Prep Your Climate Coverage: Winter Warming and Why It Matters

Transcript

David Dickson, CCNow: Hello everyone, wherever you might be joining us. It is so great to have you all here today. My name is David Dickson. I am a meteorologist and TV Engagement Coordinator with the nonprofit Covering Climate Now. Hopefully at this time, you probably know who we are, but if you are new to us at Covering Climate Now, we are a global collaboration of more than 500 newsrooms across 60 countries all over the world. 

We’re organized by journalists for journalists, to help all of us do a better job in communicating the impacts of climate change in a way that resonates with your audiences — talking about those local impacts that we’re going to be talking about over the next hour. Go ahead and head to our website to learn more and sign up for our newsletters, other webinars like this, as well as newsroom trainings, all of which are offered free of charge. 

I’m thrilled to be joined by a fellow meteorologist and colleague who’s going to help moderate today’s discussion. Over to you, Shel.

Shel Winkley, Climate Central: Yeah, thanks, David. And happy holidays everybody! Appreciate you stopping by. 

My name is Shel Winkley. If you don’t know me, if we haven’t had a chance to cross paths, I’m a meteorologist as well as the Weather and Climate Engagement Specialist here at Climate Central. We’re a nonprofit, nonadvocacy organization of scientists and communicators that are dedicated to researching, reporting and the storytelling around the data and science of our changing climate. 

At Climate Central, we develop and distribute, broadcast and publish ready climate content for you, helping to empower your forecast, your stories, the content you’re making, to make those crucial links between extreme weather events and the human caused climate change impacts for your audience to really help localize this really big thing down to the local level, down to your city, so we can help people understand how it impacts their daily life.

David Dickson: Thanks Shel. And once again, thank you all for joining us for this final Prep Your Climate Coverage webinar of the year. If you’ve joined us for the other ones, thank you for sticking around with us. These sessions offered at the start of spring, summer, fall and winter are designed to provide resources and accessible language that you can use when making the climate connection, whenever you cover the season’s anticipated extreme weather events, as well as the shifting temperature and precipitation patterns that we know are changing as a result of our warming climate. If you want to check out the previous webinars, if you missed any, go ahead and head to our website [at the links above].

We have previous sessions highlighting climate change’s influence on spring severe weather season, like severe thunderstorms and even tornadic activity, summer heat and hurricanes, and even fall wildfire trends. As far as this session goes, we’re going to have plenty of time at the end for questions, so go ahead and use that Q and A function at the bottom of your screen for that. Please, if you ask a question, include your name and the name of your outlet. It really does help us and even your location, that would be great. We’ll go ahead and read them out for the panelists to answer. And while this webinar is open to everyone, just know that we are prioritizing questions from working journalists and meteorologists in newsrooms only. 

So it is now my pleasure to introduce some of the panelists that are here today to help Shel and I so we’ll go ahead and bring things in with Kelly House. She is a reporter at Bridge Michigan, a nonprofit newsroom where she covers environmental issues impacting the state. Her coverage has garnered national honors and sparked state efforts to better protect natural resources. A Michigan native, she has written about the many impacts stemming from the Great Lakes state’s vanishing winters. 

And then we also have Leah Pezzetti, a meteorologist, storyteller, and children’s book author, if you’re looking for any gifts for the little ones this season, at KING5 in Seattle. Her work bridges meteorology with broader environmental and atmospheric sciences, bringing complex scientific concepts to viewers in accessible ways, including highlighting how the Pacific Northwest snowpack is changing as our climate warms. So please give a warm virtual welcome to our colleagues using that reaction at the bottom of your screen. I am so thankful that they took the time out of their busy schedules today for us. 

All right, let’s jump right in. Much of the country has already seen its first taste of winter. Here where I am, in North Carolina, we actually saw our first taste of snow for the season. And other areas have certainly seen their fair share of snow already over Thanksgiving, as well as a frigid chill for much of the country already. This is just a reminder that despite our increasingly warming atmosphere, winter still comes. 

However, there’s no escaping the fact that winters today are not the same ones as the ones we grew up with, given that we are all in different corners of the country, where winter looks vastly different among us, I’d love to hear from you, Shel, Kelly and Leah, about what ways you have personally seen the changes to this season. 

While you all think about that for a moment, I’ll go ahead and jump in with mine. Growing up, my family had a little cottage at a small lake in Connecticut. And growing up, I always heard about ice fishing on this lake, which dates back to the early 1900s, and every year the lake would freeze over, and people would be able to skate out and ice fish on it. Yet, for the past 10 years, the lake has not frozen over, and so that kind of tradition has vanished. You know, we’re going to be talking about some of the ways that the changes to the environment and to our winters kind of extend beyond just what we see and how that changes, kind of personalities and regional identities as well. But let’s go ahead and start with you, Kelly, go ahead. 

Kelly House, Bridge Michigan: Yeah, so I grew up in northern Michigan, northern Lower Peninsula, so not, you know, the most frigid parts of the state, but what we consider a snowy region. And I think the biggest change that I relate to comes in the shoulder seasons. You know, growing up, winter coats [while] doing trick or treating, flurries flying when I would go to watch my older brother’s football games, or flurries flying in the spring when I was running on the track field. You know, those childhood memories where it just felt like winter lasted forever, and now that’s becoming rarer and rarer, so those shoulder seasons. 

And then on top of that, I’m a cross country skier, and I now live… I left the state for, you know, a decade or so, and came back five years ago, and was so excited to live somewhere where I could consistently cross country ski. It hasn’t been the case. I find myself traveling further north, further north in Michigan trying to find the snow, because where I live in Lansing, it’s precarious. You know, maybe a couple of winters a year. So that’s one of the ways I really measure it is just those outdoor pursuits that we all love.

David Dickson: I appreciate that. Over to you, Leah.

Leah Pezzetti, KING5 Seattle: I grew up in Sacramento, and honestly, Sacramento winters were kind of a flop. In my opinion. I don’t know, we didn’t get snow in the Sacramento Valley. I do remember one time as a child, and I think it was in the first grade, we walked out and there were snowflakes falling, [though] nothing stuck. 

Honestly, if anything, I’m seeing it more here in Washington. I didn’t grow up here, but I think Washington is a great example of a very temperate climate. We don’t have big swings, and that’s why we love it here, right? Our summers are not too hot, our winters are not too cold. It’s like the Goldilocks forecast year round, and that’s why people love it here. 

But even since I moved here, I’ve seen that change, and that’s not even a lifetime. That’s like the last five years, I’ve seen these crazy changes of every single [season]… it’s not just winter. It’s summer too. Every summer, we’re [seeing a] record summer. Oh, we hit 90 degrees more than ever before, because that didn’t used to happen in Washington. That’s that Goldilocks forecast. Or, you know, triple digit days more than ever. Or, you know, in the winter, our snow pack is nothing compared to what it used to be. 

So it’s not necessarily something I’ve lived [personally] but I’ve looked at the data of my lifetime, and it is crazy, like the data doesn’t lie, and that’s the craziest thing to see for me, is both [in] winter and summer, just the swing is becoming so much greater in the Northwest, and that’s scary.

David Dickson: And for the folks liking data, we’re going to have a lot of it coming to you in just a moment, but first over to you Shel.

Shel Winkley: So much data. Yeah, I’m a Texas guy. Lived here all my life, and I think to echo what a lot of folks have said here, shoulder seasons are big. 

You know, I’m a big Texas A&M fan. The past two seasons, we haven’t worn long sleeves to a single home football game the entire season, and we’ve got a college football game playoff coming up. Humble brag there. Looking at the forecast, I don’t know that we’re going to wear long sleeves, as well. 

We got our first frost this morning down here in central and southeast Texas. A lot of it comes with additional warmth that we’ll show you here in a bit. But a lot of it, too, is warmer ends to our winter. So really, that springtime creep that’s coming at the end of winter, we still get some really cold air that comes in July and February, or rather, January and February, but it’s the earlier spring times, the wildflowers that are coming up earlier and earlier each year and then have the potential to be wiped away by a pretty standard late what should be winter freeze. 

And then obviously, you know, one big thing that we look at a lot of things like the February 2021, epic Texas freeze, where the grid just collapsed on us, the power grids. So while that was not necessarily all caused by climate change, we understand that these extremes are becoming more extreme, even during the winter time, and it seems that each winter there, there’s one big winter storm, or at least one big winter cold snap that everybody kind of holds their breath because we’re wondering, you know, how is this going to impact our heat, our water, and the things we need to stay bundled up during those cold snaps?

David Dickson: And I think everyone in attendance also has their own personal stories about how they’ve seen the changes to winter or even other seasons personally. I just want to say I appreciate everyone sharing this, because it shows that we have these stories, and your audience likely has these stories as well, because the changes aren’t just, you know, numbers. They have big emotions coupled with them, and they also have huge economic consequences as well, which we’ll talk a lot more about later on in this session. 

These are not just anecdotal references. It’s a scientific fact that our winters are much different compared to 30 or 50 years ago, and we have the data for that. So let’s go ahead and take a closer look at the numbers and explore where exactly winter warming is the fastest and the most. So we’ll head back to you Shel. 

Shel Winkley: Okay, so let’s jump in, and we’ll start with winter as a whole. So when we [say] winter, you know, we’re talking about meteorological winter. So that’s specifically going to be December, January, and February. Winter is the fastest warming season, more than any other season for a good portion of the United States, and the vast majority of us experience the fastest warming when it comes to climate change and our seasons during the winter season. 

Since just 1970 the season has warmed in 98% of 244 cities that we at Climate Central recently analyzed, and on average across the United States that warming is 3.9 degrees above what it was just 50 to 55 years ago. You can see on the map there, the regions where winter isn’t quite like the seasons of past decades, the things that Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby were singing about. 

The Upper Midwest is warming the fastest by an average temperature of nearly five and a half degrees. Alaska and the Northeast and the Ohio Valley have all warmed by four and a half degrees, at least in these last 50 to 55 years. 

There are some cities that stand out the most when it comes to how we now experience winter. So if you’re joining us from Burlington, Vermont, you unfortunately get the gold star for the fastest warming city of these 244. Their winters have warmed by just over eight degrees since 1970 leading the country for this fastest warming season. They are followed by Milwaukee, Wisconsin at 7.3 degrees Fahrenheit compared to 1970. Green Bay is right around seven degrees, Waterloo Iowa, Concord, New Hampshire and Toledo, Ohio are all between 6.7 and 6.8 degrees of warming. 

So average temperature increases are a good way to really start the conversation when you’re talking with your audience about this warming season, that even when you walk outside and need a jacket, it’s just not quite the same as what it used to be. In everyday terms, this warming is changing what winter feels like for many of us. 

Across the US we’re now experiencing more mild days in the heart of winter, on average, about a week of extra warmer than average days is now being experienced compared to those early 1970 trends. From the northeast to the upper Midwest that number is around 16 extra days per winter that are now expected to be above average. So that’s now for most putting over half of our winter that’s expected to sit above average. 

And with the shift, the coldest nights aren’t as cold as they used to be. 91% of 232 cities that were analyzed are now averaging about 15 fewer nights than they were in winters of the past. So what I want to do, really quick, because there’s a lot of data that you can really dive into with all of this. So I just want to show you real quick where you can find this for your reporting. 

So if you go to climatecentral.org and you click on this resource tab here, it will take you to all of our recent resources. Winter is still pretty close, but you can just type in winter here in the filter by keyword section, and click on the winter package, [and] you’ll see all these graphics here at the top, the key facts that go with it. You can download local data, that national map that you saw there for all of our meteorologists in the room that are using either a MAX or a Baron system. You can download a KML map that goes into your system. For our [online] journalists in the room, we have an interactive map. 

But if you’re looking for your city, you simply just click on the graphic here. We’ll type in…I’m in Bryan College Station, so we’ll type Bryan, we’ll pop it up, and then you can grab that graphic. You can download it here in both English as well in Spanish. But again, we have a lot of different resources that come along with winter. 

So if you come back to the homepage again, climatecentral.org, Leah is in Seattle, so we’ll use Seattle. You type it in here right on the homepage, and then what that will do for you is bring up a lot of different stats and details of the year for your city specifically. But then we also break it down to winter. So here’s some of the key stats that come along with winter. There’s an atmospheric river event that’s happening now, so you can utilize this rainfall data there, and then some of the big key things. Winters are warming up in Seattle. So there’s your graphic that you can download easily fewer freezing nights. It’s all there. And if you keep scrolling down, you’ll also be able to find all the information localized to your city, to your area that you’re reporting for.

David Dickson: So there you have it. A really simple way to bolster your story or your web article with historical trends and those great graphics. (I see a few people posting in the Q and A. I still encourage you to do that. We’ll get to that a little bit later on. So if you have any questions for Shel and I, or any of our panelists, go ahead and use that function.) 

But I really believe that this data is incredibly important as it can be difficult for audiences to understand and parse out climate change’s influence when we’re talking about long-term trends compared to a singular, large impact event like a hurricane or really bad flood. I think that is especially true when it comes to winter, because the season’s more memorable moments, such as huge snowstorms or the bitter cold that comes with that attention grabbing polar vortex goes against what some people think global warming is. 

This data helps us parse out climate change’s fingerprint on winter temperatures that may not be readily noticeable because we’re kind of all in a tub of water that’s just slowly warming up. However, these gradual changes lead to huge consequences, by way of example, let’s go ahead and take a look at a piece that Leah and others at KING5 in Seattle produced last year that highlighted the changes to the Pacific Northwest snow pack. It’s about a minute long snippet, so let’s go ahead and take a look at it. 

David Dickson: So first off, I want to encourage everyone to check out their special — I think they did a great job with it. It was really well done. We’ll include the link to that in the chat. But I clipped that segment because it showed that it’s not always the big, flashy events, like a deadly heat wave that is causing a significant reduction in the snow pack there, but rather a gradual warming trend throughout the season. So Leah, first off, how is the snow pack doing so far this season?

Leah Pezzetti: What snowpack? It’s terrible. It’s so sad in the northwest, you know, La Nina, typically, we think, okay, cool, good. Yay, snow pack! That’s our impact for a La Nina year, and we’ve got about zilch right now. What I’ve tried to hit home to people is that when we have a weak La Nina, it’s not a guarantee, right? Like, it would have to be a strong La Nina for us to feel more confident in saying, yes, we feel good about having a good snow pack year. But our data, our records, show that when we have these weak La Ninas, it’s like flipping a coin. It could go better, it could go worse, and unfortunately, we’re off to a worse start right now. 

And it’s been fascinating. I know people are across the country seeing different things, but it’s been so interesting to see people talk about this early snow and this great snow early on in the season, and here in the Northwest, we are not seeing that. What we’re seeing is we’ll get a little bit of snow. But then it gets warm and it all melts off. And so we have not been able to build a base. We have not been able to build a snow pack. We’ve not been able to open our ski resorts yet. They were all targeting this week, actually, I think it was, or last week. They were targeting opening dates. That’s kind of when they usually would be able to open, but they’re not even close to being able to open. Our snow pack is at between 10-20% depending on the area you’re looking at, what it should be right now. 

So it’s, it’s bad news for snow so far, that being said, it’s December, we could still get a good, you know, late December storm or January storm, that makes up for lost time, basically. So we’re not completely saying it’s a wash of a winter, but it’s not a good start. And right now, we’re seeing a really warm atmospheric river hit the region, and that is not bringing any of that good snow that we need. So it’s not looking good here in Washington.

David Dickson: And I know you’ve spoken to researchers there that have studied snowfall trends, but you’ve also spent time yourself on some of Washington’s declining glaciers. What are the greater implications, beyond just, you know, there’s not any snow to ski on for this winter warming in regards to the glaciers and the snow pack in the Cascades and Rockies that newsrooms there should really pay attention to?

Leah Pezzetti: So I learned so much this summer when we did a week-long series about glaciers, and I can talk more in depth about that, if you want me to, but I’ll just briefly say right now, I work at a Tegna station, and our Tegna affiliates in the northwest, four of us, in Seattle, Portland, Spokane and Boise have teamed up, and we’ve created a franchise together where we create regional stories that we share with each other. I’m happy to talk more about that. If anyone has questions about that, it’s been so successful so far. But this was a team series that we did. 

We did it for shrinking snowpack, which you just saw that little blip of. And then this summer, we did one of our glaciers. So everybody, we had team coverage all week long, teased up stories all week long, and it was smashing success! 

So the glacier is what we’re talking about right now. We said, Hey, let’s do a story about the glaciers. And honestly, we thought we’d do it in the winter. And then we realized, wait a second, in the winter, our glaciers are covered by snow, so we can’t get to them. So we had to do it in the summer. 

So this summer, I hiked to a glacier. I backpacked. It was my first time backpacking. I’m a hiker, not a backpacker. It was a very difficult experience, one of the hardest physical and mental things I’ve ever done. But we backpacked to one of our glaciers in the North Cascades, and my photojournalist and I told a very incredible story that I’m just so proud of — I’m so proud of what we produced. We went along with a team of scientists who have been doing the same trek for 42 years now. 

So this guy, Mori, when he was a young pup, getting out of grad school, a climatologist, said, I need a project to devote my life to, and I need it to be cheap. What can I do for cheap? He said, hike. I can always hike for free. And where, where would I never need technology because it’s banned? National parks. So he chose to commit his life to hiking into national parks in the northwest to measure glaciers in the northwest. I went with him this year, it was his 42nd year. His daughter goes with him.

 Now we put together a cool piece on their relationship and their studies, and that was such a great story, because I can go on KING5, and I can say we’re losing our glaciers. I can show that data trying to hard winters or whatever degrees warmer, but it’s not tangible. And that, I think, is the biggest thing that as journalists, we have to do is find tangible examples of these impacts. It’s not enough to just say the numbers. We have to show why those numbers matter to the people sitting at home. 

And in the northwest I’m very lucky to live in a place that cares about our environment. And if we say orcas are dying, if we say any aquatic critters are suffering, any animals, nature, whatever, people listen. I’m lucky to live in a place where people listen and people care about our environment. So when we say melting glaciers, people listen. When we show a glacier and say it used to be here, and now it’s here. You can physically. You can see it. People listen. When I have a climate scientist who has done this hike for 42 years, and he starts crying on camera, saying, we’re losing our glaciers. This is going to be no more in the next few years, people listen so. 

So that was just an incredible experience getting to see it firsthand, tell that story, and I have lots more I can talk about, if you want me to, but that’s kind of the overarching view of that story. And I forgot your question, so I’ll send it back to you.

David Dickson: All good. I think you covered a lot. We’ll come back to something that you mentioned a little bit earlier, about the importance of finding these local researchers and telling their story. I want to go now over to Kelly — completely different side of the country, and completely different impacts. What are some of the more significant changes that you’ve reported on, and what does this mean now for the people that live on thin ice, literally in the Great Lakes region? 

Kelly House: Well, I first just want to amplify Leah’s point that bringing it home to people by telling the stories of people or animals or ecosystems, but the impact, not just the change, is so important. 

But in Michigan, you know, we don’t have glaciers. We don’t rely on that snow pack throughout the year in the same way to provide our water, we rely on winter, first of all, just as a cultural frame of reference and point of pride. I mean, you know, our governor always likes to talk about grit. And I think there are a lot of reasons for that, but part of it, I think, is we come from a part of the world where there is a prolonged, cloudy, snowy season. We view ourselves as hearty people who can not only get through that, but celebrate it and embrace it. And an entire culture has formed around that. 

We have sauna culture up here. We have festivals practically every weekend, whether you want to go to a, you know, an ice fishing derby, a sled dog race, a festival to the Finnish snow god, you know, you name it, pond hockey in Detroit, where people would flood their backyards and play hockey all winter. These are all things that have relied on consistent frigid temperatures. 

And shout out to Climate Central, I know through you guys that we have lost nine days of freeze compared to what we would have in a non climate change scenario, and that’s the average. Some places in our state have lost far more, some less, but nine days when winter only lasts a few months is huge. And of course, we’re only, you know, beginning to see some of this impact. So for us, it’s a cultural story. It’s also an economic story. 

You know, I’m thinking about last summer when I visited this museum to vintage snowmobiles. And just, you know, at one time, there were dozens of different snowmobile country companies in our region alone. Now some of the biggest snowmobile makers are backing out. Communities that have built their entire economies around basically snowmobile parades, where people will go trail to trail and town to town and stay the night, are suffering. You know, communities that have built economies around ice fishing are suffering. 

Parts of the Great Lakes — which you know, the winter freeze is an important, again, economic, cultural, but also ecosystem event — are going to be ice free by mid century. They will not ice over — that’s the prediction. So you know, you’ve got those physical changes, but then they all lead to these ecosystem changes that we are just beginning to understand. So, as an example, snowshoe hares that live in the Great North — they turn white every winter as a means of camouflage, but when we have less and less snow, that makes them stick out like a sore thumb. So we’re seeing, you know, this species that is a part of our regional identity and an important part of our ecosystem disappear. 

Moose are another example. They are afflicted by this tick that used to die off in the winter because the temperatures would get so cold. Now it’s living through the winter and staying on those moose all winter and really proliferating on them. And these moose are basically being drained dry during the season, when you know those fat reserves and fluid reserves are so important. So I think here, it’s becoming visible in many ways. And I think telling people how it is visible and letting people share their own stories of loss, I think, is really important. 

David Dickson: This is all fascinating, and I completely agree with you about giving space for people to tell their stories and let them share their moments of sadness, especially with this changing environment. And I, for those that may not spend a lot of time in the north, or may live in areas a little bit further south, where, you know, winter is just like, Oh yeah, it’s a little bit of a season. It gets a little cold. Sometimes we get some snow. I don’t want people to kind of shrug off well, you know, they’re not able to ski anymore. 

To your point, Kelly, it’s a huge industry. In fact, winter sports is estimated to be a $12 billion industry in the US… How are businesses changing their habits, or even kind of adjusting to the milder winners in your area, and what recommendations do you have for newsrooms that might want to kind of cover this aspect?

Kelly House: Yeah, so you know, for some businesses, the answer is closing. Unfortunately. We’ve had some of those hotels that cater to snowmobilers and are on snowmobile trails just say, we can’t make it anymore. There’s not enough foot traffic through our community. But we’ve also seen cross country ski resorts and downhill ski resorts begin to invest in snow making. Snow making was already pretty common in downhill skiing, at least in the southern Lower Peninsula of Michigan. Now it’s becoming, you know, a must have. And cross country skiing has always been something that, for the most part, is just done on natural snow.

Last year, in February, I was writing about the absence of winter. It was literally 60 degrees in early February. That should be the coldest part of our year. And I was up in Gaylord, which is in the snow belt of Michigan. We get this lake effect snow, and Gaylord just happens to be the epicenter where they get dumped on. It was 60 degrees. It was supposed to be the first day of their annual snowmobile festival. 

The grass was growing, and I was talking to people who had come up for it, who were standing on the side of the street in shorts and a hoodie. So I think there’s not a lot you can do in that scenario. If you’re, you know, you are known as, like, sort of the winter place. We’re not going to do snowmobile snow making. But you’re also seeing communities just try to shift toward other, you know, other winter activities in what our new winter looks like. 

So one example is an annual sled dog race that happens in the UPI never had to be canceled, and then had to cancel two years in a row. So, you know, they hope that they can do the race every year moving forward, but now they have contingency plans in place where they plan a festival. And you know, if you can’t have the sled dog racing, you can still bring people in with, you know, various activities downtown. 

We’re starting to see more mud dog racing as a thing. Snowmobiles are being swapped out for side by sides at a lot of these, you know, outdoor sports retailers. So you know, I what you’re starting to see is just less emphasis on winter activities and more emphasis on what outdoor activities can we do when it’s mud season rather than snow season?

David Dickson: And we’re going to talk a lot more, I know we have some questions for folks from the audience talking about areas a little bit further south, trust me, we’re going to get to it because it’s completely different. And there are some common audience questions about, like, well, we get less snow. That’s kind of great. That’s why I moved down here. We’ll get to that, trust me.

But I just want to highlight a couple of quick things about extreme cold, because climate change isn’t going to eliminate cold weather completely. We’re seeing that across much of the US right now. But less cold doesn’t mean never cold. I will just quickly add that there is research being done exploring if we can expect more batches of frequent cold air at mid latitudes in the future, as our climate scientists actively explore the link between a warming Arctic and more frequent shifts of the polar jet stream, or that polar vortex that sends cold air rushing into Europe, Asia and North America… We don’t have enough time to really dig into this, and there is still some uncertainty with this particular climate connection, but data overwhelmingly shows that every incidence of extreme cold all over the world has decreased in likelihood and intensity over time due to climate change. So back to the numbers and back over to you Shel.

Shel Winkley: Yeah, and I think this will touch on… both such great stories already from both Kelly as well as Leah. Kelly, I know it’s maybe not the right geography, but when I think about a northern US winter, I grew up watching Grumpy Old Men and Grumpier Old Men and as like a Southern guy, like, that’s what I picture. So you talking about that? Like, that’s what was in my head.

This might be one of the trickiest conversations to have in the wintertime, because, as David mentioned, even in a warmer world, and we’ve experienced it already this winter, being in the La Nina pattern we’re in, but extreme cold events still happen. They are still there. We just know that they’re getting shorter, and as Kelly mentioned a little bit ago, they’re also getting milder. And as you saw in the story from Leah, when that snow is being etched away. So long, sometimes stubborn, cold snaps, they’re fading too. 

On average, these cold streaks are shrinking by about six days. When we looked at cities across the United States, it’s a trend for 98% or 236 of the 240 cities [we analyzed] have witnessed on the coldest day of the year, which usually arrives mid-to-late January, that it’s not as cold as it used to be, talking about standing in hoodies and shorts. Across these 240 locations, the annual coldest temperature has warmed by about seven degrees on average, with nearly every location that we analyzed warming by at least one degree. In most of those locations, that coldest day has warmed by at least five degrees or more. Over 50 locations have dramatic jumps of at least 10 degrees or more, and that includes cities like Boise, like Las Vegas, Idaho Falls and Reno. 

So anytime we get into a period where, yes, things are really cold, a lot of the questions are, well, how do we still talk about climate change in a warming climate when we’re bundling up when we walk outside? And I think the best way to show this, even as people are putting on those big coats, are records. Records help tell the story. 

So when you look at decades of observation that are kept by NOAA and other National Weather Service offices around the world, daily record highs far outnumber the daily record cold ones. Over the last year, there were three times more daily heat records than cold records across the globe. In a more stable climate, you’d expect that heat and cold records generally split, right? That’s the natural variability we get with weather. They’re usually about 50/50, but over the last 40 decades or so, record heat has been pulling ahead as our planet warms. 

This is where Climate Central’s local records tracker tool is useful. This is one of the things I go to often, and maybe one of my favorite tools that we have. It lets you show easily how lopsided these record events are for your area. And what’s great about them is they’re interactive. So you can scroll over them, you can look at the percentage of record highs versus record lows per decade, but it updates daily. 

So as soon as the National Weather Service in your area puts out their climate report for the day, that data gets put in there, and you can keep track of it as these cold events or heat events are happening. It helps to put the occasional extreme cold snaps into perspective and into the context of this longer term warming. So even with this, you’re going to get doubts that creep in. You’re going to get the social media comments that are like, you know, how about that global warming, right? 

So, Leah, I’ll open it up very briefly to you. How do you — when you get those comments, and if you engage with those comments — how do you have those conversations? Because I think that if someone is mentioning it to you, it may seem like it’s coming from a negative space, but I’m always of the belief that if someone’s asking you about climate change, even if it doesn’t seem genuine, I think they have questions.

Leah Pezzetti: Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, first of all, like I said, I live in the Northwest, and I live in an area that, you know, changing climate is generally accepted, and people understand and are on board with it and want to see things change. So I do feel very lucky to be in an area [where] that’s not really an uphill battle. 

But of course, there are those people. I mean, the biggest thing I’m going to say, I said before, I’ll say it again, I think, is showing the impacts. And so when we launched our Environment Northwest franchise, that partnership with the four stations, our goal was to not just show data, but show impacts. And that is what people can’t deny. That’s when people, I think, kind of forget to be combative, if you will. 

Because if you’re saying, you know, you’re not going to be able to have your crab for your Christmas dinner, because the snow crabbing season didn’t happen, because there was a warm pool in the Arctic, and so they couldn’t crab, because all the crab died. That’s because of global warming, like, it’s the domino effect, right? And that was a story I covered, that was a story we broke…won some cool awards for that one last year. But that one was one that it’s like, okay, crabs, everybody cares about crabs, right? I mean, if you don’t eat them, then you at least care about them as a species. That was because of warming waters. 

And so we gave them the information [that] things are changing, things are warming, but paired it with this very visual, impactful thing. And so it’s like, they can’t deny that, they can’t fight that, like they’re gonna care about that. And everybody cares about people, animals, impacts, and so I don’t even try to, like, fight anyone on it. I just show them. I’m like, well, look at this story. What do you think about that? And then we started a great conversation.

David Dickson: And for those of you that have been at our other webinars, we always like to provide you with scientifically backed language, just in case you get any of these comments, or you want to kind of further dive into this and talk about, kind of the impacts to winter in your area, but want to make that climate connection succinctly. 

So here’s some language for you from us at Covering Climate Now and Climate Central:

Cold snaps can still happen, but winters are warming overall, milder days and fewer freezing nights are all clear signals of a warming climate. 

There you go in one sentence. We’re running a little bit behind on time, so Shell, let’s just quickly run through something that probably a lot of people are caring about, but we’ve already kind of touched on it, and that’s snow.

Shel Winkley: And this kind of gets to Michelle and Barbara’s questions as well. So snow… it is one of the biggest impacts of the winter. In the past few weeks, snow has been a big part of the forecast, especially for the upper Midwest and the Northeast. Chicago recorded its biggest one-day November snowfall over the Thanksgiving weekend, collecting eight and a half inches of snow in one day, but at the same time, that same day left behind point two inches of snow in Denver, which ended a 224 day snowless streak to mark the city’s second latest first snowfall on record. 

So we understand that these extremes aren’t playing out the way they used to, right? It’s not as evenly distributed across the US. This goes to what we know — winter is a shrinking season for much of the US. Fall temperatures are eating at the start of the season. Springtime warmth is creeping at the back end, and climate change can affect the timing, the location and the amount of snowfall, as well as the dynamics of snowfall melts. 

Essentially, it’s affecting the two basic conditions needed to produce snow, the freezing temperatures and the moisture in the atmosphere. The reality for over 2,000 snow locations that we analyzed here at Climate Central are a loss of snow days and a smaller snow pack as our number of days with temperatures at or below 32 degrees is expected to continue to decline over the coming decades due to human caused climate change. This can mean more days with a cold rain than a fluffy snow. And not to pick on the city of Denver, but last Christmas, on Christmas day, it was a cold, sad rain, and not the festive snow that you typically would expect in Denver.

And we understand there was a fingerprint of climate change there with the temperature, a loss of snow days, and a smaller snow pack, right? But for 731 of these snowy places, this is maybe interesting for you, is that there’s an increase in the annual snowfall trend. So as the climate warms, we understand that the atmosphere can hold more moisture, and it’s the old physics equation of every one degree Fahrenheit of warming, we can hold 4% more moisture in our atmosphere. So it’s a sponge that’s getting bigger, and it just needs that weather event to unlock it and the right temperatures to make it snow. 

So like the flooding we experienced across the country this year, flooding event after flooding event, throughout the spring and the summer, when the moisture lines up with that right weather system, it can produce some big, blockbuster snowstorms that are still possible in this warming climate. 

While we typically associate the big snowfalls with the mountains, the Great Lakes play a major role here. As the lakes warm, they’re losing about 25% of their long term ice cover, leaving more open water for evaporation. That’s the extra moisture that can supercharge these lake-effect snow events, and we also know that it allows for these snow events to happen later in the season, as that snow machine really turns on. 

So to sum it all up, here’s some vetted language that you can use when you talk about snow:

Heat trapping pollution is reshaping when, where and how snow falls.

As the basic ingredients for snow shifts, shrinking snow packs don’t just impact winter sports, but they also affect water supplies that communities and ecosystems depend on year round.

David Dickson: Lost where my mic mute button was. Thanks Shel. I think once again, this data, all available on Climate Central’s website, speaks to the regionality and complexity of snowfall trends. I urge you all to go on their website and explore how your region’s winter precipitation is changing through resources like this one, as well as especially connecting with local experts at nearby universities, National Weather Service offices and state climate offices. 

I know we have a few questions. I want to get to that in just a few minutes, but I [want you to] understand winter looks completely different from region to region. We’ve talked a lot about the Pacific Northwest. We’ve talked about the Midwest, in the Great Lakes region. So before we jump to those questions, I want to quickly take a trip with you all, all across the country, to give you some relevant data and a few possible story ideas that aren’t just, hey, we’re seeing fewer white Christmases as a result of climate change. 

So let’s first start off in the West. We’ve touched on some of these topics already, but in the western US, snowpack has been shrinking since the mid 20th century, as snow is melting earlier in the year. A 2018 study showed that this decline has reduced snow derived fresh water in the west by 15 to 30% since the 1950s. In 2020 another study identified the western US as a global hot spot for snow drought experiencing a 28% increase in duration of such snow droughts from 1980 to 2018. 

So what does this mean? It means less snow for skiing, but it also strains water supplies for cities, agriculture, and ecosystems. This smaller snowpack can also mean drier conditions in the spring and summer, which raises the wildfire risk. Shel and I have talked a lot about this and Shel, you can chime in really quick, the impacts to winter, you say, extend far beyond the season’s end.

Shel Winkley: Yeah, I like to say they ripple through the rest of the year, right? Because if you don’t get that snow pack, we mentioned it a little bit ago… but yeah, a lot of this was in the questions. Not everybody loves snow, not everybody loves the extreme cold, but that snow is very important, because once spring comes, that snow melts, and then it recharges our reservoirs and our aquifers in order to have water as we go through the hotter months of the spring and the summer. 

But that’s also very important, because if you have a dry summer that eats into a dry fall, and then you don’t have as much snow in the winter, yeah, like you see there, that just leads to that tinder box that can be left in place, that we know with climate change, we’re seeing more wildfire days. We understand that the underlying conditions of wildfires have a long-term effect because of climate change. So even though we’re talking about this cold in these three/four month period, winter is really important for what happens throughout the rest of the year.

David Dickson: Let’s move across the country now and talk a little bit about the Northeast, because winters are shifting there in a different way, as I talked a little bit about at the very beginning. 

More winter precipitation is now falling as rain instead of snow, and this is a trend that is expected to continue as this rain/snow line moves northward throughout this century. This is especially important for winter recreation and the economy and culture and even traditions around it, as Kelly has been explaining so thoughtfully. 

But take Maine, for example, where winter sports, just for [one state], is a $3 billion industry. This warming is also leading to a growing issue for much of the country, but especially for the Northeast and the Midwest, as disease carrying pests such as ticks become more and more prevalent. 

Kelly, you already talked about it with the moose population there [in Michigan], but for human populations, this deer tick, which were normally dormant in winter, which caused Lyme disease and anaplasmosis and other sicknesses are becoming more and more active, creating a greater health risk. Check this out, because this is a growing issue. 

You can talk to local doctors, but also talk to local allergists as well, because you want to explore, especially if you’re kind of a little bit further south, and we see this in the South as well, how populations of the lone star tick, a different breed of tick altogether, is growing across the country, with more and more cases of alpha gal syndrome, which is a potentially deadly allergy to red meat, spread by this tick’s bite. Yeah, it’s fascinating, frightening stuff, and unfortunately, a lot of this allergy reaction comes with people who spend more time outside, and typically are more outdoorsy and typically meat eaters. So that’s a climate connection you can make, and a personal connection as well.

We talked a lot about the Midwest and the Great Lakes with thinning ice and changing snowfall patterns, but I also urge newsrooms in those regions to explore how warming winters are wrecking fruit crops and impacting agriculture overall. For example, I know Michigan is the nation’s leading producer of cherries, and they have been hit especially hard by the erratic and drastic temperature swings that we’re coming to expect with climate change. 

And finally, where I’m located, and Shel is located in the south, and I understand, and I see a comment from Michelle, it’s good to see you here, that for some it’s like, hey, yeah, winters aren’t really a big thing here, and I’m kind of okay with less snow and less cold. But it’s changing agriculture in the south, and I will say, at times for the better. Some areas are now seeing a longer growing season that you can explore with earlier springs and later frost. This potentially even creates new opportunities for different plants to be grown. 

Take for example, in Georgia, where farmers are now testing growing citrus as a fruit as hard freezes become less frequent due to climate change. However, at the same time, other fruit productions, such as peaches, are taking a huge hit, as these trees require to be exposed to cold temperatures for a long enough period of time, a process that farmers call chill accumulation. Warming temperatures disrupt this winter dormancy, which can lead to trees blooming early with catastrophic results if a hard frost follows, as was the case two years ago, where I am in North Carolina and South Carolina especially, and Georgia, which caused a nearly $120 million crop loss in just the course of a weekend. 

And this is also the case with ticks, but we’re also seeing it with plant diseases, as well, as climate change is intensifying and spreading plant diseases and pests by creating more favorable warm and wet conditions. 

No matter your region, I highly encourage you all to speak to your local farmers, agricultural research centers and state departments to better understand what pests, blights, and other threats to plants are increasing in your area. 

So that was kind of a lot of information and a lot of topics that we kind of threw at you over the past hour or so. And don’t forget if you forgot a stat or specific language, as both Shel and I are more than happy to help. 

Just feel free to send either of us an email, and also check out Climate Central and Covering Climate Now’s resources to help you and your coverage and expand your climate knowledge. So I think I covered a bit of Michelle’s topic or question about the perception [that less snow] is good, [because] I hate snow and that’s why I live in the south so…

Shel, if you want to chime in or anyone else, how would you recommend telling the story of warming winters in communities that are already known for mild winters?

Shel Winkley, Climate Central: Yeah, we hear that all the time, like that’s why I moved to South Texas —  to not be cold. One of the best ways that I did it as a broadcast meteorologist, I really connected with my audience, you mentioned it, David was chill hours. We love our plants, we love our trees, we love the things they produce. We had a weather watcher who, right now, is in full on Christmas tree mode. In the summertime, he grows berries and stone fruits, and every winter he panics because those chill hours aren’t accumulating like they’re supposed to. We have yet to even cross the threshold into the chill hour territory here where we live. So yes — you as a human, you may not like the cold, but help to make those connections of the ecosystem around you, the things that you love to see around you, the place you live, because of the beauty that it is, maybe around you. How does the wintertime temperatures and those really cold temperatures help with the things that you like to see when you’re getting out in the spring and the summer?

Leah Pezzetti: Can I jump in? And this is maybe, like the opposite, I think, of what people are expecting, but it’s the story we told, and I’m going to tell you all now. And this also kind of goes to Stephanie’s question of the health impacts. 

I was curious last winter, what the temperature threshold is that we start to see people dying of hypothermia, and so I spent weeks digging through data. It was one of the most time consuming projects I’ve ever done. I talked to the coroner, coroner’s office, both for the county and the state, and I pulled data. I said, How many people have died from hypothermia in the last, I think I pulled 20 years. And I said, Give me all of it. If someone says hypothermia death, give me their information. 

And so I could see the time, the location, the date, the name of everything, and I went through that data, and I then pulled all the data for what the temperature was at the time of death. It took a long time, and I found a skew of, you know, temperatures in the teens to temperatures in the 50s for people dying. Then I talked to the National Weather Service, and I said, Okay, so what are we seeing here? And they said, You know what? We’re actually working to redo our cold weather products, because we know that this is confusing, and so we’re actually revamping it. So there we go, that kind of helped with the newsworthiness. 

And they said, We’re not seeing things getting colder. Oh, and then the other thing I found out was more people were dying from hypothermia. Riddle me that. It’s warmer out there, why are more people dying from hypothermia? 

Well, first of all, it doesn’t have to be freezing for people to die. Second of all, what we discovered when we went through the data and looked at when and where people were dying it’s that they were dying in a lot of these extreme events. So it wasn’t okay, it’s getting colder [and] more people are dying. It was, we’re getting, you know, overall warmer winters, but we’ll get a one-off ice storm, a one-off snow storm — the extremes that are impactful, people aren’t ready for them — and then they die. 

And so a lot of our hypothermia related deaths were correlated with those extreme weather events. And so it’s not the overall trend of warming. It’s the ice storm. It’s the snowstorm, the one-offs each winter, we would see dozens of people die in one period, and that stuff gets missed in the news a lot of the time, because coroner’s reports take time. That’s not you know, if there’s a flood, you they can usually say three people are dead. Off the top, they find their bodies, right? It’s very clear that the flood killed them with heat and with cold. Those reports come in weeks after the fact, and they’ve left the news cycle. And I think those are really, really, really important things to cover and follow up on. 

So it’s up to journalists to know, to go to the coroner’s office and ask them, show me the data, how many people died? We had that heat wave last year, how many people died during that heat wave, and pull the data, and do it yourself. And so I think that’s a really easy way of showing the health impacts, showing, like, literally people died from these extreme events, and also doing something different. And you can do that in every city, and maybe every city isn’t going to have that correlation, but mine did.

David Dickson: And I think it speaks also to the lowered risk perception that comes as a result of this? You know, if areas see less frequent bouts of extreme cold, they’re going to be less used to how to deal with that and how to deal with especially vulnerable communities, the unhoused, the incarcerated. So definitely explore that. That’s a great story idea. 

I know we just have a few minutes left. One thing that we haven’t talked too much about, and Kelly, you had some great advice on the subject, is winters are chaotic. Some of this data also is difficult and complex. So as trusted meteorologists, reporters, and newsrooms, how do we acknowledge to our audience that there is going to be variability and chaoticness in our winters, but still acknowledging climate change’s influence on that?

Kelly House: Yeah, well, I think you just acknowledge it by acknowledging it, you know! And actually, to the point of the folks who said, you know, I live in Boston, or I live here or there, and people are actually happy to see [less snow]… I think it’s okay to note that. I mean, you are, as a journalist, we’re responsible for noting what is happening, but also how people are receiving it. 

So I think you can acknowledge that in your reporting, while also highlighting the disturbing realities too. Hey, you know, we’re all happy we don’t have to shovel our sidewalk, but, oh, by the way, you know, snow that melts early in the season leaves less available to us in the spring and summer, when crops needed to grow, or, you know, whatever, however you want to infuse that, just make sure that you’re then infusing the complete story. 

But, yeah, it is difficult, you know, in the Great Lakes, because, as Shel noted, climate change can actually lead to more lake effect snow. Open, you know, an unfrozen Great Lakes is more vulnerable to the land getting dumped with this lake effect snow, but then that often melts immediately, so you’re getting maybe more snowfall, but less snowpack.

 I think you just try to be clear with your audience and frank about what we know and what we don’t know. Because as journalists, you know there’s already so much spin and so much distrust and intentional disinformation around this issue, I think it is imperative upon us as journalists to be, you know, a reliable and sober voice of the facts, and that includes maybe the facts that are a little more complicated, to help people tease through the variability within the long-term trends.

David Dickson: I want to thank all of our panelists, as well as my colleagues at Climate Central, as well as my colleagues at Covering Climate  Now. Shout out to Theresa for helping out with the chat, for taking the time today. I think this has been incredibly insightful. 

We are at the very beginning of the winter season. If you need any assistance or want to explore different story ideas or looking for different sources of information data for your region, reach out to us. Shel and myself. It’s easy to find us. My name is just David at covering climate now.org. I think Shel’s is…

Shel Winkley: swinkley at climate central.org

David Dickson: Reach out to us. We are more than happy to help. I urge you all to also sign up for Covering Climate Now’s and Climate Central’s newsletter so you can stay informed. Also keep an eye out as next year we have some exciting offerings from both of our organizations, and in the meantime, I hope all of you have a fantastic rest of your year and a very happy holiday season with your family and your friends — you all have definitely deserved that. So we’ll see you back here in 2026 and in the meantime, stay safe and have a good one.