May 2020 cold snap; record cold, possible snow?

[Chicago Storm]

This period at ORD...

As mentioned before no records were broken, and it probably was not as significant as it could have been, but still fairly unusual.

[michsnowfreak]

While Detroit only saw a trace of snow in October, I noticed that the DTX NWS office in White Lake, which is about 25 miles northwest of Detroit in the highest elevations of Southeast Michigan, did see measurable snow in October. So regardless of the fact that they ironically missed out on much of the April snow fun for being too far north, they pulled off the rare feat of having measurable snow fall 8 months in a row.

 

Detroit's far northern suburbs almost always get extra early and late season snow accumulation when down here the snow does not stick or fall as rain, yet mid April to mid May of 2020 they were consistently too far North to see the best snow. So crazy.

 

Oct- 0.7" (.....dtw T)

Nov- 11.1" (.....dtw 9.5")

Dec- 6.7" (.....dtw 2.7")

Jan- 9.9" (.....dtw 9.7")

Feb- 18.2" (.....dtw 14.7")

Mar- 1.7" (.....dtw 1.7")

Apr- 0.9" (.....dtw 4.9")

May- 0.2" (.....dtw 0.5")

 

 

[Hoosier]

2 hours ago, Chicago Storm said:

It's the same temperature.

I don't know about you but I hope Jonger starts reporting to 3 decimal places.

[Roger Smith]

As I posted elsewhere on the forum, have been updating the Toronto (city) weather records and noted that the first record low minimum in May since 1923 was obtained on the 9th with 28 F (previous record 29 F in 1850). The maximum of 42 F on the 8th failed to beat the mark set in 1947 (41 F) and on the 9th 44 F missed the 1966 record by 1 deg also. The location saw six consecutive days with lowest temperatures since 1967 (an arbitrary division in my research data created by dates in a publication I used to generate the daily records against which I have checked all available internet historical data since then). The air temperatures of -0.4 (11th) and 0.0 (12th) represent latest of season for converted to 31F and 32F since 1924 (for the 31F with 30 on 21st) and 1936 (for the 32F on 16th). Previous to that the frost season extends later and later with the smaller urban heat island in place, and eventually reaches its latest observation of June 10 in 1842 (a reading of 28F which is both the latest 32 or colder, and tied for June extreme with an earlier date in 1843). There was a reading of 34 F on May 24, 1956, and a report of snow at YYZ on night of May 25 to 26 1961. That snow failed to reach the downtown location (back in a time when this was a first order continually observing site) and the morning low was 37 F. Going back to early June 1945 there were snow flurries reported at Toronto downtown, only the second occasion with June traces of snow (the other being 1859).

The latest 1.0" snowfall in the records was on 9th in 1923 (1.3"), and the latest 0.5" on 12th in 1966, with 0.2" on 15th of 1959 and the latest measurable amount 0.1" on 16th of 1884. After that daily records are all traces only and are quite infrequent. 

So this cold spell seems to be a benchmark event. I would be grateful for any thoughts about snow reports as my only guide for that now is snow depth reporting, the previous station listing both rain and snow amounts downtown ended operations in 2017. I assume that most of the 1.0 mm precip on May 8 was snow downtown, how about with the Sunday night into Monday event? That seemed more like either cold rain or melting snow at the location? 

Both 1966 and 1967 were very backward springs with unusually late leaf foliation, as I recall from reading my own high school era weather station west of Toronto, the trees were not fully in leaf until around the end of May those two years. I can also remember running at a track meet in Guelph ON in falling wet snow some time around the 10th of May in 1967, so if you had to choose one of those two summers to follow, I would say 1966 (a hot, dry summer) as opposed to 1967 (June was very warm and humid with excessive rainfalls, the rest of the summer rather cool). It was quite a contrast to the previous two years when May (1964,65) had well above normal temperatures and in both of those the weather turned quite chilly at the end of May into early June.