"We go Green Bay!"

[ljgeoff]

-- As the Yooper old timer's say(1).

Well, the whole damn UP has gone to Green Bay. Climatologically, that is. I just spent a couple of hours (I'm obsessed, I know) looking at average mean temperatures across the midwest. From 1950-1980, Green Bay had an average mean temperature of 43 (F). The average mean for the UP in the same period was just short of 40 (F). But the average mean temperature of the UP, from 1997 to 2007 was a little over 43 (F).

A couple of months ago, I wrote an essay predicting that the UP would have the climate of Madison, Wisconsin by 2035, but now I'm thinking that's too generous. I think we'll be there by 2025.

Seattle has gone up one degree fahrenheit (1950-1979 vs. 1997-2007), where Lansing has gone up 2.5 degrees -- Seattle being buffered by the Pacific ocean.

If you are curious, tell me your town, and I'll tell you where you've already migrated.



(1) from Wikipedia: Some common features of English in the UP:
-- Deletion of "to the" ex. "I'm going store," "We went mall," and "We go Green Bay." This is an influence from Finnish, which doesn't have the preposition "to" or articles "a," "an," or "the."

Comments

[teeahr1.livejournal.com]

Mpls?

-p.

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

The average mean temperature of Minneapolis from 1950-1979 was 42.5 (US Historical Climatology Network (http://cdiac.ornl.gov/r3d/ushcn/statemean.html)). The records from the USHCN only go to 1994. To get 1997-2007, I went to Weather Underground (http://www.wunderground.com/). The average mean temperature of Minneapolis MN from 1997-2007 was 46 (F), an increase of 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

You've already migrated to Des Moines.

I have it on an excel program if you want it. Interestingly, the "new" average mean temperature of Minneapolis is 45.4 (F), which is the 1970-2001 average. So, when someone says "we're only 1 degree above the historical mean", they are talking about this new 1970-2001 mean average temperature.

[boxofdelights]

Holy cow. My mom lives in Boyne City. She says it's a lot colder this year. How has the mean changed there?

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

This winter has been a little colder than we've gotten used to. But overall, the temps are higher. It's always better to look at a longer range to get good statistical values, but just looking at the ten year ranges of the 1950's and 1997-2007, we get:

mean average mean high mean low
1950's 50.7 84.8 9.8
1997-2007 53.5 89.2 15.7