Thanksgiving Weather: 2005-2017
As I do every year I'd like to take a look at how the weather affected Thanksgiving and Black Friday on a national basis, and see where Turkey Day 2016 stacked up locally here in State College, Pennsylvania. Nationally, the big story this year was the Thanksgiving heatwave in southern California.
Los Angeles hit 91 degrees, a new record hot Thanksgiving. These were the temperatures at 21Z:
In nearby Camarillo, it hit 99 degrees on November 23, the hottest it had ever been in November!
There was rain and some snow in the Pacific Northwest, but elsewhere the weather was fairly tranquil. Although forecast models had predicted a big east coast storm on the day before Thanksgiving a couple weeks in advance, most of them had given up on it by last weekend, and there was only a small coastal storm that brought rain (and some travel troubles) to New England.
Below is what our forecast Thanksgiving map looked like on Thursday; animations of our Thanksgiving and Black Friday forecasts are also available.
Central Pennsylvania Thanksgiving Weather History
Locally here in State College, Pennsylvania, it was an average Thanksgiving, cold and cloudy, with nothing to write home about -- near normal temperatures for the second year in a row. Here is the official record:
For the record, here are my best Instagram pictures from the last five Thanksgiving weeks in Pennsylvania:
Here are the 10-year record Thanksgiving events for State College, Pennsylvania (unchanged again this year, 3rd year in a row):
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COLDEST: 2013,
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WARMEST: 2007
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RAINIEST: 2010
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SNOWIEST: 2005*
*2014 was a runner up for daily snow, the most snow during the period for November and a tie for snow cover -- both days had several inches of snow on the ground Thanksgiving morning.</em>
National Thanksgiving Weather History
Last year, we went further back in time and published an interesting article about U.S. Thanksgiving storms past, detailing famous storms in history: 10 notorious Thanksgiving storms that wreaked havoc, including...
+ 1898 - Infamous Portland storm
+ 1921 - New England's worst ice storm
+ 1926 - Thanksgiving Day tornado outbreak
+ 1945 - Severe nor'easter disrupts Thanksgiving
+ 1950 - The Great Appalachian Storm
+ 1971 - Snowfall blankets northeastern U.S.
+ 1982 - Hurricane Iwa disrupts Hawaii's Thanksgiving
+ 1988 - Historic tornado twists from Raleigh to Jackson, North Carolina
+ 1992 - 93 deadly tornadoes rip through Gulf Coast states
+ 2010 - Tornado outbreak slams Deep South
Here are links to my previous blogs about past Thanksgiving weather:
