How Impressive Was November Cold / Snow?
Late November was brutal compared to the last two years in the Northeast, and I've got the stats to prove it. When the cold outbreak first started here in the Northeast last month, I wasn't that impressed, but last week I started to think, you know this November has been really cloudy, cold, and snowy here in State College, Pennsylvania, home of AccuWeather HQ [Google Map].
I'd like to quantify those thoughts a bit. First, let me explain something about Central Pennsylvania. It's devoid of official climatological recording stations, so quantifying precipitation is nearly impossible. Check out our awesome map which shows most of the state with only two stations, both to the east.
UPDATE: See Joe Bastardi's December forecast and the latest snow maps for the Northeast this weekend on our Breaking Weather News Page (PREMIUM | PRO) - screenshot at right.
So if I'm looking for information on State College like how much sleet or snow fell, I'm forced to look at my own records. But I'll try to be fair and check the rest of the state as well. Looking back at previous blog entries, we only had one major winter event in the state of PA in November, and it was mostly lake-effect. The local NWS office has a special page up about it. Unfortunately for us here in State College, less than two inches of snow fell (I think the report of 1.7" on their page is really stretching it, and by the way, reported 6-10 inches from the lake-effect in Cambria county, so that area is underrepresented). In any case, I think the event was arguably less impressive than last year's mid-November snowfall, unless you were in one of those areas that happened to get a lot.
So that got me thinking, if the one-time snow wasn't the big story, why did it seem that November was so brutal?
The more important event for State College occurred on the 24th-25th. Now, nobody likes sleet, because it makes the roads slick quick, and it cuts down on snow amounts. But I'd wager we got at least an inch of sleet that night, and maybe another inch of snow the next day. The key with sleet is that it takes a long time to melt or sublimate, so it makes the snowcover stick around. If you look at my Ground Cam #2 Archive, you can see that I had a trace of snowcover (observable snow on the ground within my yard) every day after the 21st, with a solid snowcover on 4 days. While I have no records to prove this, it strikes me that this persistence of snow cover in my yard in November is unusual. Last year, according to my Ground Cam #4 archive we had a snow in mid-November, but it only accounted for 2 days with snow cover, because it warmed up afterwards, and it wasn't sleet.
Since AccuWeather is headquartered here, we do maintain a climatic station of our own on AccuWeather.com, which is fed with data from Penn State University (PREMIUM | PRO). This station only records the amount of snow, but it had at least a trace of snow falling on 13 days during the month, which is pretty impressive, by my recollection. In fact last year had only 8 days with snow, and only 4 in 2006 (with nothing accumulating).
If you want to talk temperatures, looking at the AccuWeather station mentioned above:
2008: 17 Days Below Normal, Min -14, Max +17, Avg. -0.7 2007: 22 Days Below Normal, Min -10, Max +16, Avg. -0.8 2006: 9 Days Below Normal, Min -14, Max + 22, Avg. +4.1
STATE COLLEGE NOVEMBER 2008
This says to me that, while technically last November was colder on more days, it wasn't as cold as the coldest day this year, or in 2006. So that doesn't sound that great, but remember, the cold really hit on the last half of the month. If you factor in only the 16th-30th, you get these stats:
2008: 13 Days Below Normal, Min -14, Max +0, Avg. -6.5 2007: 10 Days Below Normal, Min -10, Max +16, Avg. -0.2 2006: 4 Days Below Normal, Min -6, Max + 22, Avg. +6.2
Now it's clear how this long, late-November cold outbreak is kicking butt. It wins the largest number of days below normal, the largest swing below normal, most below normal average, and, most importantly, had zero warm days, whereas the previous years contained 16 and 22! This is what got me thinking late last week that this is really unusual. The graph above shows this lengthy period where high and average temps were below normal here. Below is a map showing that -6.5 compared to surrounding stations. Note on the Northeast map there are double-digit losses from North Carolina through Pennsylvania, so this wasn't just State College by any means.
I also believe that November was unusually cloudy here. Because of the frequent snow showers, I'd say we went at least a week or 10 days without seeing the sun. Unfortunately, AccuWeather doesn't record that data, and the percentage of sunshine data was missing from both Williamsport and Harrisburg readings on the NWS site. Now I wish I still had that weather station that recorded solar radiation, that I sold on Ebay.
(The climo graph was obtained from our Premium site. The custom past weather plot maps were obtained from our Pro site.
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