Saturday: 5 January 2013
It’s time to remember the weather in 2012. Hopefully NOAA will have its annual summary up soon.
Below (and clickably linked to a larger version on a new page) is my usual summary figure for the year. What started out as a purple curve are the mean daily temperatures over 30 years, so that’s our temperature baseline. The blue and red dots are individual temperature measurements during 2012 and 2011, respectively. The thick blue and red lines are 25-point running averages to smooth things out a bit.
At the bottom of the figure are individual daily precipitation measurements for 2012 (the dark green bars), and the light green line shows accumulated precipitation for the year. That’s to be compared to the 30-year average accumulation shown by the dotted green line.
Here are the main features for 2012:
A-C are unusual temperature regimes.
A: We had a long period of extremely warm March temperatures - unprecedented here and affecting much of eastern North America. Remember? This was the result of a long-term high pressure system centered over the mid west.
B: A similar system caused unusually high temperatures just about everywhere in the first half of December. Hardly anyone around here noticed.
C: High temperature records were set just about everywhere toward the end of June and into July. We hit 109 degF on June 29. That was the all time record high for any day in Athens, until two days later on July 1. That was also the day we were called to a large structure fire off US 78.
D-F are unusual precipitation patterns.
F: Our total for the year was about 36 inches rain, 75% of the normal 48 inches. 2012 would mark the 8th or 9th lowest rainfall since 1920, from Athens records. Taken as pairs of years, though, 2011 (also 75% rainfall) and 2012 would be the third driest pair since 1920.
D, E: Not many people noticed the dry year. I think this is why: We had two long periods with little rain, but these periods were during the months of March-May (D) and October - November (E), when temperatures were relatively mild. We actually had a fair amount of rain during the (for the most part) not-so-hot summer.
This wasn’t a very hard year to summarize. Others elsewhere had more extreme temperature and precipitation conditions, and of course much more intense storms, than we did.
Below is a much simpler plot of our temperatures, with a 100-point running average so you can see the long periods of high temperatures. Again red is 2011 and blue is 2012. Isn’t it interesting how temperatures in both years settled down during the autumn before beginning fluctuations in the late autumn and winter?
Below (and clickably linked to a larger version on a new page) is my usual summary figure for the year. What started out as a purple curve are the mean daily temperatures over 30 years, so that’s our temperature baseline. The blue and red dots are individual temperature measurements during 2012 and 2011, respectively. The thick blue and red lines are 25-point running averages to smooth things out a bit.
At the bottom of the figure are individual daily precipitation measurements for 2012 (the dark green bars), and the light green line shows accumulated precipitation for the year. That’s to be compared to the 30-year average accumulation shown by the dotted green line.
Here are the main features for 2012:
A-C are unusual temperature regimes.
A: We had a long period of extremely warm March temperatures - unprecedented here and affecting much of eastern North America. Remember? This was the result of a long-term high pressure system centered over the mid west.
B: A similar system caused unusually high temperatures just about everywhere in the first half of December. Hardly anyone around here noticed.
C: High temperature records were set just about everywhere toward the end of June and into July. We hit 109 degF on June 29. That was the all time record high for any day in Athens, until two days later on July 1. That was also the day we were called to a large structure fire off US 78.
D-F are unusual precipitation patterns.
F: Our total for the year was about 36 inches rain, 75% of the normal 48 inches. 2012 would mark the 8th or 9th lowest rainfall since 1920, from Athens records. Taken as pairs of years, though, 2011 (also 75% rainfall) and 2012 would be the third driest pair since 1920.
D, E: Not many people noticed the dry year. I think this is why: We had two long periods with little rain, but these periods were during the months of March-May (D) and October - November (E), when temperatures were relatively mild. We actually had a fair amount of rain during the (for the most part) not-so-hot summer.
This wasn’t a very hard year to summarize. Others elsewhere had more extreme temperature and precipitation conditions, and of course much more intense storms, than we did.
Below is a much simpler plot of our temperatures, with a 100-point running average so you can see the long periods of high temperatures. Again red is 2011 and blue is 2012. Isn’t it interesting how temperatures in both years settled down during the autumn before beginning fluctuations in the late autumn and winter?
