Winter has gone missing across the Midwest and Great Lakes, and time is running out to find it. Dozens of cities are on track for one of the warmest winters on record, making snow and ice rare commodities.
Several cities are missing feet of snow compared to a typical winter, ice on the Great Lakes is near record-low levels and the springlike temperatures have even spawned rare wintertime severe thunderstorms.
A classic El Niño pattern coupled with the effects of a warming climate are to blame for this “non-winter” winter, said Pete Boulay, a climatologist with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.
Winter has become the fastest-warming season for nearly 75% of the US and snowfall is declining around the globe as temperatures rise because of human-caused climate change.
Funny observations now will turn into food and water scarcity later. The 1% will be high and dry (at least while they can grow food without an ecosystem), while the rest of us enjoy unimaginable human suffering on a massive scale.
Yep. Got almost no snow for the last few years running, and that sucks. Way more bad bugs in the summer, less maple syrup, etc.
Not good.
I’m in QC and it’s quite incredible this winter, instead of 0F we have 48F, we had 2 snowstorm in a few days early January, nothing since. I’ve never saw a winter like this, people were wearing shorts this week-end
It’s not as stark of a difference, but in western Washington we’ve also had a noticeably warm winter. Really just feels like a continuation of fall. Almost the entire winter we’ve been around 40-50 °F, only had one cold snap that even got down to freezing, into the 20s for 4 days or so.
Last friday it was 60F here in the Detroit area. I took my daughter skiing at one of the local places and you could see the snow melt running down the hill. I saw at least two kids skiing in shorts.
I’m sure by March we’ll have another vicious cold snap that kills anything that was tricked into thinking it’s spring.
Except for the ticks… they were bad last year and I expect them to be worse this year… ugh
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I live in Taiwan and it hit 90F the other day. I went to the beach today at 24 degrees(75F). We are supposed to get 15C-20C winters. This is not normal.
Where I live, our winters are typically like this. It’s never been particularly stable, often oscillating between spring-like warm weather, standard cold winter weather, and stretches of extreme arctic blasts.
What has been unusual is that we haven’t had any snow at all so far, not even an ephemeral flurry. We haven’t had any wintry weather (i.e. sleet, snow, freezing rain) this winter. And for that to be the case in mid February is definitely unusual. If we go this entire winter with no wintry weather, it will be the first time in my lifetime that I can recall.
Coincidentally, back in the fall the long term forecasts for this winter were suggesting we would have more wintry weather than normal in this area, since there would be more moisture and more frequently extreme cold events (as well as cooler than normal temps).
Warmer weather during winter has been an obvious trend for decades now. But this year is different. The last few years, we’d have weeks where the snow would thaw in my area but then it would get cold again because that was happening was a storm was pulling warm air up from the south.
This year, we’ve had the opposite where the default is warm weather and occasionally a storm brings cold air down from the north.
Now this is the second year of an el Nino, so this hopefully isn’t the new average case yet. But this year is really exemplifying how much things have changed since the last second year of El Nino we’ve had. Not even sure when that was (2012?), but I am sure that I’ve never seen a winter like this before.
Oh yeah, bringing up 2012 reminds me that we’re also at the solar maximum part of the sun’s cycle.
