near-record cold

Sorry for the broken record, but here’s an update on the astounding weather pattern that has been locked in place for the past several weeks.

 

Just as a superpowered pattern was entrenched from late December through the middle of January, producing some of the coldest sustained weather Chicago has ever recorded, a similar pattern has had a near-chokehold on the entire middle/eastern portion of North America since late March. Temperatures in much of the rest of the Northern Hemisphere are well above normal, while the air mass that would normally be over Canada and the North Pole has been sliding southward by a few thousand miles due to a massive contortion of the jet stream. That’s led to conditions that have been more like February than April – the whining/jokester crowd is torn between “Apruary” and “postwinter” – for a huge chunk of the United States.

 

• This weekend’s storm left more than a foot of snow in Sioux Falls and Minneapolis, and almost 30 inches at Stevens Point, Wisconsin. They’re officially at 24.2” and still snowing at the Green Bay NWS office, and that ranks as their second-highest snowstorm total of all time. (The highest was 29.0” in 1888, and the next highest April total was 11.0” in 1977! Properly called a “once in a lifetime snowstorm” by NWS.)
• April snow has been recorded from Kansas to DC and Denver to Boston.
  • For the Boston Marathon today the city could set an all-time record for low-maximum temperature; either way, temps in the 30s with a driving rain and winds >20 mph will make for one of the most miserable/difficult marathons on record there.
• From what I can tell there is no way to confirm this, but a couple of sources have posited that April 2018 has set the all-time record for most snowed-out Major League Baseball games. Anecdotally, I’ve never seen more cancelled games (for rain and snow) or snowed-out games.
  • As noted above, the Minnesota Twins hosted the White Sox this weekend…and had three straight games snowed out with well over a foot of snow and temps continuously below 32F for four straight days. Unreal. Since 2000 – the starting point of recorded data – the Twins have only played 30 games with a first-pitch temp below 40F, and six of them have been in the past two weeks (while most of the other scheduled home games were cancelled due to even worse conditions).
• The first half of April in Chicago featured exactly two mild days (the 11^th and 12^th in the 60s and 70s) and 13 others that were cold, with nothing in between.
• The only other first half of April in Chicago that really compares to 2018 was 1881, and data back then were recorded in the Loop. 1975, 1926, and 1874 were also cold, but for the duration plus intensity of cold I think it is fair to say that this among the very coldest Aprils in Chicago history and likely the coldest in most people’s lifetimes.  
  • The lack of individual record temperatures is notable but deceiving. The acuteness of the cold hasn’t been nearly as impressive as its duration and persistence.
    • Because meteorological spring begins March 1^st, and because early March can be very cold, the official spring-to-date temperature rankings don’t tell the full story. March 2018 was consistently cold, but it lacked the bitter cold in the early weeks that can really drag down the averages.
• Looking at the full distribution of temperatures, with seasonal averages nearing 60 degrees for a daytime high, the corresponding pattern on the warm side would put temps here in the upper 80s (and the record high for today is, in fact, 87).
• The temperatures at/above 70F over the President’s Day weekend in February 2017 were just about as fluky as these, but they lasted for a short period of time. The sustained nine-day stretch of temps in the mid-80s in March 2012 is a better – albeit more extreme – comparison.

 

So yes, it has been freakishly cold. Going forward there is good news and bad news.

• Bad: the rebound toward normal  will be slow. Starting tomorrow temps will moderate but remain 5-15 degrees below normal.
• Bad: the overall pattern (cold, with frequent precip) has not yet broken down.
• Good: sunshine tomorrow and Thursday will make for a much warmer “feel” than the thermometer readings in the 40s.
• Good: the sun is not broken, the earth is still spinning, and the seasons will progress.

 

Sunday 1pm (temps near 50F along the lakeshore and near 60F inland); Monday (the 23^rd) looks similar.

 

 

Tuesday 1pm (temps in the 40s and 50s along the lake with mid-60s inland)

 

 

 

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