10,000 Record Lows, 5,000 Record Snows in 2013
According to the NCDC records website, 10,167 record lows have fallen so far in 2013 in the United States, compared to only 2,185 for the same time period in 2012. In the last week? 2,901 record lows, only seven record highs! Additionally, 5,000 snowfall records have been broken so far this year.
This graph shows how last year's extremely warm late winter and early spring compares to 2013: Lows have clearly dominated highs, especially in the last few weeks, as the one-month animation from CoolWx.com and the two-week map from HamWeather.com shows:
In the last 365 days, however, there have been twice as many record highs as lows, a ratio that is similar to the last 10 years.
The snow records have not just been broken, they've been shattered, and we're not just talking about daily records here; 170 stations have never recorded this much snow in April, and 23 stations had never seen this much snow in a day, ever! our news story on the topic says:
I also provided this tidbit to the story: "On April 23, 2013, 91.9% of the upper Midwest (N. Plains) was covered by snow, according to NOHRSC, but the same day last year, there was only 0.4% snow cover." The percentages for the last eight years are as follows: 0, 2, 0, 0, 7, 1, 0, 19 and 0. For the continental U.S., we're at 23.8% yesterday, versus the percentages since 2004 of 6, 6, 8, 12, 6, 6, 11, and 5.
Heck, as of April 18, we hadn't lost ANY snow cover (percentage-wise) in the last 30 days! Again, this makes me want to go back to writing my fan fiction from a couple years ago entitled "April 3, 2031: The Big Ice Age."
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