NOAA: U.S. breaks or ties 115 cold and sets 63 new snowfall records

Philip_B: “My proposal is for a new metric is the number of new monthly highs versus new monthly lows (although daily high/lows would work just as well) as a rolling 12 month number.”
I agree. I have never liked the averages. Too smooth. But, you must realize that record highs and lows are conditioned on the length of the record. In year 1 every daily temperature is a record, and in year 2 as well. In year 3 some daily readings fall between those of year 1 and 2, so some non-record days occur. And so on. As the years in the record book increase, the likelihood of a record setting day decrease.
So I suggest using deciles instead, as in counting the daily highs and lows that fall in the top or bottom ten percent. That system would be significantly less (but not completely) dependent on the length of the record.

Anthony-
The same source you used (I did the research myself):
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/records/index.php

One other point on food supply.
There are business news stories about how farmers in many locations can’t get loans for seed etc for next year’s crop because of the financial crisis. In Russia for example, wheat production may be down as much as 50% next year.
Mike Dubrasich, deciles are are a good idea, and there are many other metrics I could think of.
See below for some very interesting time_of_day analyses of Australian temperature data.
http://gustofhotair.blogspot.com/search/label/weatheranalysis

October snow forecast for Morocco.
http://www.snow-forecast.com/maps/static/europe/next3days/snow

I wouldn’t put a lot of credence in the NOAA climate records. I know that much of the data has been massaged, expunged, and manipulated. I have the daily records for Bangor, ME (KBGR) that go back to the end of 1926. NOAA is using an abbreviated version that starts in 1946 with some interruptions.
Using their data, on Jan 25th, 2004 a new record low was recorded – 12F eclipsing the old record of -10 set in 1982. My records show the record low to be -14F set in 1948.
Their records show that on July 14th, 2006 a high temp of 93F tied the old record set in 1952. My data show the record to be 99F set in 1995 ( I distinctly remember this day because it was the highest temperature recorded since 1975).
There will be many high temp records set for Bangor since the records of the 1930’s and 40’s are no longer part of the official NOAA climatology.
I know that Farmington, ME has also been adjusted and their record warm years in the 1930’s no longer exist.
How much of the historic record is tainted is anyone’s guess. Hopefully my example is an exception to the rule.

In mid-October 2006 there was the arctic blast that gave the Buffalo area record snows of 2 feet.
In April of 2007 we had that freeze that killed just about everything south of the Ohio River.
Now we have this, freezes in Florida for the first time in October EVER recorded and all-time monthly low temperature record. The year after it SNOWED IN NOVEMBER in Florida for the first time ever, and the freeze in January that went right down to the Glades. Did I mention 2 feet of snow in New York?? This just two weeks after they got record early (and accumulating) snows out west.
If the flavor of the generation climate catastrophe this go round was “The Ice Age Cometh” the media vultures would be circling in the hay fields, ready to attribute any weather event, or non-event, to global cooling, AGC. Hansen would have doctored temperature anomaly charts derived from his own program with encrypted algorithms that create cold bias and similar to his current practice; no one would be able to see them and he would tell us all how silly we are for not buying into end of the world Ice Ages soon-to-be-here mantra. The mile thick glaciers that would push the empire state building out to the Hudson Canyon. Warn us of ‘Climate refugees’ flooding southern international borders, falling sea-levels that would ruin all port towns and cities economies. Falls in sea-ice would be changing wind patterns but gains in ice would mean global cooling has taken effect. Record snowfall would be AGC, not global warming putting more moisture into the air in places where it snows. Icebergs reaching New Zealand would be Antarctica trying to claim adjacent land areas, rather than Antarctica melting into the sea. The only animals one would hear about would be penguins swimming north to mid-latitudes in an apparent attempt to spread beyond their habitat into new, cooler areas. We’d hear stories about Polar Bears in Iceland or seals in Canary Islands, not manatees in Long Island Sound or Cod off Greenland. Speaking of polar bears, it would be a well known fact that their numbers are increasing if the greens instead decided to push the Ice Age agenda, unlike that other twisted version of polar bears they have. The one of starving, drowning bears swimming in vain through Arctic waters. Funny how something that has supposedly never had to swim before can suddenly swim for hundred of miles. Seems like an instinctual behavior to me. Just as a bird builds a nest and a fox, a hole.
Heat waves and droughts would come and go; little would be made of them. There’d be global cooling conferences, headed by Al Gore himself (only he’d have a nobel prize for alerting the world of the coming Ice Age), every month of the year; just as there’s now global warming conferences every month of the year. Every global cooling conference would be held in air conditioned room because every time they have one of these things, it’s 105°F outside; just as it snows during global warming conferences in London and Washington. 100°F heat for the first time in 30 years waves would strike the “Live Earth” global cooling concert in an ironic twist; the same way it snowed for the first time in 30 years in South Africa for that lame entertainment venue. There’s be cooling tax legislation proposed, same way carbon taxes are imposed. You know, you would have to pay extra to use the A/C because all that evil cold air would escape your house and get lose in the outdoors to make extra ice. You’d be told to unplug your freezer during times of non-essential use and open it sparingly.
But a mere 30 years from now, global warming would return and we’d be told once again that global cooling was a myth and anything that doesn’t agree with global warming, such as an October snowstorm, is merely anecdotal.

Pamela – Minor point, but they are Canada Geese, not Canadian Geese (unless they have passports or birth certificates…). They may not be where you are, but they are here on Vancouver Island in hundreds. And to keep closer to topic, I have been tracking forecasts versus actual temperatures since the start of the year and the meteorologists have been too high between 2-5C consistently. I suspect they are basing their forecasts on the last 30 years, not what is actually happening with the PDO shift. I just bought a home met station so I should be able to keep things a bit more scientifically in future – but it sure is cold!

Flanagan-
You are mistaken. The daily AMSU readings are not accurate, as they have to be adjusted due to satellite drift. Not only was October 29 likely NOT the warmest ever measured, but September was only the 8th warmest in the UAH record, not the 3rd warmest. And it was also cooler than September 2007, 2006, 2005, 2003, 2002…most of the years this decade.

Record low temperatures in Cuba also. Well, it’s only one data point. Hmm… if all of North America got record temperatures would that be one data point?

Flanagan (01:35:33) Now if we were warming, September would be first warmest, not third warmest. This data, in fact, shows we are cooling. Sure, it’s not much of a trend over the last few years, but it’s longer than your trend, over the last few months.
See NOAA’s CFS ensemble graph for projections of a deepening La Nina over the next 8 months. That’s going to produce a few N’ths warmest months where N is greater than one, demonstrating cooling.
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Hey! Al Gore, whatinthehellisgoingon? Record cold? Where is this global warming stuff????