Winter 2023-2024: Another Absolute Dud Meteorological Winter is the months of December, January and February…the three coldest months of the year. And yet: the season was anything but “cold”. We had a quite cold 8 day stretch in January annnnnd…well that’s pretty much it. December was the 2nd warmest on record…February in the top 5 warmest on record. January was 3.7 degrees warmer-than-average and it was the MOST “normal” month of the three. All in all, this will go into the record books as the 2nd warmest winter season on record here. Was that expected? No, but perhaps it should have been. T ..read more

SUMMER 2023: NOT THAT HOT! Meteorological Summer (June-August) will go into the record books as pretty ho-hum this year. Temperatures and precipitation were both pretty close to average! It was the coolest summer since the middle of last decade, however. In terms of rainfall, some areas had more than others, but generally the area had between 11-16 inches for the summer. The season started quite dry but finished with a water-logged month of August. How was our Summer Forecast? Not bad. Here’s where we put the odds of different outcomes: It ended up being a little warmer and wetter than expe ..read more

WILL THIS SUMMER BE DIFFERENT THAN RECENT SUMMERS? In eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania, meteorological summer (June-August) has been 1) warm and 2) wet more often than not in recent years. Of course, it gets hot and we have rain every summer. But compared to average, wet summers have outnumbered drier ones…and we haven’t had a legit “cool” summer in nearly a decade. As noted in the graphic above, it got pretty dry in summer 2022. Our viewing area was never put in the “drought” category, but we spent a fair amount of July and August under the “abnormally dry” designation. As you may know ..read more

In this post we will eulogize the winter 2022-2023 forecast and then never, ever speak of it again. I am no huge fan of snow….shoveling it, driving in it, etc. So, on one hand I am happy with this season’s exceptional warmth and lack of snow so far. On the other hand, BOY DO I HATE GETTING A FORECAST WRONG. Especially one that involves the kind of hours of research and hard work as the annual winter forecast. I mean, this is the nature of the beast; seasonal forecasts are hard and sometimes you are going to fail spectacularly. But it still stings. We will treat it as a big learning opporunity ..read more

A REVIEW OF A COOLER, DRIER 2022 Hey, wait a second…it was a hot summer! True. And the year will finish as a warmer-than-average year. But it was the coolest year in Youngstown since 2015. Compared to average, January was the most abnormally cold month as we endured a long stretch of sunfreezing temperatures during the second half of the month. It was not as wet this year. In fact, it got pretty dry over the summer. Not a severe drought locally, but we did string together several drier-than-average months in a row. Overall, it was the driest year since 2009. The cool weather that settled in ..read more

WAIT, WASN’T DECEMBER SUPPOSED TO BE PRETTY COLD?? When I issued by annual Winter Forecast back on November 17, a key point of emphasis was the idea that this December had a good chance of bucking the trend of recent Decembers, which have been quite mild. We have not had a cold one in 5 years: As you know if you have read/watched my seasonal forecasts, the forecast is constructed partly through the use of “analogs”, which are seasons in the past that we think have a lot of similarities to the one that is being forecast for. Toward the top of the list of analogs for this winter was 2010-2011 ..read more

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BLOG VERSION OF THE 2022-2023 WINTER FORECAST FIRST, A REVIEW OF WINTER 2021-2022 Winter 2021-2022 got off to a slow start, with the 4th warmest December on record. Natually, with weather that warm, we did not see much snow during the first month of Meteorological Winter. However, Winter did stage a pretty good comeback in January, particularly during the final 10 days or so of the month. February started with a pretty intense winter storm, but the 2nd half of the month featured some big thaws. March was pretty decent for a change with temperatures ending up a few degrees warmer-than-average ..read more

A LOOK BACK AT METEOROLOGICAL WINTER As you may know, those of us in the weather biz like to divide up the seasons a bit differently than the traditional “astronomical” way, which are based on the position of Earth in our annual trip around the sun. Those seasons don’t begin at exactly the same time/day every year, which makes for some sloppy record keeping. Our “meteorological” or climatological” seasons are the same every year, which is useful when talking about and comparing weather records.. So, “winter” (December-February) is in the books. How did it go? How was our annual winter forecast ..read more

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