I was triggered a couple of weeks ago by this article in The Wall Street Journal: 2024 Was the Hottest Year. Here Are Climate Trends to Watch in 2025. I’m not debating that 2024 was the hottest year on record. My micro observation is that our winters in the Midwest have become cream puffs compared to 40-50 years ago. Warning, old man—talk straight ahead.
A Dismal Winter
Indeed, last winter was the mildest I can recall. We had winter for about 15 days, starting with significant snow, followed by frigid temperatures that shattered tough plastics, like my dog Sunny’s Chuck-It tool and Patrick Mahomes’ helmet. Besides that, it was a dismal winter for ice-fishing, snowmobiling, and skiing. There was no lake ice in December; what developed in January was gone by early or mid-February. Ice-fishing tournaments were canceled by the case (it’s a beer-drinking excuse, eh).
Figure 1 Ice Fishing Cancelations
Real Winters
Real WintersThe endearing movies Grumpy Old Men and Groundhog Day accurately portrayed the winters of my youth and early career. I compared two decades of hourly weather data in Figure 2 (1976-1985) and Figure 3 (2015-2024) for Worthington, MN, where I grew up. Figure 3 (don’t ask about the goofy look of the first year) shows last winter was exceptionally short and weak, as claimed. Figure 2 shows winters, especially from the late 1970s to around 1982, were much longer and colder, with significant clouds of data below -10F. In the last decade, only one-liner spikes have shot below -10F. I win.
Figure 2 Hourly Temperature 1976-1985, Worthington, MN
Figure 3 Hourly Temperature 2015-2024, Worthington, MN
Furthermore, stare at these charts a little longer, paying attention to summer peaks. Summers in the 1970s and 1980s were also hotter than the most recent decade. It’s the extremes that burn people out, myself included.
Fear Mongering
The triggering part of the WSJ article is, “As the Arctic region warms, an atmospheric current known as the polar vortex is being disrupted. These disruptions funnel frigid Arctic air south. The disruptions, and their chilling effect, are happening more frequently, according to a study last month by an international team in the journal Environmental Research: Climate.”
That is fear mongering at its worst. Climate change, formerly known as global warming, is also to blame for cold shots in the lower 48? Zerohedge noted that last week’s cold blast would be the coldest since 1977 in some parts of the country. Figure 2 indicates that the late 1970s featured brutally cold winters. This winter is nothing compared to that. We barely broke minus 10F on one night, maybe two.
Histories of Deep-South Freezes
As much as I remember brutally cold northern winters as a kid, I remember news reports of lost citrus and produce crops in Florida. Did that happen this year? Not according to Google. There were snowstorms in New Orleans and significant accumulations along the Gulf Coast. Locations in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Bamalama, Florida, and Georgia had more snow last week than we’ve had all year at this location in Wisconsin. Is that unprecedented? Possibly, but the cold plunge is not even close.
Figure 4 Snowfall for Tuesday, January 21, 2025
Treasure Coast Newspapers (Port St. Lucie) provides plenty of historic Florida freeze events to demonstrate recent polar vortexes are weak at best – and that climate change makes them colder is nonsense.
As recently as 2022, snow fell in Florida as far south as Tampa. I’m not a geography genius, but that is substantially further south than we see in Figure 4. The article says temperatures fell to the low teens in Florida’s citrus region in two consecutive years, 1894 and 1895. The orange harvest fell by 80%. As a result, growers moved 200 miles south to the Indian River region for a warmer climate.
In the winters of 1957 and 1958, temperatures in the low to mid-20s again froze oranges and killed tomato crops in Florida. In, wait for it, 1977, temperatures fell to the 20s in the relocated orange groves in the Indian River region—200 miles south of where the groves froze in the mid-1890s. Snow fell as far south as Miami.
Finally, we have the 1980s, which I remember well. In 1985, temperatures in the 20s invaded Lake Okeechobee and ended the orange-growing careers of farmers north of Orlando. I especially remember this one when we partied after college graduation in Brookings, SD. It was minus 28 outdoors (Figure 1). It didn’t matter. The bars were packed! “Still another bad freeze, Dec. 22-26, 1989, wiped out 30% of Florida’s citrus crop, and Gov. Bob Martinez declared all 67 counties disaster areas. Parts of northern Florida got three inches of snow. Temperatures dropped to 8 degrees in High Springs, 21 in St. Augustine, and 30 in Miami.”
Figure 5 December 1989, Brookings, SD
Pattern recognition is my thing. When it’s very cold here in the upper Midwest for several days, it is commensurately cold in the south. This year, it was a measly -5F to -15F compared to -20F to -30F in the 1970s and 1980s. Temperatures in the deep south were less cold by similar deltas.
It is NOT getting colder in the north. It is NOT getting colder in the south.
The Wall Street Journal article closes, “Counterintuitively, Arctic warming is expected to bring more deep freezes to North America—like the one blanketing much of the U.S. South this week [January 10]—according to some scientists.”
That is pure crap.
