Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Where Does This Winter's Average Temperature Rank in Northern Ohio?

The results come on the heals of a Facebook post I made asking to rank this winter on a scale of 1 to 10, ten being the worst winter. Surprisingly, most people said it was between a 3 and a 5. A few were above 7, a handful were down at the bottom of the scale. I thought it would have ranked higher given the comments recently after the temperatures fell more than 20 degrees.

So what does the data say?  I ran the numbers of all the years since 1871 from December 1st through March 10th and ranked the past 13 winters. You'll see last winter is close to the top of the list. This winter was much further down the list.  Here is the graph:


Now the ranks of each winter since 2000. Surprisingly, many of the winters since 2000 are fairly far down the list away from the warmer winters historically. This year ranks 32nd warmest of 143 winters!