When warm air surges in the beginning of winter, it often stays a little while. I noticed a unique pattern for December record high temperatures in Baltimore. They show up in the history book as pairs or groups. I often point out that warm ups tend to end up warmer and last longer than first thought. History shows a lot of truth to that and not just in El Nino patterns.
We just reached a record go 71°F on Saturday December and when I looked at the year we just tied, 1979 had two record high days in a row for the 11th and 12th. I had been foresting a new record for today, the 13th, that would break a mark set 126 years, back in 1889. That was a single day mark, but a pattern of pairs jumped out. There are severe sets of ‘pairs’, where two days in a row had record high temperatures. But there are clusters or groups as well. That means more than one record high was set in a single year, but not consecutively in that month.
Record High Days In Pairs:
- 1998: 6th and 7th
- 1966: 9th and 10th
- 1979: 11th and 12th
- *2015: 12th (tied) and 13th (72F°)
- 1971: 15th and 16th
- 2013: 21st and 22nd
- 1990: 23rd and 24th
- 1964: 25th and 26th
Record High Days In Groups Or Clusters
- 2006: 1st and 18th
- 1998: 3rd plus 6th and 7th
- 1984: 17th and 29th
- 1990: 23rd and 24th plus 30th
Here is the original record list. Notice the * shows records set on multiple dates prior to the one listed. It is possible more clusters are prevalent, but I did not dig deeper to sort that out).
- DY= Day
- NMX= Normal or average Max temp
- Also notice
- HIMIN- A record for the warmest minimum or low temperature. We could set a record for that on Monday the 14th
What does this mean?
- Record Highs often reach the 70s in Baltimore
- Record Highs are scattered throughout history and are nothing new
- Record Highs tend to occur more than once in years with warm weather patterns.
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This year, we were expected to reach 70F all week, but that was meant to occur on Sunday. So with a warmer day expected tomorrow, we shall likely have another two-for record setting warm mark in the record books. Doubling of warm records is actually somewhat common. I will expand on that in my next post.
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