Sunday, May 6, 2018
Winner for 2018 UW Weather Station Contest
It took a while, but finally on May 1st at 10:00 am the temperature went over 20°C for the first time this year when we saw a reading of 20.1°C. This was much later than the previous latest date for the 20 years we have been running the contest, which was April 19th (in 2006). Of course if we look back in the history of records in the region if there had been a weather station contest in 1919 the winner would only have been crowned on May 13th.
So congratulations to Will Gilbert who guessed a date that was almost 2 weeks later than the previous latest date in the contest, I highly respect that he was not afraid to choose a date outside of the recent historical pattern.
Here is his explanation of why he chose that date:
I figured that this year the weather was different from the past.
December was very cold, but the second half of February was very warm;
in fact, it was 16°C a few days before I voted. However that was about 6°C higher that it had ever been previously on that date, and it did not look as if that warm trend would go into March.
In second place was Greg Friday who also chose May 1st, but just a later time.
Both the winners will be receiving prizes graciously supplied by the UW Shop.
Thanks to everyone who entered and as always enjoy the weather.
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4 comments:
Its not surprising that the deeper you go without the first reading the earlier the time will be that it surpasses 20ºC. It was a hour and 45 minutes earlier than the previous earliest in 20 years (10 am). It was also by far the highest max temp for getting past 20ºC I reckon in 20 years.
I've gone through the records and found May 13 1919 also being the latest since I was curious (years ago). What method did you use to compile this meta-data? Just manually looking at the first 4-5 months of every year? I'm up to 1975 (ironically) and found lots of patterns like the max temp routinely ends up in a set of the same exact temperature like 21.7ºC and 20.0ºC. It is VERY uncommon for the first 20ºC reading or above to end up in May looking at 104 years of data especially in modern times so this was very rare.
What were the prizes this time at the UW shop?
If we use data from Waterloo Wellington Airport before the U of Waterloo Weather Station came into existence, we find a surprising number of years when the first occurrence of 20.0 C of the year was in May.
Before this year, the last time this happened was in May 1995. (May 12).
Previous years include 1993 (May 3), 1988 (May 6), 1981 (May 4), 1980 (May 2), 1978 (May 11), 1975 (May 3) and 1972 (May 2).
Spring was often delayed in the 1970s into the early 1980s. With our warmer climate in the last 20 years, we're seeing spring warmth arriving earlier most years. Hence a possible reason why we generally now reach 20 C in April, and sometimes in March. Remember March 2012?
Wow the number of first occurrences of 20.0ºC in May during the 70s and 80s is surprising. I wouldn't have thought that. The last one of May 1995 going that far is extremely unexpected, that is one day off from the very latest recorded and tied for 2nd latest (with 1961). The 20s and 30s didn't have many of these late occurrences except 36 and 37 which suspiciously both happened on May 1.
Looks like it will be well into May this year (2019)
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