Has anyone else noticed a difference in their winters?
I moved to a place with an "actual" winter just over a decade ago -- snow, freezing temperatures, etc. In the first couple of years, I got what felt like a genuinely solid winter. Lots of blisteringly cold days. Snow that fell in large amounts and stuck around for most of the season. I love winter, so this was great for me.
In recent years, however, the winters have been milder and milder. When we do get snow, it's only around for a bit because days above freezing are now frequent enough that it's able to melt between snowfalls. Also, the snowfalls themselves are more intermittent. This year specifically we've actually had more rain than snow. I don't remember getting rain in January when I first moved here.
It irks me a bit because the shift has been so stark and noticeable in such a short period of time. There's a part of me that thinks that it's not a big deal and maybe my first years here were unnaturally cold and snowy for the area, so what I'm seeing now is simply the other side of the mean, but then there's another part of me that feels like that's simply a comforting lie I can tell myself in the face of the obvious effects of climate change.
Is there anyone else here that feels like they're missing their winters?
I encourage people to be cautious about relating personal experience to climate change. It is extremely vulnerable to confirmation bias, where we overemphasize experiences that confirm our preconceptions. There's significant variation in weather from year to year or location to location, and we might perceive trends from random events. That's how you get senators bringing snowballs into Congress to disprove climate change.
I think climate change is real, but because of scientific consensus, not because of my personal situation. If I look at the stats for the city I live in, the average temperature for the past few years has actually been colder compared to previous years. If I just looked at my personal situation I'd end up with the wrong idea.
I totally agree with this, and also want to add that in addition to year-to-year variation, climate change related phenomena can actually result in colder winters in some regions. Having said that, I have noticed the same thing (milder winters than I remember as a kid) and can't help but think it is directly related to the climate changing.
Keep in mind that we have just come out of three years of la Niña, followed up immediately by el Niño. Because of these, the weather over the last four years has been pretty abnormal worldwide.
The weather itself does not have me too alarmed. However, it is rare to get three years of la Niña or el Niño in a row, and also rare to have one immediately follow the other. Two rare climate events happening back-to-back is...alarming. I don't think anything like this has ever happened in my lifetime.
And I am now seeing forecasts suggesting that we may be in for another la Niña in just a few months' time. If that happens, it will be five years since our planet has seen a normal weather year. When things like this keep happening, it starts looking like you're rolling loaded dice.
El Niño and la Niña are caused by a particular area of the Pacific ocean being 0.5°C warmer or cooler (respectively) than it is on average. This tiny shift in temperature has huge ramifications for the trade winds, which in turn drive weather patterns all over the globe.
Needless to say, this is exactly the kind of thing that global warming is likely to affect.
Not exactly, here's a nice graph.
But I would say the fact we had 2 such strong peaks inside of a decade for El Niño, when the last one that intense was in 1997 should be at least somewhat worrying.
There are some indications that polar meltwater is contributing to changes in the thermohaline circulation that drives deep ocean currents globally. This is going to be a major contributor to chaotic weather, with some areas becoming overall cooler than they are now.
That's why "climate change" became the standard terminology for our current situation, rather than "global warming".
That's the problem. Even with the knowledge of statistical significance and such, on really hot summer days or looking at how all the snow is melting in the SoCal mountains so I can't go snowboarding, I still find myself thinking "oh, it's so hot, must be global warming." It's unavoidable.
While I agree anecdata should be taken with a grain of salt, I have some backed with historical data that makes it feel worse in context.
NYC had 1.4 inches of snow 2 weeks ago, ending a 701-day drought of snow, the longest in NYC’s recorded history. That historical record goes back to 1868, over 150 years ago.
If the 1.4 inches is the only snowfall we see this winter, and so far that seems likely, it will be the smallest measured snowfall in NYC’s history. The second lowest snowfall was right before the drought began, at 2.3 inches.
When I first moved to NYC 10 years ago, it snowed by Halloween. These days I’m contemplating getting rid of my snow boots and replacing them with rain boots, since snow boots feel dumb and impractical now.
Last year was NYC’s hottest year (so far), and at one point it had the worst air quality in the world due to the Canadian wildfires. Even though they’re just anecdata, regularly breaking historical records does not feel like a good trend to be living through.
As a lifelong gardener, I pay attention to things like USDA zone maps, not just personal impressions.
Over the last 30 years, the place I live now has changed from USDA Zone 5b to 6b. This means that the lowest expected winter temperature has officially increased by 6 °C (from -15 °F to -5 °F). In actuality, it's now more like Zone 7, reading the stats for the past 5 years. My "annual" snapdragons in the outdoor pots are still green. We've also got vintner friends who'll give us chapter and verse on how they're changing their grape varieties and viticulture methods to cope.
I moved back to Northern Michigan (45 °N) hoping to crosscountry ski and ice skate in the winter. There haven't been enough days of intact snow to bother getting skis. There's been a noticeable trend of declining ice cover on the Great Lakes, and Grand Traverse Bay hasn't frozen at all this year.
These maps are good for illustrating the change that has happened, and the projected continuing change over the next 30 years.
Map does seem a bit out of date. My climate zone is was projected to be remaining in zone 7 until 2040. It's now quite firmly in zone 8 as of 2024.
Can I ask our of curiosity what state you are in? The map I linked does seem to be created from ~15 year old data. It does not take into account the Nov. 2023 updates that were done by the USDA just last year. But it is one of the only sources I have found that clearly communicates that changes in a single digestible graphic.
New Jersey, particularily in the southern part.
My HVAC installer now only has to design around 15F minimum temps.
So far the coldest days this winter have only been in the mid-20s.
I've lived in northern New England for my whole life and I have definitely seen some changes. All of the things you mentioned are very true here. My town does seem to get more snow than a lot of the surrounding area, we have a bit more elevation.
However...with 2 kids and a long driveway to clean up, and dealing with power outages..I have welcomed milder weather. I used to love snowmobiling, skiing, just laying around in the snow. It's just more of a chore at this point in my life. We got 9 inches of snow last night and it has been a pain to deal with today 😌
We also installed heat pumps last year and our backup heat source gets a little expensive. It comes on when the temp is below 10 F.
Southern New England here for the vast majority of my life. We used to have snow cover for months at a time (I.e., winter). Now we’re lucky to have snow on the ground for more than 3 days. Last winter was one, maybe. This winter has been around a week so far, but mostly that was just ice. A nephew got a sled for Christmas this year and I was just wondering when the hell would there be enough snow to use it.
Winter here has clearly had its spine broken. I'm on a hilltop at about seventeen hundred feet in southern NY, and even up here, everything just melts. It's like winter can only manage to materialize for a 1-3 week stretch over the whole four months it used to occupy. Maybe we get one single proper noreaster every decade at this point. Nothing even freezes, good luck going out on the ice on any body of water around here in the winter. You're getting wet fast. Can't even get manufactured snow to stick around long enough to hit the slopes.
I plainly remember digging this driveway out of several feet of snow multiple times per year, every year, in the 80s and 90s. September snow was always around in April. The pond would freeze so solid I had a personal ice skating rink for a solid three months. Snow was up to my waist. What we have now isn't winter, it's a brief cold snap. Even in a La Nina year it's only a little bit colder.
Seems like Texas actually got most of our cold weather. The cold drafts are diving much further south than they used to, and because of that, Texas bears the brunt that used to hit us. By the time that blast gets to us, it's dragged in a mountain of hot air and moisture from the gulf, and it just blows all the arctic air right back into Canada on the regular. It's also kicking tornado alley into overdrive and making it larger, which is bad bad news.
Somehow, a good portion of New England has been shifted into the heat dome that once stopped at Virginia. Combine that with our frankly ridiculous collection of lakes and rivers which hold that heat, and get slowly warmer and warmer year over year. They are amplifying the heat effect.
I don't mind it, but sooner or later we're going to have to deal with an army of invasive species that no longer die in the winter. Everything south is going to move further north. I am not looking forward to that.
I left Texas after the “”””cold”””” snap that took the entire state out in 2021. Lots of reasons to leave, but holy shit not having water because it was 28 degrees out for 4 days or something was a sign. Yes, I know historical data yada 100 year events yada yada, but y’all seem to be making a semi regular occurrence of it. Hope your governor gets around to making the goddamn power plants weatherize or do crazy things like insulate outside pipes between the super busy schedule of made up border wars and passing unconstitutional laws
</salt, which you poor schmucks could also use for the roads>
I’m in Australia, so definitely a different climate than you, but yeah I’ve been noticing that the winters don’t get as cold but also the summers don’t get as hot.
When I was growing up (I’m in my 30s now), I loved crunching my boots through the frost that had set on the grass, and looking back and seeing my footprints in bright green surrounded by almost white frost in a super even coating across the ground.
I can’t remember the last time I saw frost like that, but it’s got to be a decade at least.
About ten years ago, I was working in an industrial scale bread factory, with industrial ovens and mediocre air conditioning. I remember just about every February, I’d be keeping an eye on the weather for the inevitable three or four days over 40°C and dreading it.
I think it’s been four summers in a row now that I haven’t seen a single day over 40°C and this year we haven’t yet even had many days over 35°C
Christmas for me is usually hot enough that we start Christmas Day breakfast on the bbq out the back, but by 10am it’s hot and sunny enough that we move inside and turn on the aircon and close all the doors.
This year was cold enough on Christmas Day that I got to wear my ugly sweater for the first time ever.
In conclusion, yeah, the seasons are messed up, and they’re not doing what they’re supposed to do.
Center of the US here and our winters are a joke compared to the past, but the summers have gotten longer and hotter. Weeks and weeks in a row of 38°C/100°F+. It's essentially in the 80s to 100s from mid-May through the end of September. Spring and Fall are about a week each now. It's absolutely miserable. If it were economically feasible, I'd head north just for the climate. (not to mention the politics lol.)
Similar story for me in the midwest. Mild winters (I think 2023 was the second year where December had essentially zero snowfall in just a three year period) but excruciatingly long summers. Made worse by how the temperatures fluctuate so much during spring and autumn.
I think we had temperatures in the 70s last month? At least one day in the 80s in November? I recall one week where it dropped from the 60s or 70s to the thirties between Sunday and Thursday. It's been just bizarre and a bit unsettling. Weather has always been prone to fluctuation, but it feels like it gets more extreme every year.
In Michigan, seems like weather is more unbalanced in that winters are milder on average, but cold snaps hit harder. More power outages over the past couple years, but that might just be our utilities using more duct tape and toothpicks.
Sorry you're stuck with Consumers or DTE - I would have said they use spit and chewing gum, but they're miracles of uptime compared to Florida Power & Light.
Minnesotan here and I completely agree.
I personally hate it. I love Minnesota winters full of blizzards, crazy exciting weather, white snow as far as the eye can see. Now we just have brown-green grass, sleet, and a few cold snaps of -5 weather (which isn't even that cold for MN, so it doesn't even shut anything down.) I'm fucking sick of the mud, the rain, and the goddamn brown everywhere, it's awful. I don't know how people live like this during the winter in milder climates, it's icy, ugly, and depressing. Rain should not happen during winter, not here.
I had this conversation with my wife recently. I'm relatively sure that in recent years, I've developed Seasonal Affective Disorder because winters have gotten milder. It seems backwards, but when it was truly cold, and we had snow mid.-Dec. -Feb. I would enjoy the snow. I did alpine sports, I built snow forts with my kids, had snowball fights. All those things helped fight off that seasonal depression.
Now it just hangs around freezing point, plus/minus a couple degrees, instead of consistently below. Precipitation is rain or sleet and It leaves everything wet and muddy, or worse, icy. After it passes it's eerie and foggy.
I'm not really a cozy-up by the fire and watch a movie type person. The inattentive part of ADD runs wild. I gravitate toward video games, but even those eventually lose their luster after a while, even if I switch games, play different genres, etc.
One of the funny things about colder weather is that it means clouds don't form as easily, which results in sunnier days. It used to be a good rule-of-thumb in our local area: if it's the middle of winter and the sun is out, dress warmer.
But since the weather has been milder and the temperatures stick around 0 degrees Celsius, we've had darker and more miserable winters as a result. SAD seems to correlate with Vitamin D deficiency, something we get from the sun.
Huh, I didn't know that about the weather, but anecdotally I see it. The few sunny days we had we had last week were the coldest we've had all winter.
Since begining of Dec. I started taking a Vitamin D supplement for exactly that reason. I noticed my mood got a bit better after a couple weeks than it was late Nov. I'm would say I'm feeling medium minus when my non-winter mood I generally describe as medium plus.
Same here. In Poland since few years we have only one-two weeks of snow during winter, compared to 2-3 months years ago. Snow during the winter is very crucial for me. There's only few hours of a daylight, snow makes everything brighter after sunset. During the night it's not so dark, I can walk in the park and see people, track, ans.damn, I've even spotted two foxes hunting a bird recently.
However due to lack of snow and winter temperatures between -2 and 2 C since few years, everything is muddy, dark, enormously depressive and it affects my mood strongly.
Ten years is a short time frame.
My neighbors have photographs and endless stories about being able to drive to the island opposite to my house, across salty ocean waters, decades ago. Nowadays the municipality no longer even send out staff to measure ice at the shallow ponds for skating, let alone the ocean which I can clearly see is liquid all winter.
The local ski hill is in trouble as well.
I picked this location because my old province is on fire every summer and on severe draught warning all the time. I'm fully aware this one might go that way too in ~20.
Nordics here.
Extremes have been more prevalent. We used to have winters with temperatures between -5 C to -15 C and maybe a short dip (1-2 days max) from -20C to -30C in parts.
This year we've had so far:
And according to the forecasts, we're heading to another -20C cold front, the weather will cool by 25C in 3-4 days.
The meteorological reason I've been given is that the polar vortex used to be a circle that kinda leant to one side from the north pole occasionally and the effect was steadier. Now it looks more like a gear causing extreme heat and extreme cold to alternate.
I'm in Edmonton, Canada, and we've been having some large swings ourselves. Just two weeks ago, Edmonton was the coldest place on the planet with a windchill a bit below -50C and today's expected to be 10C, that's a 60C perceived difference (factually a little less than 50C since the actual temperature was just above -40) in just two weeks! I know this is an El Niño year, but this is very far from our norm. Usually it's bitterly cold at the end of January, moving into February. Typically steadily around -25C for a good month, but this year at least my wife will get a relatively warm birthday?
We absolutely get less winter weather compared to just ten years ago, and it's completely different to what it was like thirty or more years ago.
I grew up in a small town that was in a region I called a snow buckle, as it was within two snow belts. I now live in a small/medium city and live equidistant between my hometown and a major metropolitan area. On average, If the major metropolitan area got an inch, my current place would get two, and my hometown would get four.
When I was a young kid it wasn't unheard of to wake up and the snow would be to the top of the doors and we'd have no power or water for a few days. It happened there or four times that I recall.
I'm in Canada but I think my childhood weather would be fairly comparable to anyone north of Pennsylvania outside of the Pacific Northwest with the caveat it's usually colder and drier our on the Midwest plains.
Anyway, when I was a kid, it was unusual to not have a dusting of snow before Halloween, but it wouldn't stick until early November and it would be solid until late March or even early April. The average temp in January would be -10 or -12 so °C, and the monthly high might get to 0°C.
Sometimes we'd lose most of the snow, but get another dumping of a few feet shortly after.
This year, it was 15°C in November, and we just got our first 'snow' a week or two ago, maybe 8 inches? It's already gone. The average temp has been around 0°C both here and in my hometown. My hometown has had a few extra dumpings of snow that we didn't get here, but it doesn't last.
Long story short, your observations aren't wrong, at least to my concurring observation
Northern Alberta here. Went from -50 two weeks ago to 8 or 9 today.
I don't think my memory is good enough to trust so I choose to only talk about this year.
I live in Southern Ontario. I grew up just across from Buffalo so I can compare my current situation as they got and still get a ton of lake effect snow. My parents still live there and got up to almost 3 feet this month.
I live an hour west of my parents currently and west of Toronto. It is easily the warmest/least snow I can ever remember for the GTA. I can and will draw exactly zero conclusions from that except to say it's weird. We have only had snow on the ground for like 5 days in total and never enough that I couldn't see the grass any more. Most of the rest of the time there have been positive temperatures and rain. Easily the worst winter I can remember. I vastly prefer snow fall and consistently negative temps. Things dry out and it's awesome. All this rain just means a muddy winter. I literally have not shovelled once. That could still change in February but it doesn't look good so far.
Such a weird winter. I definitely miss having a "real" winter.
I live in Moscow, Russia, and this winter was pretty cold and unpleasant even by Russian standards
Minnesotan here. I've lived in Minnesota/Wisconsin my whole life. I'm now in my 30s, and I remember despising being outside as a kid. I have Reynaud's disease and it made it miserable for me to experience any kind of cold snap.
I know it's anecdotal, but the winters feel so mild now. Perhaps it's just being older and getting used to the region, but I feel as if it has not been memorably cold besides the Polar Vortex we had a few years back (2019?).
My wife is not from the area, and moved here during the Polar Vortex. She panicked thinking "is this what it's normally like here?" On a day that was like -40 fahrenheit below (without wind chill).
I tell her time and time again, the winters are nicer than they used to be. They used to be fierce.
Also Minnesotan. It's in the 40s right now in the Twin Cities. In January. It's not unheard of, but I don't even think we've been sub zero yet this year. It's pretty wild.
I'm certainly not complaining, but it is noticable.
A while back I made a web application to let people query Environment Canada's climate data (1900 to 2010) themselves. The graph that left me worried the most was this one:
You can see the tool in action in these other videos:
I thought we were having some El Nino rains this season and I was excited. Apparently what El Nino means to Southern California changed sometime in the 11 years I was gone because there is no rain. I remember El Nino in the late 90s and I thought it would never stop raining. It was 80 today!
I feel INCREDIBLY conflicted about this. On one hand, I have a scientific background, know that climate change is real and VERY bad, less snowfall in the winter means less freshwater from snowmelt in the spring, etc.
And yet... I made a very conscience decision to move from my hometown in NY (state), where the winters are long, cold and snowy, to a place where winters barely exist- I live in a now place where it snows maybe twice a year (once in January, once in February), and I LOVE it. Sure, it does get a little bit cold for my liking... but my deep loathing of snow and winter means that I actually prefer the heat of summer (note that I'm also well aware of the Human Wet Bulb phenomena, which is an argument AGAINST hotter summers). In other words, the warmer a winter is, the happier I am- even if all the science says this is a BAD thing.
I should also note, another reason why I hate winter is because driving in snow SUCKS- between being a tiny bit dangerous on its own, to the salt and sand used on roads to "help" drivers... snow goes from being beautiful and white to being an ugly mess REAL fast in NY.
My personal experience in my location in southern Portugal, which has a dry mediterranean climate, is that in recent years seasons have been more textbook and "extreme", meaning more rain during the autumn (not a bad thing) - in fact this year it rained pretty much nonstop - and very cold winters (I've been cold during the night at least, although it's a little warmer now than a month ago). We've always had heatwaves during the summer, but there have been fewer summer showers. Despite lots of rain in the cold months, we're still having near droughts during the warm months (our extensive network of dams and reservoirs runs near dry, especially if Spain is also in trouble, since most rivers run from Spain).
Do keep in mind the following two things, though:
I live in central Europe. We are in the area of warm summers and cold winters.
In recent say 10 winters we got much less snow than ie. 25 years ago. There were winters recently that had like 10cm of snow three times per winter. This winter we got just a few days of snow but it was quite a lot of it, maybe 50 cm.
When I was young, we got this much snow much more frequently. We could build igloos with friends and hide inside, even a few people at a time. Just from the snow we got from say 50m^2 of surface. Yes, it wasn't each winter and we didn't build igloo frequently. But there really were much more snowy winters those 20-25 years ago.
In thoe past 10 years we couldn't almost build even simple snowman onceper winter.
I have to add that I don't live in the mointans, I guess we are above ~350 meters above sea level. On higher places the snow is much more frequent and able to stay through the winter, even a few "above zero" (Celsius = not freezing) days. The experience I described is from lower lands - recen one and past one as well.
And one more thing - we get freezing days (-10 degrees C and even lower) in the winter, just without snow. But we also get quite a lot of days with not freezing temperatures. My wild guess would be that the average through one winter season would be between 0 and -5 Celsius. I don't even bother buying really fluffy warm jacket or pure winted shoes. I can do with a bit warmer fall ones...