April 2021 General Discussion

[frostfern]

So this is what prompted the severe thunderstorm warning on Saturday.  It was odd as there was a lot of thunder and quite a downpour, but hardly any wind at all IMBY.  Also weird to see a SE to NW path.

[michsnowfreak]

1 hour ago, frostfern said:

We're talking about an increase in the UHI though.  It's hard to tell how much of it corresponds to increased urban development and how much corresponds to other factors.

good point. I'd place my bets on urban development mostly. 

 

fwiw since we've been talking average, here is Detroits monthly max/min avg (rounded to nearest degree) per decade. will show you where the trends are.

[TimB]

1 hour ago, michsnowfreak said:

good point. I'd place my bets on urban development mostly. 

 

fwiw since we've been talking average, here is Detroits monthly max/min avg (rounded to nearest degree) per decade. will show you where the trends are.

That’s where I would be alarmed. Outside of the cold season, highs, lows, everything has made a steady climb of anywhere from 3-5 degrees for the most part. UHI affects lows more than highs, and DTW is nearly 20 miles from downtown, yet the daily highs in July and August have increased by about 5 degrees over the last century. I thought for a minute that my use of the word “catastrophic” was extremist, but now that I see the data, I stand by my use of that word, because the data affirms it.

[BuffaloWeather]

Buffalo is at +9.1 for April temps. 

[TimB]

28 minutes ago, BuffaloWeather said:

Buffalo is at +9.1 for April temps. 

Pittsburgh is +6.3, and that includes near-record cold the first two days of the month. The upcoming pattern should moderate things a little, but it still looks like a few degrees either side of average for the most part, so you’re still looking at a positive anomaly unless we average well below normal the rest of the way. Should be our 10th above normal month out of the past 11, and that’s not long after an 18 month streak of above average from February 2016 to July 2017.

[A-L-E-K]

Today ended up top shelf 

[A-L-E-K]

Best climo

 

[Chicago Storm]

Best climo
 

things are on the same level of popping out here in the burbs.


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[frostfern]

3 hours ago, TimB84 said:

That’s where I would be alarmed. Outside of the cold season, highs, lows, everything has made a steady climb of anywhere from 3-5 degrees for the most part. UHI affects lows more than highs, and DTW is nearly 20 miles from downtown, yet the daily highs in July and August have increased by about 5 degrees over the last century. I thought for a minute that my use of the word “catastrophic” was extremist, but now that I see the data, I stand by my use of that word, because the data affirms it.

The fact that the winter minimum temperatures haven't warmed all that much compared to summer maximums is the opposite of what you would assume.  My wild guess is it has something to do with changes in lake breeze behavior.

[frostfern]

14 minutes ago, A-L-E-K said:

Best climo

 

This pattern is actually good for flowers.  Blooms will not be over in an instant like they would if it stayed as torchy as last week.

[A-L-E-K]

12 minutes ago, Chicago Storm said:

things are on the same level of popping out here in the burbs.


.

Ready 2 become a palm guy

[Brian D]

Gloomy weather persists up here. Area has seen around an inch of rain so far. Fairly steady light rain/drizzle since yesterday morning. Maybe another inch of rain by the end of this sometime late tomorrow into Wed. Some snow on tap, mainly west of me, with a couple inches on tap for them by Wed morning.

[Chicago Storm]

Ready 2 become a palm guy

now’s the time with the new st. louis climo.


.

[michsnowfreak]

4 hours ago, TimB84 said:

That’s where I would be alarmed. Outside of the cold season, highs, lows, everything has made a steady climb of anywhere from 3-5 degrees for the most part. UHI affects lows more than highs, and DTW is nearly 20 miles from downtown, yet the daily highs in July and August have increased by about 5 degrees over the last century. I thought for a minute that my use of the word “catastrophic” was extremist, but now that I see the data, I stand by my use of that word, because the data affirms it.

30-50 years ago DTW nighttime temperatures would be anywhere from 3 to 10ﾟ warmer than Detroit city. Now they are very similar, often plus or minus a degree or so.  DTW area itself is still fairly rural but obviously the airport is full of concrete. On a good radiating night temperatures will always be several degrees colder on the South side of the airport than what the official observation indicates. And in extreme air masses is even more extreme. On Feb 20, 2015  The official low was -13ﾟ however as I drove to work literally passing the south airport property my car read -22 around 7:30 a.m.

 

We must not be looking at the same chart if you think it shows a steady 3 to 5ﾟ increase with everything lol.  I will say it again, I do not understand how using the coldest averages of whatever decade should be considered baseline. If we use that same logic, I guess the increase in snowfall is catastrophic for winter haters since the 2010s were the snowiest decade on record.

 

Here is the same chart over the last 90 years.  The only notable increase as a whole has been may, ironic after the 2020 started with cold and snow records in May.

[michsnowfreak]

32 minutes ago, frostfern said:

The fact that the winter minimum temperatures haven't warmed all that much compared to summer maximums is the opposite of what you would assume.  My wild guess is it has something to do with changes in lake breeze behavior.

I've said over and over that are winters have not really gotten any warmer they've only gotten wetter and snowier, and the most notable increase was in summer temperatures. Even then, all we are seeing is temperatures on par with what they were in the hot summers of the 1930s-50s, nothing unprecedented yet. And to be honest itll be interesting what the 2020 's feature overall.  Will it be another decade of many extremes of all types?

[michsnowfreak]

31 minutes ago, frostfern said:

This pattern is actually good for flowers.  Blooms will not be over in an instant like they would if it stayed as torchy as last week.

That sort of thing happened last fall. It was an extraordinarily long color season because the color started much earlier than normal but then caught up and stayed on the trees to normal time. After many late Spring green ups the past decade this appears to be the earliest since 2012. It's funny, I would consider 2012 record early, 2017 and 2021 very early, and most other years since very late lol. Have not really had much in between that I can recall.

[TimB]

18 minutes ago, michsnowfreak said:

30-50 years ago DTW nighttime temperatures would be anywhere from 3 to 10ﾟ warmer than Detroit city. Now they are very similar, often plus or minus a degree or so.  DW area itself is still fairly rural but obviously the airport is full of concrete. On a good radiating night temperatures will always be several degrees colder on the South side of the airport than what the official observation indicates. And in extreme air masses is even more extreme.

 

We must not be looking at the same chart if you think it shows a steady 3 to 5ﾟ increase with everything lol.  I will say it again, I do not understand how using the coldest averages of whatever decade should be considered baseline. If we use that same logic, I guess the increase in snowfall is catastrophic for winter haters since the 2010s were the snowiest decade on record.

 

Here is the same chart over the last 90 years.  The only notable increase as a whole has been may, ironic after the 2020 started with cold and snow records in May.

One could say using 90 years of data when we have 140 seems as arbitrary as using 10 years of data when we have 140. On the flip side, I can’t be the only one who thinks weather records from the 1800s are suspect due to technology or procedures or both. So it might be fair to look at 90 years. If we do that for Pittsburgh (my location), I typically only compare apples to apples and use data from 1948-present (when observations began being taken at the airport). And, considering only data from those 73 years, I think I determined that 8 of the 12 months of the year recorded their hottest average temperature on record within the past decade.

[michsnowfreak]

33 minutes ago, TimB84 said:

One could say using 90 years of data when we have 140 seems as arbitrary as using 10 years of data when we have 140. On the flip side, I can’t be the only one who thinks weather records from the 1800s are suspect due to technology or procedures or both. So it might be fair to look at 90 years. If we do that for Pittsburgh (my location), I typically only compare apples to apples and use data from 1948-present (when observations began being taken at the airport). And, considering only data from those 73 years, I think I determined that 8 of the 12 months of the year recorded their hottest average temperature on record within the past decade.

 I agree, my point was to show that it's not necessarily a sudden warming when you look at the last 90 years. Some of the early days data can certainly be suspect in ways but I still think it's a great clue as to what was going on. The 1880s featured some of the most outrageous extremes we've ever seen, particularly in Winter. We seemed to have a seesaw effect of an extremely brutal Winter followed by an extremely warm Winter for about 6 years running. In fact the warmest Winter on record 1881-82 is a record that I honestly think may never be broken.

 

 I am fortunate to own David Ludlum's books which discuss winters since the 1600s. They are fascinating and While there were some very harsh winters back then there were also some very "open" winters back then.

[Brian D]

I put these charts up for the seasons and the annual for our region so you folks talking of the changes can get a glimpse of what has been, and what things look like now in comparison. I think we do a great disservice to the observers of the past by calling their work suspect. Then and now, they all do their best. It's pretty easy to point to this issue or that to discredit the data that has been collected, but the record in the US is the best in the world. The CRN network is probably the most pristine we have at the moment, but is very short.

These are a fair representation of the last 200 years of our region. It'll be awesome to see how it works out over time. I think I have a few more years to go.

 

[TimB]

32 minutes ago, Brian D said:

I put these charts up for the seasons and the annual for our region so you folks talking of the changes can get a glimpse of what has been, and what things look like now in comparison. I think we do a great disservice to the observers of the past by calling their work suspect. Then and now, they all do their best. It's pretty easy to point to this issue or that to discredit the data that has been collected, but the record in the US is the best in the world. The CRN network is probably the most pristine we have at the moment, but is very short.

These are a fair representation of the last 200 years of our region. It'll be awesome to see how it works out over time. I think I have a few more years to go.

 

So when it comes down to that, spring and fall are warmer than they’ve ever been, summer is warmer than it’s been in over 160 years, winter is almost as warm as it’s ever been, and the annual average is warmer than its ever been.

[Brian D]

6 minutes ago, TimB84 said:

So when it comes down to that, spring and fall are warmer than they’ve ever been, summer is warmer than it’s been in over 160 years, winter is almost as warm as it’s ever been, and the annual average is warmer than its ever been.

The one thing I noticed, is that since the Super El Nino of 1998, there has been a noted shift in the climate for our region. The annual really bears that out clearly. The seasons themselves may have started to shift a little before or after that, but 1998 sure was a defining moment in weather history for us overall IMHO.

 

[TimB]

6 minutes ago, Brian D said:

The one thing I noticed, is that since the Super El Nino of 1998, there has been a noted shift in the climate for our region. The annual really bears that out clearly. The seasons themselves may have started to shift a little before or after that, but 1998 sure was a defining moment in weather history for us overall IMHO.

 

I think there are two possible ways to look at that (and I’m honestly not sure which is correct): 

1. the El Niño of 1998 itself caused a longer-term shift in climate patterns.

or

2. the El Niño of 1998 was the catalyst that gave anthropogenic climate change the push it needed to accelerate.

[michsnowfreak]

1 hour ago, Brian D said:

I put these charts up for the seasons and the annual for our region so you folks talking of the changes can get a glimpse of what has been, and what things look like now in comparison. I think we do a great disservice to the observers of the past by calling their work suspect. Then and now, they all do their best. It's pretty easy to point to this issue or that to discredit the data that has been collected, but the record in the US is the best in the world. The CRN network is probably the most pristine we have at the moment, but is very short.

These are a fair representation of the last 200 years of our region. It'll be awesome to see how it works out over time. I think I have a few more years to go.

 

I cannot think of anyone who enjoys old weather data as much as me lol, the last thing I would do is a disservice to observers of the past. My only issue with that is there was a lot and I mean a lot less weather observations back then than there are now. So many gaps to fill in so to speak. im not at all surprised that the warmest winters show up in the late 1870s to the mid 1880 's I referenced earlier, but i am a little surprised at the hotter summers of the 19th century. Then again, what data goes into the graphs? i know the upper Midwest has warmed more than the lower Great Lakes.

[michsnowfreak]

23 minutes ago, Brian D said:

The one thing I noticed, is that since the Super El Nino of 1998, there has been a noted shift in the climate for our region. The annual really bears that out clearly. The seasons themselves may have started to shift a little before or after that, but 1998 sure was a defining moment in weather history for us overall IMHO.

 

*local post* I use that timeframe as a shift locally as well, but not necessarily for temps. That is around the time that severe weather started to go down and snowfall started to ramp up. There actually was less notable summer heat in the 2000s over the 1990s before getting much hotter in the 2010s. Snowfall in the 2000s went way up over the 1990s, then in the 2010s went up yet again. It also got wetter. The period that seems to be warming the most is late spring to early summer, with winter temps basically remaining steady, though with more extremes (a watered down version of the 1880s). 

 

Despite all the pomp and circumstance over every tenth of a degree, the extremes of both hottest and coldest temps have remained pretty steady here. In fact, there are far more cold temperatures and less hot temperatures than there were in the 1950s.  Heatwaves were worse & winters were less wintry in the 1930s-50s than they are today, but springs/falls were cooler.

[michsnowfreak]

We have been going quite off topic so to bring it back to April discussion, whenever a billowy overcast with multiple shades of dark gray like today I think of November.

[TimB]

16 minutes ago, michsnowfreak said:

I cannot think of anyone who enjoys old weather data as much as me lol, the last thing I would do is a disservice to observers of the past. My only issue with that is there was a lot and I mean a lot less weather observations back then than there are now. So many gaps to fill in so to speak. im not at all surprised that the warmest winters show up in the late 1870s to the mid 1880 's I referenced earlier, but i am a little surprised at the hotter summers of the 19th century. Then again, whay day goes into the graphs? i know the upper Midwest has warmed more than the lower Great Lakes.

I don’t think it’s a disservice to observers of the past to say that weather data was probably of much less importance to society than it is now. That’s not the observers’ fault.

[michsnowfreak]

19 minutes ago, TimB84 said:

I don’t think it’s a disservice to observers of the past to say that weather data was probably of much less importance to society than it is now. That’s not the observers’ fault.

 Years ago when I visited the national weather service I looked at some of the old climate books from the 1800s. It was absolutely fascinating to see how detailed they were in their old quill pen writing down the weather data for Detroit. Even wrote summaries of the day, noting things like depth of snow drifts or in the summertime they may note on a hot day that a thermometer in the sun read 120ﾟ or something like that. If anything they took more care of their weather data back then than they do now. The problem is you had your big cities and that was it. I am sure there were weather watchers but not a lot of documented data. Nowadays we have data documented everywhere so you see all the ins and outs of what goes on between the climate sites.

[mollydog]

I don’t think it’s a disservice to observers of the past to say that weather data was probably of much less importance to society than it is now. That’s not the observers’ fault.

Weather was a super big deal to a mostly agrarian society! I think that is why we have some of the details that we do.


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[cyclone77]

Today was a perfect day to spend a good hour picking up all the sticks and little branches that blew down over the winter.  The nice thing about this time of year is you can be outside at all times and not be harassed by insects lol.  

[Brian D]

1 hour ago, michsnowfreak said:

*local post* I use that timeframe as a shift locally as well, but not necessarily for temps. That is around the time that severe weather started to go down and snowfall started to ramp up. There actually was less notable summer heat in the 2000s over the 1990s before getting much hotter in the 2010s. Snowfall in the 2000s went way up over the 1990s, then in the 2010s went up yet again. It also got wetter. The period that seems to be warming the most is late spring to early summer, with winter temps basically remaining steady, though with more extremes (a watered down version of the 1880s). 

 

Despite all the pomp and circumstance over every tenth of a degree, the extremes of both hottest and coldest temps have remained pretty steady here. In fact, there are far more cold temperatures and less hot temperatures than there were in the 1950s.  Heatwaves were worse & winters were less wintry in the 1930s-50s than they are today, but springs/falls were cooler.

Not into the why it's happening. It just has happened. Just like going into the 30's, or going into the 50's. Noted climate shifts. Going into the 2000's. Now, when is the next one going to happen? Hope to be around to see it, and got a feeling we are getting close to another one.:)