Extreme Temperature Diary- Friday March 10th, 2023/Main Topic: The Spring Climate Lottery Contest

The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉

Main Topic: The Spring Climate Lottery Contest

Dear Diary. The Climate Lottery is a forecast contest free to play by giving your picks in an e-mail or in this post’s comment section. No prizes will be given out for the contest, which is for educational purposes only. The main purpose for the contest is to get climate change conscious people interested in National Center for Environmental Information climate products. The special account that I have set up for the contest is guywalton10@gmail.com. This time I will make a personal pick, following along with any players.

The National Center for Environmental Information ranking numbers for average temperatures of the lower 48 states for Spring 2023 will be posted on or shortly after June 8th, 2022, which will be the official “Climate Lottery” numbers of the contest. Any subsequent changes by NCEI after their initial posted rankings will not be valid for the contest…but those ranking numbers will change with time.

The winning Climate Lottery numbers for Winter 2022/23 (DEC, JAN, FEB) were 64/124/102 with a Power Ball number of 117 for the season, meaning that the Winter 2022/23 was the 13th warmest winter in recorded history for the United States.

Hello again to all weather and climate geeks out there. Winter 2022/23 turned out to be well above average, temperature wise, for most of the United States. If you wish to play “The Climate Lottery” pick one number between 1 and 129 (with 1 representing the coldest possible ranking and 129 being the highest possible ranking) for March, April and May 2022. Also, pick a “Power Ball” or overall ranking number for the fall season as a whole between 1 and 129. The Power Ball ranking will serve as a tiebreaker for any close picks between contestants. Your picks are NCEI rankings for average temperatures across the lower 48 states. Because 2023 is the 129th year that the National Center for Environmental Information has been ranking years since 1895, all months for 2023 will have a warmest ranking of 129. Likewise, the year 2023 will have a highest ranking of 129. Monthly rankings for 2022 will have a range from 1 to 129 with the coldest ranking being the number 1.

Please give your picks to Guywalton10@gmail.com or in the comments section at the end of this post before April 5th, 2022. If you wait until just before April5th to make your picks, you can make an educated guess as to what the ranking for March will be and also a heads-up guess for April. All data can be found at the National Center for Environmental Information site noted here:

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/national/rankings/110/tavg/202202

The Power Ball (or overall National Center for Environment Information) number for Winter 2022/23 for the lower 48 states was 117, which was the 13th warmest ranking and well above the average ranking of 64.5 for the lower 48 states. I’ve defined each individual lottery number as rankings for each month for the lower 48 states, Power Ball numbers as those for each season, and Mega Ball numbers as those for each year. 

Chances for an entire season of below average temperatures are becoming much less likely across the lower 48 states due to carbon pollution. The whole point of these posts is to demonstrate how skewed temperatures have become towards warmth due to climate change and to get people to look at NCEI data. Of course, as far as the globe goes, the larger an area that is compared to average, the more likely that area is to be above long-term averages. What has happened this decade is yet more proof of the Climate Lottery game being loaded for warmth in the United States. Balls coming out of the Climate Lottery hopper are likely to have high numbers. 

Here’s a breakdown of the National Climatic Center’s ranking numbers by state for Winter 2022/23, which was ranked as 13th warmest or 117th coldest (or a Powerball ranking of 117):

The warmest conditions relative to average occurred in the eastern United States, which was at or very close to record warm proportions. The West was colder than average but not near record coldest.

The following is a breakdown of each month for Winter 2022/23. Each chart shows “Climate Lottery” numbers for each state (or rankings) from a scale of 1 to 129.

In December the overall ranking for the lower 48 states was 64 (out of 128 through the year 2022): 

Winter started out near average with the Northeast seeing the warmest relative conditions whole the northern Plains and Pacific Northwest saw colder than average temperatures. December was the coldest month relative to long term temperature averages for Winter 2022/23.

In January the overall ranking for the lower 48 states was 124 (out of 129):

All of New England and New Jersey saw a record warmest January. The West remained cold, but no one state was below average.

In February the overall ranking for the lower 48 states was 102 (out of 129):

The East remained mild while the West got colder.

The following are the rankings, so far, for individual months or “Climate Lottery number picks” from 2014-2023:

The average ranking for 2023 is 64.5 since the coldest ranking would be 1 and the hottest 129. I have color coded all well below average temperature rankings for this post at or below 54 blue and all those above temperature rankings at or above 74 red, with rankings + or – 10 from the mean value of 64 black for near average temperature rankings. With time, the rankings for each individual month, season and year will change as more data becomes available from NCEI. Also, for reference, the annual or “Mega Ball” numbers are shown on the chart. For example, the Mega Ball number for 2022 was 111, meaning that 2022 was the eighteenth warmest year on record for the lower 48 states, for example. 

Seasonal or Power Ball rankings for winter are those for DEC/JAN/FEB, spring are MAR/APR/MAY, summer JUN/JUL/AUG, and fall SEP/OCT/NOV. Also, keep in mind that NCEI rankings for seasons are not merely an average of rankings of individual month of a season or year, as was the case for Winter 2022/23- 64/124/102 P.B.117:

Notice that since the start of 2014 only one out of the last thirty-seven seasons have been below average or “blue.” Thirty out of the last thirty-seven seasons since 2014 have been “red” or above average. Winter 2022/23 definitely adds to our warm stats and was also colored red. Indeed, the Climate Lottery hopper is very much loaded for above average temperatures for the lower 48 states looking at recent history. Yes, the “Casino of Climate Averages” is cheating causing the “House of Warming” to win just about every season due to carbon pollution.

I hope that everyone will have a great, safe spring.

Guy Walton…”The Climate Guy”

Here are some “ET’s” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:

Here is some more new February 2023 climatology:

Here is more climate and weather news from Sunday:

(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)

If you like these posts and my work please contribute via the PayPal widget, which has recently been added to this site. Thanks in advance for any support.) 

Guy Walton… “The Climate Guy”

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