Why is it so cold in Rome, Ohio?

Last winter, Rome, Ohio in Ashtabula County reached an unofficial state record low temperature of -39. Why is Rome, Ohio so cold compared to other rural locations?  It lies in a valley surrounded by higher elevation. The denser, colder air drains into the valley when the sky conditions are clear and the winds are relatively calm. The heavy snow cover also promotes more cold.

I emailed a variety of people within the National Weather Service asking why this temperature was not certified as the new state record low. Gerry Creager explains:

"In general (and there are others on here who can correct me if I'm wrong), US NWS, and climatological records are recorded by the National Weather Service Forecast Office with responsibility for that area, as well as the Operational Monitoring Branch of the Climate Prediction Center (http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/information/who_we_are/miss_analysis.shtml).

In addition, the various State Climatologists are responsible for their local data, and report to their own State, often as direct reports (at least on paper) to their Governor.
There are three networks of stations that might use for climate monitoring, including the Historical Climate Network, the Climate Reference Network, and the Federally maintained ASOS sensors usually found at airports. To the best of my knowledge, unofficial, and Citizen-Science sources are not included in monitoring extremes for records, but may be used, as they are in operational meteorology, as sanity checks for other observations. 

I believe you can pull the MADIS Mesonet records, and look at METARs as well. There are several climate data sets in there, but the ASOS data are present, as are the CWOP data. You might also want to peruse http://www.noaa.inel.gov/crn/crn.htm, and the NCDC holdings.

Note: This is based on my knowledge and interpretation due to my research, and some of the work I do with the CWOP servers. There are other folks, associated with the Federal side of CWOP and MADIS, included here, who can provide more authoritative data, perhaps."

Regards
Gerry Creager
4-22-2015

John Horel from NOAA reiterated the same ...

"Gerry covered the issue very well. It is very difficult to get the Climate Extremes Committee managed by NCDC to use networks beyond NWS/FAA.

See http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/scec/records
for more details on the process, etc."

Regards
John

So it doesn't look promising that Rome, Ohio will officially break the all-time state low temperature record set back in 1899 in Milligan, Ohio

HUGE Winter 2014-15 Recap: Reasons for Arctic Cold, Snow, Records

I hesitated to post the final details on this past winter until I was pretty darn certain we were finished with snow. Historically, we have always used April 15th (Tax Day) as this magical, non-scientific date that signifies the demarcation between snow and spring.  If you can make it to the 15th, 99 times out of 100 you're good to go.  This winter worked out great in this regard.


Here are the final winter numbers. See my early March post on the metrics we typically use and why we used them.  Many of these graphics compare this winter to last winter and the COLDEST winter ever (1976-77) in northern Ohio.


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Our winter outlook was created by analyzing the global sea surface temperatures in these regions.

Pacific warm and cool pools have shifted since last winter (2013-14). Yet the result was the same:  COLD EAST, MILDER WEST.

The pressure pattern over the Pacific Ocean and North American continent reflected the sea surface temperature pattern:  This pressure configuration was a strong -EPO, -WPO, +PNA set up. It stood firm all winter which locked in the ridge west and trough east for the most part.

Image courtesy: Larry Cosgrove

Negative EPO favors eastern cold. Eastern US Cold periods circled in red

Positive PNA favors eastern cold. Cold periods circled in blue

-WPO favors eastern cold. Cold periods circled in red

Last summer (2014), talk of a strong El Nino faded as a central based El Nino developed called a "Modoki". These central based weak El Nino come in many different flavors. The current El Nino is circled at the top of the graphic below.

These favor below normal temperatures across the eastern US and above normal temperatures across the west.  Ridge west, trough east. 

Our winter forecast was created with weighting certain years in our analog set. Our forecast matched up very close to the overall average temperatures across the US from December through February.

We started off very cold in November partially driven by the Typhoon in the Pacific. It boosted the Gulf of Alaska low which boosted the ridge of warmth in the west which in turn drove cold south across the eastern US.  I wrote about the Typhoon Rule back in November and how we uses that to forecast the November cold.

Overall temperatures across the continental US on November 18th were the coldest since 1976!

The high of 18 degrees on the 18th was the coldest November day since 1958; 4th coldest high temperature in November since the 1870s.  
 
US temperatures rebounded in December after the cold November. We had one SNOWFALL in December which was under an inch. The 3rd lowest total since 1893; lowest since 1931.

By New Year Day, people were wondering where this cold winter was we had outlined in our outlook back in late October. I kept telling people on Facebook and Twitter to be patient. The cold is coming and when it does, it will harsh and similar to the year before.  Guess what happened in January?  The slow turnaround toward ARCTIC COLD began across the eastern US.

By February, the arctic floodgates had opened across the eastern 1/2 of North America. It was ALL-TIME COLDEST February in Cleveland since weather records began in 1871.

Rome, Ohio in the heart of Ashtabula County, due to cold air drainage down the surrounding terrain had a low of -39 degrees!

As the winds dropped, so did the temperatures. The next day, temperatures jumped 65 degrees in 30 hours!

February 14th through the 20th was 5th coldest 7 day stretch in 145 years in Cleveland coming close to matching the arctic cold of 1994.

Remember back a few winter ago when the ski resorts were having a tough time staying open because of the lack of snow and cold? Look at the winter 2012-13 temperature ranks vs the last two winters.

Add caption

Coldest winter since 1977-78

Less days above 40...

More days below freezing

 

Arctic cold and clear/calm skies produced huge ranges of temperature.

 Very cold late season morning lows we haven't seen since the early 1960s!

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 We had much more snow in 2013-14 vs this past winter...hard to believe.  If December snowfall would have been closer to average, the last two winter snow totals would have very close.

Days with snow cover of at least ONE INCH. Last winter we had more.

 Peak Lake Erie Ice Cover and Dates.