend.

Highs in the 50s/lows in the 40s dominate the week here. Going to the Tigers game Friday, definitely hoodie weather. Should warm into the weekend to 60s/40s but no heat in sight.

17 hours ago, Chicago Storm said:

 

Also, add in that the area it had originated from had missed out on activity with the event on the previous day. 

With the resurging dry/drought conditions lately, it just happened to be a perfect situation that the severe t'storm activity had collapse in that exact area.

Detroit Free Press

3 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

it would have been an even colder year if that record high waited just one more day!

Oh trust me, Ive thought of that too.

12/31/1875: 65 / 46
01/01/1876: 65 / 41
01/02/1876: 62 / 38

But actually, the entire last third of Dec 1875 was very mild. The 20-day stretch from Dec 21, 1875 to Jan 9, 1876, using todays current 30-year norms, was +12.1F and is the warmest on record for that period, after nothing but record cold in 1875! Jan 1876 was the least snowy Jan on record with just 0.3", and then 3 snowstorms (4.1", 5.2", 9.0") hit the last third of March. Like I said, cant make up the weather!

The Saturday, January 1, 1876 Detroit Free Press had a blurb about the weather under their "Sayings and Doings" column. And I love it because they were mocking the "oldest inhabitant" (back then, they always made fun of the "oldest inhabitants" for their weather insight whenever there was an anomalous weather event). Im sure it didnt actually hit 74, but tells you how warm it was.

19 minutes ago, roardog said:

I like this post. This is why there's so much disagreement among the general population(and even some posters here)about climate change. How many people that don't understand anything about weather or climate would guess that there were 4 winters in Detroit between 1874 and 1882 that were warmer than today's average with some significantly so? Not many I bet. People just can't grasp that we're talking about an average global temp and in many cases, it's tenths of a degree we're talking about. It's still cold in the arctic and warm along the equator. It still snows at the North Pole in the summer and can even snow around here in May. That doesn't mean the earth isn't warming and it doesn't mean the earth is cooling. It's just "normal" weather variation. You will still have cold records, it's just that warm records are likely to outpace the cold records. If you aren't someone that pays attention to the weather(like most people)then you don't know this stuff because the media is just as clueless about any of this as the average person. 

Amen! Thank you! And snowfall is another thing too - there were many snowy winters of yesteryear....but many low snow, relatively bare ones too. The year to year changes of our weather in MI and how different they are, despite living in the epitome of a 4-seasons climate, is what initially drove my fascination in the weather. I began talking with DTX climate historian (now retired) Bill Deedler when I was in junior high. My actual observing of the weather soon followed, and weather boards & watching forecast models came later than that. The rhetoric of some that imply that everything always warms or snow goes down is a joke, and I think this is what leads to so much of the general public to mock cc, especially when its abnormally cold or snowy. With the cold weather we will be seeing the last third of May here, I can guarentee that social media posts on the unseasonable chill will be mocked with "so much for global warming". Climate has unfortunately become very political, like so much else. But Ill stick to weather. 

Back to the actual ENSO discussion, it would appear that anything from weak nino thru weak nina is on the table, but a lean towards cold neutral is likely. Im liking many of the early factors for a good winter for the Great Lakes next year, but obviously so much to iron out. 

2 hours ago, mitchnick said:

Last post. I don't care about cc. There's nothing I can do about it and neither can you, assuming it's even a bad thing. Your wasting your time, if not your life, posting in here about it. Just because people post about temps generally or casually mention it isn't a green light to go into the subject  here because there's a forum for it. 

You wanna' talk Enso, have at it.

I am the exact same! I love discussing weather data past/present, dont really care about cc. It has its place in weather discussion, but constant derailment of threads is annoying. Im actually quite satisfied with my climate overall, so I dont really care what happens in other countries or what not. But when I see stats (my weather speciality) being twisted, I call things out. Or the fact that any below average temp period now has to have some unexpected reasoning behind it lol.

16 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

wild was 1874-75 your coldest on record?

April 1875 was historically cold and snowy here, like January in April lol.

It was 2nd coldest, only 1903-04 was colder. However, it was the all-time coldest for avg min temp (10.2F). It was a brutally cold winter, and 1875 is the coldest year on record.

The unseasonable cold was so impressive all throughout 1875 that not only is it the coldest year on record at Detroit, but it is a full 1.5F COLDER than the 2nd coldest year on record. Though records began in 1870, there is unofficial data dating to the 1830s and 1875 is the coldest. And wouldnt you know, that a big warm spell ended the year, so the record high for Dec 31st is 65F....set in 1875. Just gotta love weather stats!

2 minutes ago, TheClimateChanger said:

The 1940s had some impressive winters. 1944-1945 had very impressive snow cover in the lower Great Lakes region, and 1947-48 was very snowy in the northeast, especially around Worcester. I think they had like 3 feet of snow on the ground in February in Worcester, Massachusetts and that's from when observations were taken in town and not at the more upland airport location. 1948-49 & 1949-50 were low snow, but very cold and snowy in parts of the northern Plains and northwest. I would point out, however, that 1950 was the coldest year overall for the U.S. since 1929, and 1951 was even colder, per NCEI. 1950-51 was very snowy in the Ohio Valley and Appalachians.

1944-45 was a very cold white winter than suddenly turned into record warmth in March, starting vegetation a month early, then April and May frosts/freezes destroyed the fruit crops, similar to (if not worse than) 2012.

Actual snowfall numbers and technicalities aside, here 1942-43, 1944-45 & 1947-48 were very white winters and 1941-42, 1943-44, & 1948-49 were very bare winters.

9 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

How did you do in 1947-48, it was NYC's snowiest winter on record and had the longest duration snowcover until 1995-96 and 2010-11 came along.

 

A frozen, white, cold winter...with below avg snow. With 89 days of 1"+ snowcover, only 1903-04, 1977-78, and 2013-14 had more. So very impressive in that regard. But the peak depth was only 5". A New Years ice storm left a frozen tundra for weeks. The total snowfall was just 28.4". No other winter on record had so much snowcover with so little snowfall.

Ive seen some cool pics of the Dec 26, 1947 storm at NYC.

Loving the autumn-like weather this coming week!

24 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

WW2 was legendary for its brutal winters (similar to WW1 in that respect).  The 1940s were the last time NYC reached a temperature lower than -2 (it was -6 in February 1943). 

I have looked into some of the eastern winters of the 1940s to compare to the meek ones we had here, and Id have to say its probably the most different of any decade. Those winters sucked here. But I think a lot of it was due to dry weather and bad luck. Though there were some mild winters in the 1940s, the decade was easily colder than either the 1930s or the 1950s. But it sucked for snow. It is by far Detroits least snowiest decade on record (avg 28.7"). We had 3 major ice storms but no memorable snowstorms.

In terms of the WWII years, 1942-43 was the best winter of the decade. 1944-45 was cold and white but very dry. 1941-42 and 1943-44 were very bare winters overall.

43 minutes ago, TheClimateChanger said:

I think people are still in denial mode here. The change from 2011-2013 era to the last 36 months or so has been on the order of .5C. The 1990s are about as cold globally compared to the present, as the 1800s were to the 1990s. It makes little sense to run a linear regression back to the 1800s, when there was a relatively stable climate [only comparatively modest increase] from 1880 to 1970. Not even getting into site changes and changes in protocol. A lot of river cities saw moves to suburban airports with elevation increases of 300 to 500 feet versus downtown. With that said, in many cases, going back further to 1960 or 1970 would, in the majority of cases, increase the decline, by including snowier years from the 1960s to early 1980s. My analysis actually starts with a few notoriously low snow winters, a fact that @LibertyBellsaid was "ironic."

The climate has never been "stable" here and many other places. Stable is a place like San Diego or Barrow. As a matter of fact, Ive yet to see a more erratic grouping of winters than we had from 1875-1882 (see bottom). Just because the globe is warmer than it was, the actual climate was anything but stable from 1880 to 1870 here. The year-to-year and decade-to-decade variability always has and always will exist. If there is to be any longterm significant change in snowfall in the Great Lakes region, we will need a lot more years of data to come.

Winter avg temp at Detroit (current avg is 28.4F for reference):

1874-75: 19.1F
1875-76: 31.0F
1876-77: 23.5F
1877-78: 31.5F
1878-79: 21.8F
1879-80: 32.5F
1880-81: 21.8F
1881-82: 37.0F (warmest on record to this day)
 

9 minutes ago, TheClimateChanger said:

It's now "cherrypicking" to end a trend using all available data up through the most recent year rather than cutting off over a decade ago? And you used your backyard when I looked at dozens of sites across the lower Great Lakes, Ohio Valley and East Coast.

Its cherry picking because its a short time span. You realize that if any of the next several winters have above avg snowfall that regression line goes right back up at those places.

6 minutes ago, bluewave said:

But the magnitude of the March 2012 warmth both regionally and nationally far exceeded the local and regional cold in a month like February 2015. The aerial coverage of the +10 areas in March 2012 was significantly greater than coverage of sites which experienced the -10s and lower in February 2015. Plus the records for March 2012 absolute warmth in its warmest zones far exceeded the coldest minimums in February 2015. While the average cold for February 2015 was impressive, it was nowhere near the February 1934 benchmark cold when NYC dropped to -15 and many locations in the Northeast set all-time records for cold.

Yeah I wasnt denying the magnitude of March 2012, just for which areas were hardest hit. 

I think the duration of the cold in Feb 2015 was what was so impressive, not any individual number. Jan 2019 and even Jan 2024 had very impressive arctic blasts in areas which created some real low temps at places, but the months themselves were nothing impressive from a mean temp standpoint.