November Snowfall Variability and Trends Around Lake Michigan: Sensitivity to Temperature and Teleconnection Patterns

Using available long-term stations, November climatology of temperature and snowfall since 1950 has been composited for the region near Lake Michigan. Daily data was examined for the available stations to explore the monthly temperature and snowfall, the number of days with snowfall, and snow cover....

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bandurski, Amanda, Barrick, Justin, Smedley, Kristin
Format: Text
Language:unknown
Published: ValpoScholar 2012
Subjects:
Online Access:https://scholar.valpo.edu/cus/126
https://scholar.valpo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1125&context=cus
Description
Summary:Using available long-term stations, November climatology of temperature and snowfall since 1950 has been composited for the region near Lake Michigan. Daily data was examined for the available stations to explore the monthly temperature and snowfall, the number of days with snowfall, and snow cover. The characteristics of six sub-region composites were compared using composites around Lake Michigan, respectively. Early season snowfall is much more common in the eastern sub-regions, implying a dominant role of lake-effect snowfall to the overall climatology. The number of days with snowfall is greater in the eastern sub-regions. Western and eastern sub-regions both exhibit a negative correlation between snowfall and temperature. The snowfall is particularly sensitive to the number of near to below freezing days. Teleconnection processes were also examined and a deviation was found with El Niño Novembers as opposed to neutral and La Niña Novembers. A weaker relation to snowfall was seen to the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). There is a trend toward less November monthly snowfall and number of days with snow. For some stations in lake-effect prone areas, there are virtually no snowless Novembers in the initial decades, yet three or four out of ten Novembers have been essentially snowless since 1990.