Even though the local weather pattern turned more wintry in recent days, with some accumulating snow, that comes on the heels of a relatively mild year overall in 2023.
That’s according to recent data from the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University.
Samantha Borisoff is a climatologist there, and she said that last year was the warmest year on record for more than a dozen major locations around the northeast.
For Rochester, it was the 6th warmest year on record, and the 2nd warmest December on record. The average Dec. 2023 temperature in Rochester was 39.9 degrees compared to the normal temperature of 32 degrees.
For 2023 overall, the average annual temperature in Rochester was 51 degrees compared to the normal temperature of 49.5 degrees.
Borisoff said there are various factors at play here, including the ongoing climate change.
“Our climate is warming and so we constantly have this background of climate change that is making things warmer,” said Borisoff, “and it’s making it more likely to get close to, or even set these records.”
Borisoff said the weather pattern in the Pacific Ocean known as El Niño is also a factor in the warmer weather over the last year.
But she noted that if we get some cold air coming over the Great lakes of Ontario and Erie, which don’t have a lot of ice cover right now, it could give us a good amount of lake effect snow this winter.
“So if we got kind of that right combination of factors, including if we get a cold air outbreak, and we got the correct setup, we still could see a significant lake effect,” said Borisoff.
And the National Weather Service is looking at a change in the current weather pattern which is expected to usher in a colder weather pattern in the coming weekend and early next week.
