As avid waterskiers (and barefooters) we’ve noticed a steady decrease in the number of days per season when the wind is calm. For both pursuits, you need low winds and a fairly flat lake. Over the last two decades, there has been a definite decline in our ability to find smooth water. FWIW: I’m talking mainly about private lakes, so this removes the number of boats as a variable.
Poking around on the web, it appears my anecdotal experience is backed by hard facts. Wind speeds around the world are rising.
It’s not surprising to me that wakeboarding has surpassed the old pastimes of waterskiing in popularity. It is designed around jumping waves, and is more suitable to the modern world’s windier, rougher water.
South Texas native chiming in here. When I was in school back in the 80s and early 90s, I remember some high school football games were definitely cold. This would have been in October or early November as my team was never in the playoffs. These day it seems like winter is down to three weeks. It starts about 1 week before Christmas and lasts till about 1 week after New Year’s Day. At least this was what it was like last year and the year before.
Just 10-15 years ago we had proper seasons. We even had snow for Christmas in 2004. That’s now a thing of the past, and I suspect this year we may go straight from autumn (which is just getting ready to start next week) to summer sometime around Valentine’s Day, skiping winter and spring entirely.
This past growing season (between frosts) in Chicago was (IIRC) the longest recorded since 1870s. And last year I didn’t even start up my snow blower once (I shovel if the snow is light enough.) Yeah, just anecdotes, but they seem to be piling up. My town has historically had flooding problems. This year precipitation has been significantly above average, but we have not had the downpour/flooding events that had seemed so regular before. Has been at least a year or 2 since our last 100-year rain!
Recently I went back through my weather records for my midwestern location, and found that the first frost in autumn was occurring about 7-10 days later on average than when I started noting this information back in 2001.
Such observations can be prejudiced by what era(s) one is using for comparison. If you compare current summers to the ones a century ago in the region, it might seem that it’s warmer now. Make comparisons to summers of the 1930s, and you could argue for a cool-down.
Accurate mapping of long-term trends always trumps anecdotal observations and cherry-picked comparisons. We’ve been in a warming period for quite awhile now, and good evidence shows the major cause is us.
