DCMetroWinston Posted August 8, 2011 Share Posted August 8, 2011 Brad Panovich has an interesting blog posting on how Charlotte's new average reflect a decline in normal temperatures in every month. The decline is especially pronounced for low temperatures. Does anyone know of other cities that have had such a signficant and yearlong decline in averages as Charlotte?> http://wxbrad.com/?p=1382 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FoothillsNC Posted August 8, 2011 Share Posted August 8, 2011 Brad Panovich has an interesting blog posting on how Charlotte's new average reflect a decline in normal temperatures in every month. The decline is especially pronounced for low temperatures. Does anyone know of other cities that have had such a signficant and yearlong decline in averages as Charlotte?> http://wxbrad.com/?p=1382 I was wondering when you were going to post this. Looks like it was probably mostly just CLT that had declines, as the state had increases, as did the nation. I haven't looked much at it yet though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FoothillsNC Posted August 8, 2011 Share Posted August 8, 2011 I was just looking at the new 1981-2010 Precip numbers, and Brad's and NWS numbers are slightly different...not sure why. GSP has it as 41.61", Brads is at 41.63" so no big deal on actual difference) The old averages were 43.51" so precip came down substantially, which I knew the last 10 years would definitely affect their numbers, even though that area usually comes close to making up any lost ground to drought at some point during the Summers of late. Shows a drop of 1.88" a year, which is substantial. I can't wait to do the numbers for GSP and then for smaller in between sites where the drought really has shifted the numbers in Rutherfordton and Shelby. CHARLOTTE DOUGLAS AP (311690) Monthly Totals/Averages Precipitation (inches) Years: 1981-2010 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Annual Average 3.41 3.32 4.01 3.04 3.18 3.74 3.68 4.22 3.24 3.39 3.14 3.24 41.61 edit..just went to the GSP website and looked at the data for Shelby, the official location 2NNE of town, and wow what a drop. That site has always been a much wetter site and more indicative of what happens north of highway 74 too, if you go south of 74 it really changes for the drier . Anyway it went from 49.31" to 46.85" which is 2.46" lower! Thats a heck of a drop for a 30 year running average, which shows the power of the last decade, if it can do that with just 10 dry years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jburns Posted August 8, 2011 Share Posted August 8, 2011 Anyway it went from 49.31" to 46.85" which is 2.46" lower! Thats a heck of a drop for a 30 year running average, which shows the power of the last decade, if it can do that with just 10 dry years. Humor me here because it has been 45 years since I took a math class and I lost my abacus during a move. I assume they recalculate the 30 year average every 10 years. What is the difference in average between the 1970s and the 2000s.I assume must be one heck of a drop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wxbrad Posted August 9, 2011 Share Posted August 9, 2011 Humor me here because it has been 45 years since I took a math class and I lost my abacus during a move. I assume they recalculate the 30 year average every 10 years. What is the difference in average between the 1970s and the 2000s.I assume must be one heck of a drop. Hey guys thanks for the comments. I pulled the climo from this site http://ggweather.com/normals/NC.html#C I think that the drier weather has lead to a much cooler overnight low trend for sure which has brought down the averages. It is odd how lows the highs have been so low. It thought maybe the averages would drop but not to this degree or magnitude. Wonder if CLT is some kinda of anomaly? Brad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FoothillsNC Posted August 9, 2011 Share Posted August 9, 2011 Hey guys thanks for the comments. I pulled the climo from this site http://ggweather.com/normals/NC.html#C I think that the drier weather has lead to a much cooler overnight low trend for sure which has brought down the averages. It is odd how lows the highs have been so low. It thought maybe the averages would drop but not to this degree or magnitude. Wonder if CLT is some kinda of anomaly? Brad I'm trying to figure it out as well. I noticed the last few Autumn through Winter months, CLT has bottomed out many times sometimes more than 5 degrees compared to surrounding areas. This happened a lot during the past few years in Fall and Winter. In my opinion, we've had the flow that was conducive to cold air drainage in western piedmont of NC when the surface high was situated in ne Tn. Last Winter and the one before, my area to CLT went well below MOS and MAV mor often than not, and by a large margin too. Anyway, looks like the whole country has edged upward in terms of overall state wide coverage, so KCLT was an anomaly. I'd urge caution on the numbers overall though since anybody can use the numbers to basically prove a lot of stuff. We had a lot of warm weather in parts of this decade that helped pull the numbers up, but maybe just as important is now the cold 1970's are no longer factored in. Remember how cold the 70's were???? I definitely do, both in person and in the research I've done. Also, thanks for the link! That will be a wealth of info to me....I have been looking for something just like that. Check out the 92" of annual snow on Mt. Mitchell Meanwhile, my snow average went from 7" to 4" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DCMetroWinston Posted August 9, 2011 Author Share Posted August 9, 2011 I know the state overall saw an increase in average temps, but what about RDU and GSO specifically? Also, how about new snowfall averages? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BullCityWx Posted August 9, 2011 Share Posted August 9, 2011 The 90's killed the snowfall avg in CLT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FoothillsNC Posted August 9, 2011 Share Posted August 9, 2011 The 90's killed the snowfall avg in CLT Its going to take some time to sort out this data I think. I havne't had time to look at much from the new NWS GSP data, but a few that I have looked at already are different from this link Brad gave. It has Casar NC (which is upper Cleveland County and close to Hickory's climate) has less snow average than Shelby now Absolutely no way is that right. Interesting though that CLT has passed my area in snow average, that could be thanks to a couple of real biggies CLT got in the 10 to 20" amount that was a whole lot less just west of there around 2000 and 2004. I'm noticing more oddities in that list the more I look too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DCMetroWinston Posted August 9, 2011 Author Share Posted August 9, 2011 Only 4.3" of snow average for CLT? Ouch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UNCCmetgrad Posted August 10, 2011 Share Posted August 10, 2011 Hey guys thanks for the comments. I pulled the climo from this site http://ggweather.com/normals/NC.html#C I think that the drier weather has lead to a much cooler overnight low trend for sure which has brought down the averages. It is odd how lows the highs have been so low. It thought maybe the averages would drop but not to this degree or magnitude. Wonder if CLT is some kinda of anomaly? Brad I'm trying to figure it out as well. I noticed the last few Autumn through Winter months, CLT has bottomed out many times sometimes more than 5 degrees compared to surrounding areas. This happened a lot during the past few years in Fall and Winter. In my opinion, we've had the flow that was conducive to cold air drainage in western piedmont of NC when the surface high was situated in ne Tn. Last Winter and the one before, my area to CLT went well below MOS and MAV mor often than not, and by a large margin too. Anyway, looks like the whole country has edged upward in terms of overall state wide coverage, so KCLT was an anomaly. I'd urge caution on the numbers overall though since anybody can use the numbers to basically prove a lot of stuff. We had a lot of warm weather in parts of this decade that helped pull the numbers up, but maybe just as important is now the cold 1970's are no longer factored in. Remember how cold the 70's were???? I definitely do, both in person and in the research I've done. Also, thanks for the link! That will be a wealth of info to me....I have been looking for something just like that. Check out the 92" of annual snow on Mt. Mitchell Meanwhile, my snow average went from 7" to 4" I have discussed with with a few of my professors at UNCC and one said that when the station was moved from one place on airport grounds to another it has ran cooler epecially at night. The location of the ASOS sensor suite is situated in a depression. It is likely that cold air drains into this area on clear fall and winter nights with light winds. This fall and winter watch the hourly overnight observation and you will see many large drops and jumps as winds slacken off at night. Also you will see many times when the 6 hour low will be several degrees colder than the hourly obs. An extreme example of this was one night a couple of winters ago when the lowest hourly observation was 32 degrees but the six hour low as of 12Z was 25. The next lowest low for that morning was at HKY with 29. I'm also friends with the guy who works the third shift augmenting the ASOS observations at Charlotte Douglas. He says many times during the cold season on calm clear nights he has to edit the visibility because fog forms around the ASOS site and visibility reads from a quarter to half a mile while you can clearly see downtown Charlotte or some other visibility marker that is 5+ miles away. I guess Charlotte is the anti-Raleigh as many believe that since the KRDU site was converted to ASOS it has ran too warm. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tazaroo Posted August 10, 2011 Share Posted August 10, 2011 I looked over the normal snowfall rates for NC posted here http://ggweather.com/normals/NC.html#C as mentioned above and it just looks horrible. I guess they must be correct but I have a hard time believing the numbers. Every city seems to be less be a good amount. I know we had some big snows in the late 70's and very bad winters in the 90's but I wonder if everything is correct. Asheboro, near where I live lost about 3 inches down to a measily four and Greenboro went down about that much to 7". Some of the figures didn't seem to add up for instance Boone, NC elevation around 3000 feet had 35" while Banner Elk at close to 3800' only avg 3 more inches more. I have obserbed that Banner Elk almost always gets more snow than Boone. I did live there for a while at one time. Also, if you look at the stations in Raleigh you see that they are all within a few miles of each other and vary way too much with one Raleigh station reporting avg snowfall of 2.4" and another has 5.9". Many others just seem suspect just at a glance. Just to name a few more: Elkin, NC in the Northern NC foothills just reports an average of 3.8" and Eden NC 2.6. I just find it hard to believe the more I look at the numbers. These numbers look like to me that NC was shoved about 200 miles straight South. Is there something not right with these figures? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FallsLake Posted August 10, 2011 Share Posted August 10, 2011 Something is wrong with those numbers. It states Durham averages 1.9 inches of snow and I know that's not right. I've been living in this area the last 30 years and there has only been a couple of years with amounts that low (or lower). http://www.currentresults.com/Weather/North-Carolina/annual-snowfall.php Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DCMetroWinston Posted August 10, 2011 Author Share Posted August 10, 2011 How can Greensboro have an average snowfall of almost 8 inches, while adjacent High Point only has an average of NEARLY 2 inches? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jburns Posted August 10, 2011 Share Posted August 10, 2011 How can Greensboro have an average snowfall of almost 8 inches, while adjacent High Point only has an average of NEARLY 2 inches? High Point spotters are more truthful? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DCMetroWinston Posted August 10, 2011 Author Share Posted August 10, 2011 or measuring in the metric system Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Itunis Posted August 10, 2011 Share Posted August 10, 2011 I have to think that the unusually low snowfall averages are due to incomplete obs. I know my nearest NWS recording station in Alpharetta has an average of like 1"/year, which baffled me at first. Then I looked at some of the significant snows the area has seen and noticed that some of the time the data was missing from the time of the snowfall. Maybe something similar is going here-some of the stations have incomplete data. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MotoWeatherman Posted August 10, 2011 Share Posted August 10, 2011 I have to think that the unusually low snowfall averages are due to incomplete obs. I know my nearest NWS recording station in Alpharetta has an average of like 1"/year, which baffled me at first. Then I looked at some of the significant snows the area has seen and noticed that some of the time the data was missing from the time of the snowfall. Maybe something similar is going here-some of the stations have incomplete data. Agree....ATL airport shows 2.9" and it shows me in Dahlonega at 5.7" so you should be in between those. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tullioz Posted August 12, 2011 Share Posted August 12, 2011 The snowfall amounts are way too low for my area as it shows Eden averaging only 2.6". Checking my own records which go back to 1979, I have only recorded 4 out of 31 Winters with less than 2.6". When I average each winter from my personal records I come up with 10.8". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DCMetroWinston Posted August 12, 2011 Author Share Posted August 12, 2011 The snowfall amounts are way too low for my area as it shows Eden averaging only 2.6". Checking my own records which go back to 1979, I have only recorded 4 out of 31 Winters with less than 2.6". When I average each winter from my personal records I come up with 10.8". that sounds much more believable Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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