Track Your Local Climate Change
Friday, May 29, 2009 at 07:00AM I ran across an interesting Web site, U. S. Historical Climatology Network, which lets users access data for local weather stations going back into the 19th century. I wandered about the site for a bit, pulling up charts from various places in the Backcountry, and found that some have gotten warmer, some have gotten colder, and many have stayed within the same range for a century plus. Here is the chart from the station closest to where I live (click on the image to see a larger version):
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There doesn't seem to be a warming trend, or a cooling trend, in this case. Same for Lewisburg, West Virginia:
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I found other places where the temperatures have gotten cooler, such as Marshall, NC:
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I have linked a passel of Backcountry weather stations below. To see the trends near you, go to U. S. Historical Climatology Network, scroll down to the map, click on your state, and then click on the nearest weather station; find the block titled "Select a Temperature variable for plot of Mean Temperature vs year;" then select either "Mean Temperature" or "Urban Heat-Adjusted Mean Temperature," whichever is more appropriate for your locality.
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Reader Comments (3)
I presume our anecdotal memories of deeper snows and colder winters are accounted for by (1) playing outside more & getting chilly and (2) being closer to the ground and hence more impressed with snow depth. Facts are so inconsistent with opinions, more's the pity.
What I need to find now is a source to explain the phenomenon of the walk to school being uphill both ways.
Depending on where/when you grew up, you actually probably did get more snow. Throughout my childhood in the 70s, we would spend weeks out of school, building snow forts, riding sleds down the street, but we've had zero snows of over 3 inches here in over 10 years now. Some years we get nothing but a few flurries.
So for here, we had more snow in the 70s than we do now, but, of course, that's one location and two random points in time and means nothing.