That’s probably my biggest worry for my parents in the Midwest climate wise. Those wild temperature swings yielding unexpectedly strong wind and storms. That and the rising insurance costs to cover the damage.
Also, just looked at the map for day. Round three well under way I guess:
Also, also, a little update on the water situation out west. It’s, uh, grim:
edit: in case it isn’t clear, that red line represents the worst snow pack in recorded history prior to this year
I found a source for that data and it also reveals a programming error. I’m not sure if it is because it is the lowest ever recorded, because it looks like it is doing a percentage relative to the highest, rather than a ranking within years, which would make the error make more sense:
https://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/ftpref/support/states/CO/products/#state=co&element=wteq
The OP may be interested in this cite:
Either it’s a temporary artifact or they noticed and fixed it already. It says “34% of median as of…” now. Yikes!
Thanks, there is going to be some interesting reading for a bit. The reanalysis data is starting to roll in and people are starting to dig into it.
Well, all I know is that the few tornadoes we used to get in this region were all EF0s and, on occasion, an EF1. A couple of weeks ago we had an EF3 that was on the ground for over forty miles. One of our assistant principals suffered $70,000 in home damage and 3 totaled out cars. He was out 4 days and had to buy a car so he could come to work the following Monday.
News flash: It’s actually only going to get worse. … Honest.
Sorry to hear that. I hope they bounce back.
And yes, it’s sobering to reflect on what might be in store in the future given warming trends. The thought that we’re likely to see more of these spring heat waves and anomalously warm winters as we push past 2C of warming for example.
I think their source for relative snowpack was off because yesterday the entire map was grey for “no data”, so it was a GIGO situation from whatever common source they draw the data from.
I actually reported the issue to them, so it’s possible they noticed because of me, but it’s also possible they noticed it by themselves or the data was automatically updated correctly in the background.
I should apply for a job at the USDA, since this is the second time I’ve noticed an easily-fixable error on one of their websites and reported it (the other time was a stale link that was easily fixed through an obvious alteration.)
My source for snow pack is looking out my window. Sorry about the foreground clutter. I think that is North Arapaho Peak, with a summit over 13,000 feet. That ought to be solid white. The middle distance foothills should have brown and white patches, but not the real mountains.
Not a scientific summary, just a document of what it looks like now, with a memory of what it’s looked like in past years.
Pivoting, I scheduled my snow tire swap for this coming Saturday. That is only a week earlier than last year, and two weeks earlier than previous years, but I could have skipped them entirely this year. I only used them on snow once this year, and even during the other snow events, the ground has been so warm that the roads never got beyond “wet”.
As things are starting to calm down a bit, we have these two maps courtesy of NWS:
What I’ve noticed is how much it fluctuates. It was in the 90s yesterday. The high was in the 50s today, as it was just a couple days ago.
This time yesterday, I was lamenting having to hook up the AC. Today, I’m lamenting having to turn on the heaters. I can’t remember anything like this at any time of year before.
At least here, in the Midwest, it’s always been typical to be switching back and forth between heating and AC, even from day to day, at this time of year. It’s the extremes – in temperature and precipitation – which seem to be more pronounced in recent years.
I have a set of snow tires that came with the car, but this will be the last season I bother with them. Even in this season’s unusually snowy La Nina winter, there were at most one or two days when I was actually driving on snow. All the rest of the time, I either didn’t go out or the roads were clear. Once the regular summer tires come on, they’re staying on. At most, I might get a set of all-weather tires on the front drive wheels.
I drove with snow on the ground twice this season, the first time on my “summer” all season tires, and the second on the snow tires. As I’m sure you’ve experienced, there is a very noticeable difference.
I’ll continue swapping at least until this set of snow tires wears out, but unless there is a return to typical patterns in the next few years, I might not replace them.
Yet another couple of data points. I’m waiting while my summer tires get put on, and I’m logging the swap in Teslafi. It helpfully informs me that the average temperature for my first two sets of winter tires were 47F and 45F. For this set, which has only been used this most recent winter, the average temperature was 55F.
There is a decent chance we are shifting gears again on the climate gearbox. Each strong El Niño seems to be accompanied by a spate of records falling, and then we just kind of never really return to the previous level.
I’m afraid the typical patterns we are all used to are a thing of the past. Things we’ll only see as “freak occurrences” going forward.
Yes, the way I think of it is each hottest year on record may be one of the coolest years of the next 50.
I think that’s the worst thing about this year in where we are going. By all rights this should be an average or below average year for heat. But it’s still one of the hottest years on record. Same sort of vibe going on with the Greenland ice sheet. Greenland still lost ice mass despite having lots and lots of snow and, while a lot of regular melting, not a lot of flamboyant melt events and heat waves.
So even in “normal” years, change is still changing apace. My guess is the rest of 2026 or 2027 will be worse then 2025-2026 because of this. The best I can hope for is the same level of heat and ice loss.