TheClimateChanger

I wonder how cold it got in November 1950? I know there were a lot of single digit and subzero readings in Ohio during the great blizzard which dropped a widespread 20-30+ inches of snow in the Ohio Valley and Appalachians.

Quite a different picture for our friend in Dayton, where a daily record rainfall of nearly 2 1/2" of rain converted a small annual deficit into a surplus of nearly 2 inches. This was also the 67th most precipitation for any day on record - dating back to the 19th century! It may always be sunny in Philadelphia, but it's always cloudy in Dayton.

Water withdrawals have essentially zero impact on Lake Champlain's level. It's a minute fraction of the total volume, and most of it is treated and redeposited into the lake system.

I'd say so with the yearly deficit nearing one foot.

Increased Siberian snow cover is, in part, a consequence of a warming Arctic: Enhanced Arctic moisture transport toward Siberia in autumn revealed by tagged moisture transport model experiment | npj Climate and Atmospheric Science

I think looking at precipitation only is insufficient to determine dryness without also considering the impact of elevated temperatures on the hydrological cycle. Ground and surface waters may tell a different story. We can see for instance Lake Champlain is teetering on the edge of its all-time record low level. We can see from this September 4th article, the all-time low level is 92.4' set in 1908. Source: Lake Champlain approaching record low levels | WAMC We can see in recent days, the lake has dropped to within about 7" of that record, although it has recovered a bit today in response to recent rains.

Wow! After coming up just 1F shy of the monthly record yesterday, CAR set a new monthly record today. They had a rough stretch in August when three consecutive days (8/11-8/13) all came up one shy of the monthly record, so this avenges that. They also tied the June (and all-time) monthly record just last year (2024).

We used to be destined for greatness, but it was stolen. In 1837, the St. Clair River, north of Detroit, was still closed to navigation on June 1, with ice harvested from the river on the 4th of July! From Special Bulletin No. 149 of the Michigan Agricultural College [now Michigan State University] dated February 1926:

Take a look at 1836. Tri-daily mean of 38.2F for October, and 30.8F for November, at Allegheny Arsenal in Pittsburgh (Lawrenceville). Not looking for a debate here... the 1820s data is probably substandard exposure and too high. Not that it matters much, last year was 56.4F at the airport, which is 500 feet higher in elevation for context. Despite the lower elevation, the 46.9F mean observed in 1837 is more than 1F lower than any year in the official record, and 48.2F in 1836 is second lowest. This is what was stolen from us!

No, because they don't get upslope snows, which are what pile up on the western slopes of the Appalachians. It looks DC used to average around 2 feet per year, but that's still substantially more than today. They haven't had 2 feet of snow in any winter in the last 11 years. And the early numbers are probably an undercount as they were mostly just daily observations after the storm had ended, versus today's systematized observations of reporting peak accumulation in each six-hour period. UCAR estimates a bias of 15-20 percent, which could be even greater if there is missing/bad data. See: Snowfall measurement: a flaky history | NCAR & UCAR News So it's reasonable to believe that, in the absence of human intervention, DC should be receiving 25-30+ inches of snow each winter. It's hard to imagine the depth of snow that should have fallen over the last 100 years but failed to fall due to human interventions.

Lol, I know it sounds crazy, but it's true. Look it up. Here is another example... winters in DC used to be colder than modern winters in Elkins, West Virginia, which averages 70" of snow a year (elev: ~2k feet). And the old DC numbers are probably artificially elevated due to UHI and substandard siting/exposure (rooftop, and for a time, northern window well). By contrast, there are only like 20,000 people in all of Randolph County, West Virginia, which is a big, sprawling county full of national forestland, so there is no UHI at all.

It's a general observation. The October climatology for New York used to be the same as modern Scranton, PA (elev: ~1,000 feet, and inland). Mean temp (1869-1900): 55.0F in NYC; mean temp (2015-2024): 55.1F at Scranton. And there have been several 1"+ snows in Scranton in October. Plus, the NYC figures are probably artificially elevated due to UHI, which is minimal in Scranton. The actual climate was probably colder.

I can assure you that New York was screwed out of at least 5 or 6 October 1"+ snowfalls that would have occurred in a natural atmosphere.

DC is a subtropical swamp.

If not for the incredible warming during that period, there probably should have been several more October snowfalls that never were allowed to occur. And the lack of a 1" snowfall was more bad luck than anything, considering even DC had snowfalls in excess of an inch in October 1925 and October 1940.

And it's kind of surprising too, when a lot of empirical data supports warming in that era. This blog suggests a systemic early warming bias in the instrumental temperature records that predate the adoption of the Stevenson Screen, and questionable SST data... although I'm not sure how that would impact proxy-based reconstructions. It looks to me like a lot of proxy data (e.g., the above) would support warming, but I'm not sure if empirical data like this enters into the proxies since such data does not exist for earlier years. Early global warming

I think the weirdest thing is how it was there was a general consensus that the late 19th century and turn of the 20th century was unusually warm among period scientists, but a lot of bogus "reconstructions" today try to tell us it was the coldest since the early Holocene. See, e.g., below, that period is shown as nearly the coldest in the past 1,000 years, surpassed only by a cooler interval in the 15th century. Makes a big difference with how the present looks compared to the past. If there was already say 0.2 or 0.3C warming by 1900, then we're even further off the charts then commonly supposed. It makes VERY little sense to say these very smart people were investigating the cause of the observed warming trend, when, in fact, it was unusually cold. But if you buy the reconstruction below, that's exactly the implication to be drawn.

Wow! Incredible! Last 30 days:

Winnipesaukee continues to track just below the 1982-2024 minimum level for the date. Although it looks like estimated inflows are currently larger than discharges, so might stabilize or come up a bit.

Some improvement in the drought situation locally, but still dry in most places. The dry grounds really absorbed a lot of the rain, so area lakes and rivers are still quite low.

Despite a couple inches of rain last week, the reservoir levels have continued to decline. Should drop to 1,399' tomorrow. Further research shows it got down to at least 1,364' last year, maybe even a couple feet lower. Not sure of the final tally. Still aways to go before reaching those levels again, but with the current forecast could be looking at 1,380' later in the month.

Accuweather's early winter outlook calls for below normal snowfall (28-35") and near normal temperatures. Sounds like a repeat of last winter.

Wow, this would be an unusual La Nina to be that dry in the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley regions. Maybe not as unusual for the east coast, but certainly strange to see so much below normal precipitation anomalies [especially given climatological trends].