TheClimateChanger

Some ground confirmation of heavy snow showers:

Looks like some heavier snow showers moving into eastern Ohio, per radar. Will be interesting to see if these hold together. Could pick up another inch or so.

Is it just me or do we get way more snow than they say? My flat picnic table in the backyard clearly has over a foot of snow on it, but they say only a foot has fallen all month? So nothing has melted, sublimated or blown off the table in two weeks?

The most recent GFS run suggests around an inch of snow on Saturday, with temperatures no higher than the mid 30s. 10:1 ratio even higher, but probably unrealistic given thermal conditions.

While snowfall to date is right around normal (see below) at PIT, we have already eclipsed last winter's total of 16.3 inches and are sitting just 1 inch shy of the 17.6" total from the winter of 2022-23. We will likely eclipse that winter on Thursday.

Still here. Been busy with work, traveling, kids and watching football. For context, 2024 was the warmest year on record by a full degree - including downtown observations. January has been cold so far, but its only 25th coldest on record. A bit of a difference comparing a cold two-week period versus beating a 12-month annual record by an entire degree. With the cold next week, no doubt we will climb up the list and perhaps make it into the top 10 or 15 coldest starts to January. But there is still more than half the month left. And for further context, meteorological winter to date is about as "normal" as it gets. Tied with 3 prior years for 71st chilliest [of 151 years].

I don’t think most people can grasp how warm recent years are compared to the rest of the Holocene. Not sure how else to read this, but this would seem to imply even if global temperatures were sustained 1C below the most recent decade for an extended period, there would marked changes in glaciation and vegetation, given how much we have overshot natural variation.

Some more paleoclimate talk. Deniers have been using this to make it seem like the Altithermal was much warmer than today. Of course, that’s not true. These alpine forests formed over thousands of years with relatively warm global temperatures driven mostly by the Milankovitch cycles. Certainly interesting that this forest has been hidden by glaciers for 6000+ years. I would surmise that they must have remained locked in ice even during the multiple centuries long Roman and Medieval warm periods. Obviously disingenuous to use this as evidence it was warmer during the Altithermal, when it’s one point on the globe and you are comparing a millennial scale warming versus the unprecedentedly rapid warming since the Industrial Revolution coming out of a relatively colder period.

Another way to visualize 2024, courtesy of the WMO.

What a game there for THE Ohio State University. Unreal.

They got some good pressure on that last one, that’s for sure.