February 2017 General Discussion

[BuffaloWeather]

Global warming is real.

[csnavywx]

Freezing line has retreated all the way to James Bay in Canada. Pretty amazing for February.

[Stebo]

1 minute ago, csnavywx said:

Freezing line has retreated all the way to James Bay in Canada. Pretty amazing for February.

I'd have to imagine that hasn't happened too often, probably could count the instances on one hand.

[hawkeye_wx]

It's pretty remarkable to have a cold front pass in mid February and chop ten degrees off the temp, but still hit low 60s.

[Chambana]

Easily broke the record high of 65 from 1961, sitting at 68 now. Everyday continues to overperform by 3-4 degrees. 

Tomorrow forecasted 67, record is 68 from 1930. February gonna seal this winter as crazy warm. 

[Chambana]

18 minutes ago, BuffaloWeather said:

Global warming is real.

As alek use to say, "deniers gonna deny"

[csnavywx]

13 minutes ago, weatherbo said:

Started the day with 22" and now down to 18.  Yesterdays high was 46 and a low of only 34 last night, so the snow was soft starting the day.  Windy and 55 degrees... 30 degrees above the norm is just staggering to me... perfect melt conditions.

 

 

Even heard a few birds today which is pretty rare in February.

 

Gnarly. Looks like a cooler Sunday, but I see a real snowpack demo coming Mon evening-Wed. Strong WAA-driven warm rain Monday night with rising temps. Virtually no cold air behind that system, so Tuesday will start with a rain-soaked melting snowpack and stout, warm westerly winds. Wednesday looks even warmer. If you lose 6" under these conditions today, there may not be much left by the time Thursday rolls around.

[michsnowfreak]

The warmest Feb temps for Detroit are below. Detroit has been 65+ 7 times in Feb.

 

Although Feb 2017 wont be nearly as extreme as Feb 2015, the difference in mean temp will be staggering.

70F - 2/11/1999

69F - 2/26/2000

68F - 2/26/1944

66F - 2/15/1954

66F - 2/25/1957

65F - 2/22/1930

65F - 2/25/1976

[michsnowfreak]

2 minutes ago, Chambana said:

As alek use to say, "deniers gonna deny"

There is a difference between "weather" and "climate". (And there is even a climate change subforum on here). But a weather board should be the one place where you can get away from hearing every warm spell "global warming is real" or every cold snap "so much for global warming". Positive temp departures in the midwest this Feb will likely be less extreme than negative departures of Feb 2015.

[csnavywx]

Best to approach AGW attribution from the lens of "loaded dice". It's further complicated in the wintertime where the atmospheric circulation response to Arctic amplification can counteract the warming trend in the mid-lats. In a year like this, when the AO remains stubbornly positive, the Pac jet is active and most of the cold is shunted to the Asian side of the hemisphere, the impact can be to make a sucky situation worse than it would have otherwise been. In that vein, 2011-2012 and 2016-2017 won't be isolated incidents, but they (thankfully) won't be occurring every year either, at least until the warming signal begins to seriously deplete the strength of NHEM cold pools. That'll take a while.

[Hoosier]

8 minutes ago, Chambana said:

As alek use to say, "deniers gonna deny"

Don't want to get too far down the hole here but...

Not easy to attribute individual events to climate change, but this is one of the things you would expect to see... more frequent/anomalous warm spells in terms of duration/magnitude.  

Now, nobody can deny that we've had some impressive cold in this region in the past few years.  But on the warm side, we've had the unprecedented Morch 2012 and now 5 years later are currently in the midst of Morch junior as far as anomalies/duration (especially true with southward extent). Would either of these events have been as impressive with a cooler baseline?  No El Nino in either case btw, though of course we had the super Nino last winter.

[Stebo]

69 at DTW.  Hope we hit 70 during the hour.

[Powerball]

14 minutes ago, michsnowfreak said:

There is a difference between "weather" and "climate". (And there is even a climate change subforum on here). But a weather board should be the one place where you can get away from hearing every warm spell "global warming is real" or every cold snap "so much for global warming". Positive temp departures in the midwest this Feb will likely be less extreme than negative departures of Feb 2015.

The bolded will always be the case (no matter what the season is) for the simple fact that cold air is denser than warm air (thus far easier to advect in and far harder to scour out).

[Powerball]

Just now, Stebo said:

69 at DTW.  Hope we hit 70 during the hour.

While it would suck to get 89'd, this is still impressive.

[Stebo]

4 minutes ago, Powerball said:

While it would suck to get 89'd, this is still impressive.

Checked with my coworker it is 69 so far but we still have a chance within this hour.

[weatherbo]

48 minutes ago, csnavywx said:

Gnarly. Looks like a cooler Sunday, but I see a real snowpack demo coming Mon evening-Wed. Strong WAA-driven warm rain Monday night with rising temps. Virtually no cold air behind that system, so Tuesday will start with a rain-soaked melting snowpack and stout, warm westerly winds. Wednesday looks even warmer. If you lose 6" under these conditions today, there may not be much left by the time Thursday rolls around.

Yep, expecting very little snow pack left when the pattern does finally shift back colder.  I'm pretty sure that's unprecedented in this area...?

 

[csnavywx]

14 minutes ago, Hoosier said:

Don't want to get too far down the hole here but...

Not easy to attribute individual events to climate change, but this is one of the things you would expect to see... more frequent/anomalous warm spells in terms of duration/magnitude.  

Now, nobody can deny that we've had some impressive cold in this region in the past few years.  But on the warm side, we've had the unprecedented Morch 2012 and now 5 years later are currently in the midst of Morch junior as far as anomalies/duration (especially true with southward extent). Would either of these events have been as impressive with a cooler baseline?  No El Nino in either case btw, though of course we had the super Nino last winter.

There are exceptional events than can be more or less tied to AGW through risk assessment. Sometimes a stat test is enough though. That's the case for March 2012, where you would expect an event of the same magnitude or greater to occur just 0.07% of the time. Or in simpler terms, once every 1400-1500 years with 20th century climate, or just a handful of times every interglacial, to put it in perspective. That's about right, there's an extremely small chance for STL, for instance, to pull a +14.8 anomaly without external forcing in March.

[BuffaloWeather]

27 minutes ago, Hoosier said:

Don't want to get too far down the hole here but...

Not easy to attribute individual events to climate change, but this is one of the things you would expect to see... more frequent/anomalous warm spells in terms of duration/magnitude.  

Now, nobody can deny that we've had some impressive cold in this region in the past few years.  But on the warm side, we've had the unprecedented Morch 2012 and now 5 years later are currently in the midst of Morch junior as far as anomalies/duration (especially true with southward extent). Would either of these events have been as impressive with a cooler baseline?  No El Nino in either case btw, though of course we had the super Nino last winter.

Even without the anomalous events. Buffalo has been above average for like 90% of the last 2 years.

[harrisale]

53 and not a cloud in the sky here. Absolutely top shelf day. Had to roll up the pant legs. 

Unfortunately being surrounded by three great lakes has the side effect of regulating the surface temperature a bit here early in the season.

[Hoosier]

Fairly good chance at getting another record at ORD tomorrow, but it's less of a slam dunk than the past couple days, in part because tomorrow's record is higher. Morning actually looks to start out cooler than today, and there is more uncertainty on the movement/timing of the lake breeze. They should break it as long as the lake breeze holds off until at least 1-2 pm.

[Stebo]

DTW got 89'd, 69 is the max.

[Chicago Storm]

70 is where ORD finished temp wise today. Blew past that record of 62 (1981/1961).

[Hoosier]

I'm a bit of a stat nerd so with the benefit of hourly obs being available on the 3 prior days that Chicago has hit 70 in February, I figured out approximately how many hours Chicago had spent prior to today at 70+ out of the total amount of hours in February since temperature records began.  The answer?  About 8 hours out of just over 98,000 total hours. 

[Hoosier]

14 minutes ago, Chicago Storm said:

70 is where ORD finished temp wise today. Blew past that record of 62 (1981/1961).

Rockford beat their record by 10.

[cyclone77]

8 minutes ago, Hoosier said:

I'm a bit of a stat nerd so with the benefit of hourly obs being available on the 3 prior days that Chicago has hit 70 in February, I figured out approximately how many hours Chicago had spent prior to today at 70+ out of the total amount of hours in February since temperature records began.  The answer?  About 8 hours out of just over 98,000 total hours. 

Haha, wow.  That's a pretty cool stat, no pun intended lol.

MLI actually ended up tagging 70 after all.  Beat the old record by 7 degrees.  67 in the point for tomorrow, so maybe a 3rd 70+ day in a row in the books?

[Hoosier]

11 minutes ago, cyclone77 said:

Haha, wow.  That's a pretty cool stat, no pun intended lol.

MLI actually ended up tagging 70 after all.  Beat the old record by 7 degrees.  67 in the point for tomorrow, so maybe a 3rd 70+ day in a row in the books?

That would be sick to do it a third time, considering Moline only had 3 total days of 70+ in February prior to this year.

[cyclone77]

10 minutes ago, Hoosier said:

That would be sick to do it a third time, considering Moline only had 3 total days of 70+ in February prior to this year.

Indeed.  Looking at the 36hr HRRRx, it's forecasting 70 for tomorrow (after a 34 degree start).  It was a few degrees too cool with Friday's forecast for MLI.  Never saw what it showed for today, as it wasn't going out past 18hrs with yesterday's runs.

[IWXwx]

RECORD EVENT REPORT 
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NORTHERN INDIANA
0421 PM EST SAT FEB 18 2017

...RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURE SET AT FORT WAYNE...

 A RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURE OF 67 DEGREES WAS SET AT FORT WAYNE TODAY. 
THIS BREAKS THE OLD RECORD OF 61 SET IN 1994.

[cyclone77]

Temps are tanking now that the sun has set.  Already dropped 10 degrees back to 55.  Good chance we go down to near, or even below freezing by sunrise.  Gonna be another 35-40 degree rise tomorrow.  

[weatherbo]

Marquette the city hit 60 today, breaking the record high of 52.  Records there date back to 1871.  MQT in Negaunee reached 54, also breaking their record high of 52.  Topped out at 55 at my house... back down to 39 now.