Category: weather

What Happened to Our Cold Winters over the past 10 Winters?

This is an update to what I did yesterday but with a lot more detail. I have added CONUS scale winter temperature anomalies for each of the past 10 years so you can see for yourself, in your area how the cold winter frequency has changed (there is a summary CONUS scale summary table for this now too). I have added correlation slides from CPC and Physical Science Laboratories to show there really the correlation I am suggesting is true.

What Happened to Our Cold Winters of the Past?

At least over Southwest Michigan and likely most of the northern CONUS, we have lacked cold winter (relative to 1991-2020 normal) since the winter of 2014/2015, which was the last cold winter. I would suggest warming oceans are at least part of the story.

Storm Summary for the 27th into the 28th of February, 2024

Record high temperatures ( many cases all time record highs for February) were quickly brought to an end by a strong late February cold front. There were 21 reported tornadoes, mostly EF-0 and EF-1 but there was an EF-2 near Grand Blanc in Geneses County just ahead of the cold front. Temperatures fell around 50 degrees between Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday afternoon over Lower Michigan. There was 6 to 10 inches of snow in upper Michigan and locally 1 to 2 inches of rain in parts of southern Lower Michigan. Winds gusted to 69 mph over western Lake Erie.

The first 9 days of February this year, were the Warmest on Record of Southwest Lower Michigan

What makes this more striking is that over the past 30 years, the last week of January and the first two weeks of February are the coldest weeks of the entire year. The mean of 37.2 degrees in Grand Rapids would be normal for the 20th of March (using the 1991-2020 normal).

Unusually Warm into Friday, then over the next week, the colder air returns over most of the CONUS.

This past 15 days ( Jan. 23- Feb. 7) in Grand Rapids, Michigan were the warmest on record (34.8F) that exceeded the 34.7F for the 15 days ending on January 6th 2012.

It will be unusually warm till next weekend. Then the cold and snow return. This time the cold will not move out as quickly as it did in January.

The bottom line is it will be very warm, relative to normal until around Valentine’s Day, the it will get cold across most of the central and eastern CONUS with a significant amount of snow over the Great Lakes and New England.