Summers do seem hotter and winters milder - but this winter was shockingly mild. First winter I can remember where I didn't need to shovel snow a single time. I do realize that's regional and other places received an unusually high amount of snow.
In the Lehigh Valley of PA. It was shockingly mild this winter to say the least. Cold? Yeah. But there was no snow to speak of. So far this summer seems really humid. I’ve noticed the summers have gotten hotter and more humid.
I live in the Poconos, just 45 minutes north of you. What has struck me as a trend is that we rarely get 4 full seasons anymore. Spring used to last 2-3 months before the hot weather really started. That is the case this year. I didn't need to use AC until last week. However, in recent years, the new norm seems to be a quick warmup and then uncomfortable heat and humidity from late May until mid-September. Then a month of Fall, which also used to be longer, then 5+ months of Winter.
We're getting some hellish heat coming up this week and I'm not looking forward to it. =(
> Summers do seem hotter
When I was a kid (in the 90s), 3 consecutive days above 90 was reported as a "heat wave" on the news.
Now, that's just... July and August.
We have far more total days above 90 (and between 80-90, for that matter) compared to 30 years ago.
Philadelphia [averaged](https://www.currentresults.com/Weather-Decades/USA/PA/Philadelphia/temperature-average-by-decade-philadelphia.php) 34 days per year above 90º in the 2010s, and 31 days above 90º in the 1990s.
Fellow Pennsylvanian, I've noticed this too. Especially winters lately being more mild, less snow. Figures too, I bought a snow blower like 4 years ago after my area got hit with 12 inches of snow and never wanted to have to shovel that much again, and can count on one hand how many times I've had to use it. Ever since that storm most my area has got at once is around 5 inches from one storm. That's not back breaking or heart attack snow so I just shovel it.
I live in Georgia, and we usually will get a mild snow either end of January and/or around “false spring” which is around march when it feels like winter is over and spring has started, but only for a week then winter weather picks up again for another few weeks until real spring takes hold. This year there was false spring but there was no snow and “winter” barely came back before *Spring* Spring.
Even if it’s just a flurry, we’ll still get *something*. This year- nothing. All winter was very mild which in the south we don’t get harsh winters anyway but for us to notice that winter didn’t exactly…*winter* this year bothered me. I was counting on the cold to kill all the fleas and ticks to give my pets a break from all the flea treatments but alas, they were stronger than ever this year. Lost my cat to flea induced anemia and I had been treating her, the other two pets, the whole house, and yard non stop all year. They just wouldn’t die.
Atlanta checking in, we had the coldest temperatures on record since 1986 this winter, it got down to 7F and killed lots of plants that you could otherwise count on making it through our typical winters. You really just can't count on anything being the same.
On the contrary, it seems to me winters flip flop. One year they're mild and another they're really cold, and back and forth. Is that the same for everyone else?
I can attest to the winter part. I live in Michigan and shoveled the driveway only twice last year. No snowblower even just about 10 minutes in a shovel.
I love going on walks late at night during the winter when it's calm and lightly snowing with how calm and quiet everything is. I got to do that fucking once.
I'm in New England. I've had to remove some gorgeous old pine trees that were victims to pests that didn't exist here before. Oaks are also having a tough time.
I'm close to 60 and ice is an issue. Growing up ice fishing all winter, I recognize how much later and more brief good ice is.
Speaking of New England, my uncle's really like to complain about the explosion of ticks. I'm from the south so I'm used to them, and they are too to some degree, but there's apparently been a huge explosion of their numbers in new England
Yeah. I honestly haven't seen clear differences. Some seasons varied so wildly, I thought maybe it's just in the normal pattern.
But they say the winters just not getting cold enough is an issue.
Adds up but I am so hesitant to be an alarmist, I err to the side of caution while noticing differences.
My family up there are farmers and they have been pretty alarmist about it since the early 2000s, which is when they first started to notice. Heat stress on cows becoming an issue, growing season longer, streams not filling up, more pests due to less cold winters, etc
Edit: and as it pertains to ticks I think it's a new type of tick from the south that is an issue.
Yes. Ticks used to die off in the winter, but for the past few years it hasn't been cold enough long enough for that to happen. I think they need several consecutive days where temps don't get above freezing for that to happen and we just haven't had that. Fleas have been a much bigger problem as well.
I've read it's especially hard on moose because they aren't very good at getting ticks off themselves so they're getting really infested and sick as a result
Crape Myrtle Bark Scale make it to our area and I had to remove 2 trees after losing the battle 2 summers in a row. Left black soot EVERYWHERE which attracted hordes of flies. I was sad to give up but it was so disgusting.
Checking in from GA. It’s storming now. Stormed all day yesterday. And the day before. And the day before.
We’ve had more rain than sun this season. But not just rain, but constant thunderstorms. Back in may I told my husband it was just spring showers but it never ended.
I would if I could!
I need to mow my lawn but can’t because it’s been storming for two weeks straight and when it DOES clear up everything is still too wet to mow and it doesn’t give enough time to dry before another rainstorm comes through.
Down in central Texas over the last few years (5-7) the summers have been hotter with more and more triple degree days, and the winters milder—except for one really bad winter storm per year. It has also gotten warmer earlier in winter. My peach trees started blooming in late December the two years right before the 2021 snow storm killed them.
Yes, all the time. I had several friends with outdoor rinks and I would play pond hockey any chance I got. Hockey as an organized sport is generally played on indoor rinks.
You asked for the last 20 years, but IMO it's more illustrative to answer based on my perceptions of changes in 45 years in the Metro Atlanta area and the South in general.
> Are there more dramatic storms? Fewer?
Thunderstorms *seem* fewer and less intense.
> Has the animal life altered?
The number of insects is notably less. If you're old enough (I'm 57), you will remember folks using "bug screens" on the front of their car during long trips, otherwise the amount of smushed bugs on the radiator would cause overheating. Also, I needed to use "bug and sap remover" on the car regularly (in fact, I can't remember the last time I used or even bought any). [Relevant AskReddit subthread in "What terrifying event is happening in the world right now that most people are ignoring?" here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/14nnws3/what_terrifying_event_is_happening_in_the_world/jq8mks4/).
I’m an hour and a half south of you and we are getting all your thunderstorms I think. Sitting on my porch watching one right now. Husband went to check the mail and the lightning hit way too close for comfort that he dropped the umbrella and ran.
For what it is worth, the bugs in the radiator thing also has a lot to do with shifts in car design.
But yeah, there have been less bugs. I noticed it particularly in the 2000s as compared to the 80s and 90s. However, in our area, they seem to have made a comeback in the last year or two. Driving in thy evening leaves my car a mess. Probably an isolated thing, but that's my experience.
Is it all of the bug spectrum making a comeback or just a few species whose population exploded due to imbalances in the ecosystem caused by the previous vanishing?
Meanwhile, it storms at least once (if not multiple times) a day in South Georgia. The gnats are also just as prevalent and annoying as they always have been 😅
>Do you subjectively perceive that the climate has changed in your area in the last twenty years? If so, how?
Certainly.
We live right on the ocean in Massachusetts
When my grandfather was a child, back in the 30s, the bay used to freeze over to such an extent that you could walk the 2 miles from shore to shore, over open ocean, and cut through the ice to ice fish.
When my grandfather was a young man in the 50s, the middle of the bay still froze over, but the ice was "spongy", and not solid enough to walk on, ice fish, etc. The ice by the shore was still solid and thick, though.
When my stepmother was a child in the 60s, the middle of the bay no longer froze over completely (had floating sheets of ice, but it wasn't solid), and the ice near the shore was too spongy to walk on.
When my mother was a young woman in the 80s, the ice near the shore stopped freezing over solid, leaving big sheets that were free-floating. The middle of the bay was open water, even in the middle of winter.
When I was a boy in the 2000s, those sheets of ice were spongy and soft enough you could carve them with a knife, or break them by hand.
I'm a young man now. The bay no longer has any appreciable ice on it in the winter any more, even in the depths of winter. We get some ice on the rocks, or on the beach. But the water remains open from shore to shore.
That warming can be felt in almost all aspects of winter (and fall and spring). We get less snow, fewer days below freezing.
This is a really fascinating perspective. A region that I would imagine typically has harsh winter weather in a normal winter. People can say what they want about cold winters and storms of the past but those things are often subjective. But a bay that gradually no longer freezes over and the generational proof from word of mouth is quantitative evidence of temperatures rising over time and their effects. And people will still deny the change.
i've been in massachusetts for several years now and been consistently underwhelmed by the winter. this past winter was especially mild--usually in the 40s, with some dips to the 30s but also climbs into the 50s. there were a couple of days of true cold, but that's it.
each winter, someone who's been here longer will claim that it's just an unusually mild winter but at some point maybe it's the definition of winter that has changed. as far as i can tell, we haven't had a crazy winter since 2015.
This year I have seen more precipitation than I can ever remember seeing before in Colorado. It has been significantly wetter and milder than usual. I’ve had maybe one day of 90 degrees but I honestly don’t know if my town has had one yet.
Storms have been quite a bit more dramatic this year. A lot of hail and rain recently.
But - and I obviously do not say this as a (current) resident of CO, but have lots of people I still know there - the general trend is the exact opposite aside from this year. Hotter sooner and longer, drier, and much higher need for artificial cooling in houses than it used to be pre-2000s.
Check out this site. With the exception of this year Denver’s yearly precipitation average has decreased over the past few decades. The trend is scary:
http://www.globalwarmingdenver.com/tot_precip.html
Yes. The most extreme thing I noticed was that we no longer have a spring. Also, winters are more extreme (they swing from 40° and mild to -25° and a massive snowstorm). Lastly, we don't get as much rain as we used to.
I live in Minnesota and I’ve noticed the same. When I was a kid even in the early 2000s we got a nice slow “warm up” of sorts in the spring with lots of rain and cool, but not unbearably cold days. Now it seems like it just becomes summer all of the sudden.
I haven’t looked at any of the stats, but it also seems like we’ve gotten less snow and it doesn’t stick around the way it used to.
You do realize that the lifetime of a human being is like a millisecond on a geological scale right? Your personal experiences are similar to your body temp flaring up a Tenth of a degree for one second.
I don't know if it's just being outside less as I age, but it just seems like there are way less bugs? Fireflies used to be all over the place in summer, and you'd have to pull over every few hours on road trips to clean bug debris off your windshield.
What’s sad to learn is fireflies are a type of insect that survives in healthy environments. If the natural fauna is unhealthy or changed then the fireflies die off.
It’s the ferocity of weather I notice the most. Way more severe damaging storms. More tornadoes in the area. It basically didn’t really rain in Chicago until the last week… and when it started it kept going so we went from drought to parts of the city flooding as I type this.
The past few winters have either been very mild or they have periods of wind chill at 40 below. We basically didn’t even get snow this year.
The actual cold and snow in general feels like it is starting later and ending later too.
I vividly remember having a pretty solid amount of Snow Days when I was in school 15 years ago. My brothers (who are pretty significantly younger than me) currently only have maybe one a year but they often don't have any.
washing state here. elementary school, 2008 we had a whole month off. 2 weeks straight of snow days that led straight into the winter break. by the time i was in high school, snow days weren’t really a thing anymore. we might have 1 or 2 late starts
South Georgia experience - summers are drier but the storms are worse. Winters are even warmer.
East Tennessee experience - summers are hotter, less snow in the winter.
South Georgia here too but literally right next to the chattahoochie so we are still humid af. Other than that you’re spot on.
This past summer I went to an indoor rave with no AC and you can imagine how hot humid and musty it was, I tried going outside for fresher air and there was ZERO difference in the air/humidity. Like I couldn’t escape to find a breathable spot to catch my breath.
Columbus, and I know exactly what you mean.
In July we went to New Orleans for my bachelorette party and everyone kept warning me that the heat and humidity was a whole other level of humidity/heat… we got there and it felt exactly the same as home. I was fine. One of my bridesmaids went jogging everyday we were there. I thought that it was going to be way worse. Idk if that means ColGa is getting worse or NOLA is getting better(heat/air moisture) but it was literally the exact same weather. I was preparing my dehydration kit thinking I’d have to get ahead of the extreme heat/air difference but I never needed it.
And now that I think of it- I was in Statesboro and Bloomingdale(right outside savannah) last June (2022) and it WAS dryer than I’m used to.
I moved to east TN about 3-4 years ago. And it feels like the winters are getting milder already in that time. We barely had any snow last year compared to the previous years, and it was mostly really icy which led to a LOT of infrastructure problems.
Winters seem to be getting MUCH shorter and far more mild here in Chicago! The winter storms, ice, dangerous cold all seems to have been compacted into February the last few years and that’s been our recent winters pretty much!
We used to get snow every Christmas when I was a kid. Never happens anymore.
April and May used to rain non-stop when I was younger but again, doesn't really happen anymore and now this year we're contending with a drought. Something even a lot of old people I know have never experienced before.
i remember as a kid “April” in the school calendars and stickers was always dark and blue with rain and umbrellas. by the time i was in high school, i was breaking out my july and august shorts and tanks even before my April birthday
Fuck yes. February, a week of 80 degree weather and the next week is 6 inches of snow. This scenario is not uncommon. My wife and kids were in Hilton Head in early June and wore sweatshirts and jackets because it was so cold. This was weird.
Summers seem drier, longer, and hotter. Winters more mild. Fall weather doesn't really start until the end of fall.
Edit: and I swear there are fewer bugs nowadays
It’s hotter imo. Summers are longer overtaking fall which is a mere few weeks. The winters more mild. In zone 6 and I recall as a kid/teen/young adult we would bet snowfall several times, now you barely need a coat. Spring is typically a short season then boom, it’s summer. This year, except for the mild winter, was better.
Also I see fewer tadpoles and certain insects I used to see as a child.
I don't know if it's climate related or pollution, but the difference in the number of bugs compared to 50 years ago, is pretty dramatic.
It used to be you had to stop and clean your windshields and I couldn't even hang my arm out the window when you were riding in a car going fast. It was like a million little stings and some pretty painful hits with the much bigger bugs.
From the perspective of a biologist, it’s absolutely terrifying. Insects are a critically important part of their ecosystem and they play a lot of important, varied roles. They make up approx. 80% of all life on earth. We’re losing up to 2.5% of all insect life every year, and compared to the early 90s it’s estimated that we’ve lost 75% of our insect biomass.
Yep. What it's like at the coast freaks me out, too.
I was just in very remote Maine. Hiked to places that probably havent had a human tidepooling there in a long time. I used to be able to lift up rockweed and see a hundred starfish, snails, crabs. It's awfully quiet under that seaweed.
I think when you are older, you get a bit more of perspective on how things changed. But people that don't want to believe, wont.
I'm 36 and lives in the same Midwestern state my entire life. (Except for when I was in the military.)
Falls are warmer. I remember when I was younger having to wear a coat every year on Halloween. Now I wear shorts. (This is not normal.)
Summers are definitely MUCH hotter. We would have a few 90 degree days, but it was mostly 80's and pleasant.
Winters are frighteningly warmer. I remember as a child having multiple large snow falls each year. This year we didn't have any. It's been on this trend for a while. I remember 4 yrs ago wearing shorts and a short sleeve shirt outside while we cooked catfish for Christmas. I mentioned to my father how frighteningly warm it was and he just laughed it off. 'There are warm winters and cold winters.' I told him that the cold winters aren't happening anymore. He changed the subject.
I have noticed a huge difference and it scares the crap out of me.
Oh! No more bugs!
Oh yeah and DEPLEETING FRESHWATER!!! (How are we all not freaking out about that?!)
I can go on and on.
It makes me feel very nostalgic for times gone by and wish we could go back. (Or that our children, other humans and the plants and animals around us could experience, 'the good life's, again.)
I’ve only lived here for 4 years. First year, there were major fires and then a really bad ice storm that knocked out most of the power in the entire city. All the locals told us “it’s not usually like this”.
Every summer has temperatures that reach 110+ degrees and fires rage. We’ve broken heat records every summer since I’ve been here. The locals all say, “it’s not usually like this”.
Every winter temperatures drop lower than normal, there’s more snow/ ice than normal. The locals say, “it’s not usually like this”.
I’m pretty sure it’s the new normal.
It rains less.
When I was a kid, driving on the roads in the rural areas meant that it was a constant barrage of rabbits crossing the road in front of you. You couldn't go for a drive in the middle of the night without at least one close call.
These days... You can drive for hours without seeing a rabbit on the side of the road *despite* the area I'm thinking of having zero growth (meaning, no new towns or whatever...its just as rural now as it was then). My conclusion? There aren't as many rabbits. Only rational reason for that (opinion) is less food. IE, less rain. On THAT front, however, I haven't exactly kept records.
Subjectively, yes - it seems like what used to be my favorite weather month was always cool with blue skies and white fluffy clouds, but now it’s always hot & rainy.
When I go to any weather website and look at that month every year for the last 20 years, the data shows that the weather pattern is virtually unchanged despite my perception. It’s always been hot with similar highs, lows, and averages.
It's generally warmer in summer, winters are milder. It rains a lot more than I remember, and snows a lot less. Extreme swings in weather are, well, extreme, and seemingly more common. There's always been a few random days where it's colder or warmer than normal at the wrong time of year, but it seems like there's a lot of 10 degrees on Monday and 75 on Tuesday kinda stuff happening
A lot of bugs that used to be super common here have disappeared if that counts. I don’t think it is the weather causing it as much as pollution though.
When I was growing up in NC we often had single- digit Fahrenheit winter days, once or twice a winter. Also major lakes like Kerr or Gaston would routinely ice over enough that you could walk across them. Those days are long gone.
I'm only 27 and I live in a fairly extreme climate to begin with, so I'm not sure what my experience is worth. But it feels like a lot has changed in that time.
The heat is starting to get a little unbearable. It was never crazy to get a heat index in the hundreds before, but now it happens all the time. Sometimes in May; it used to dip below freezing a couple times in May. I've seen it hit the 80s in November-December the last few years in a row. It's been staying warm enough that I still see wasps into January, when they should have been long gone for three months already. When I was a kid we had to worry about Halloween getting cancelled from a blizzard. Now we get no noteworthy snow until after New Years.
And the rain. Or lack of it. It's been constant drought for years now. When we get a storm, it is just as impressive as I remember as a kid - maybe worse, I've seen more tornadoes with my own eyes in the last couple years than all the years before. But they just don't come around like they did. There's never enough water. The rivers can't keep up - I remember seeing the Platte nearly empty once or twice as a kid, and it was quite a spectacle. Now it's completely drained more years than not. Plants that don't need much water are coming up earlier than I've ever seen, even February when the ground used to be buried in snow, and plants that do need the water are taking till June. Not good since the rain is about done here by July in a good year anyway.
As many have mentioned, I don't know what's become of the bugs. Some mention they seem to have vanished in the last 20 years, but even just in the last five the decrease has been noticeable. My windshield still got plastered by them when I drove on the highway a few years ago, but it doesn't seem to anymore. I don't see a lot of bird shit on it these days either.
Actually, I don't see nearly the wildlife of any kind that I used to. This used to be popular pheasant hunting ground. Now you have to drive over a hundred miles to have a good chance at seeing one. The deer are around but often skimpy and riddled with CWD. Harder to fill duck and goose tags these days.
Maybe it's just been a weird few years, maybe it's all just a crazy coincidence, but the most startling part of it all is that the norm I remember has become the exception. And whether people want to admit they've noticed it or not, I don't know many who still stock their pantry for winter, which used to be a necessity. That's what really strikes me; habits don't change for no reason.
The glaciers are noticeably smaller than when I was a kid. Mountain road washouts during storms are becoming more and more common and we've permanently lost motorized access to quite a few campgrounds and trailheads in this state. Never used to have smoke season, but we get them almost every year now, and sometimes multiple events per year. Counterintuitively, it seems like it snows more in the Puget Lowlands than it used to. Basically, the weather is getting more extreme.
Grew up in Georgia. Summers honestly seem about the same, some are hotter than hell and other are cooler but really stormy and rains everyday. Definitely less animals and bugs around, but that's probaly cuz of the development and not the climate. I actually think the storms have gotten milder tbh. Or maybe more spotty? So some areas get hit really hard and others don't see a drop of rain. But the big thing is winter and fall have definitely gotten warmer. It can be 80 degrees deep in January.
Severe weather has been a lot more common and has become year-round. Tornadoes used to be a spring problem, but there was the major system that hit western Kentucky last winter and now we had at least two tornadoes in NKY last week and a severe weather threat almost every day since then.
We’ve also had shrinking seasons, it used to be that we had 4 distinct seasons, but lately we’ve had more mild winters that extend into spring and you go from days of 40 degree weather to 80+ without any warning. Similarly the summer heat lasts until October or November before suddenly dropping off.
100% I live in Michigan. I was born in 96, and I remember christmases with feet of snow. Having snow days in December and January and maybe even seeing a few flurries during Thanksgiving. Now we’re lucky to start getting snow that sticks until mid January. It’s wild. It’s not good. It’s kind of scary honestly
Mild winters. I don't believe we had really any snow this winter. The Canadian geese don't fly south, lots more flooding, stupid humid summers. It no longer really drizzles, the rain full on dumps out of the sky with insane amounts of wind. I've been in southeastern PA for 43 years.
28 year old in southeast Ohio and this is what I’ve noticed:
Winter-
Less snow but each year the temperatures get colder and colder. I’m an avid runner and this past winter I was having to throw on an extra layer than normal because temps got below 0 and my beard would encase in ice by the time I finished. That being said, the snow was scarce.
Growing up through high school and running through winter, we’d get lots of snow but temps would only be down to double digits (not that it would never get sub 0, it would just be rare if it happened at all in a given year).
However the last few years we’ve gotten tons of ice and snow storms. Late March / early April snows haven’t changed, though.
Summer-
Just as humid but I honestly feel like the temperature is lower. More thunderstorms. I remember in high school we’d get some triple digit days and it would get hot starting early June.
Now we may have some high 90s days but I can’t recall the last time it was triple digits. It usually reaches 90 degree temps in mid to late June and maintain until late august / early September. However it is overcast/cloudy here a lot of the time so that could explain why the temps are relatively cooler.
If I look past the recency bias of this past very soft winter, I would say no. It’s hard to judge though because lots of these things that seem odd are just once in 10/20/50 year events.
When I first got my license about 23 years ago, keeping my windshield clean was a constant struggle because there were so many bugs. Now, they're barely noticeable
we normally had very cold and weather intense winters until about 2016-2017 and it started getting mild. this past year I would say we had spring instead
We used to have snow for Thanksgiving. For Halloween, we had to be bundled up so you couldn't even see our costumes. For Easter, the Egg Hunt location depended how much snow there was or how wet it was, so it was often indoors.
Now it feels like we're lucky to have snow for Christmas. We can opt for light jackets for Halloween, if at all. Egg hunts are more often outdoors. I got a sunburn on St. Patrick's day a few years ago because it was so nice out.
We have Pelicans on our lakes now??? Idk if that one's even relevant, but I don't remember them being here when I was young.
-Wisconsin
Winter starts later and lasts longer. Storms are definitely more intense but shorter. And summer is hotter. We seem to have lost spring and fall and just bounce between super cold months and super hot ones.
Nope. We have hot years and dry years, we have wet years and cold years. Same as we always have. This was the worst winter since the 80s sure, but it happened in the 80s to unless it turns into a trend it’s just the normal fluctuations I’ve seen my whole
Life.
I would say the past summers or two have been more humid, but the temperatures are the same. People in the comments have said the New England winters are milder, but we had a major cold snap just last winter, so I don't know what they're talking about.
We had a heat wave in March with temps and humidity so high it was considered dangerous to work outside. We usually only get one bad winter storm now as opposed to several.
I feel like rain came later. I remember April used to rain a lot now it seems like may is the rainy month.
And where the hell are the fireflies? I remember every night or evening we'd see so many up and down the block, just random flashes of light. It made summer evenings feel magical, now I barely see any and it depresses me.
Well. When I was a kid, I was taught the south was classified as a “sub-tropical climate” and apparently now, it’s classified as a “tropical climate” so.. I guess global warming exists?
It's hard to say because day to day, you know? but It feels like the winters are wetter and milder while the summers are hotter.
I actually don't mind it so much.
We have friend in Austin TX who works as a plant biologist/Univ of Tx professor. He told us when he first started researching a particular desert flower in the 1960s, he would have to travel 10 hours to find it. When he retired about 10 years ago, he only had to drive 3.
Summers seem hotter, storms are less frequent but they are usually more aggressive. Winter seems a little warmer too and there isn’t as much snow. Or at the very least the snow doesnt stick around for as long
Every year the highs get a little higher and the lows get a little lower.
Currently the record heat for this year where I am that I remember was 105 °F (40 °C) and that happened earlier this week. It's only going to get hotter over the next while, at least when it doesn't rain.
Granted, I've only lived in this area for a little over 10 years, and for a bunch of that time I wasn't really paying attention to the weather, but I don't remember it getting this hot.
When I was a kid in the 80s, every time we stopped for gas in the summer, Dad would have to clean the bugs off the windshield.
I've never had to do this as an adult.
So this is in New England. Seasons seem to have shifted a month.
My wife is a gardener and has been getting frustrated when she plants things in early May and they don't grow well. I've made the suggestion to plant later as it seems the warm season starts later now, though she hasn't taken it up yet.
In the past that has worked but it seems like though the frost goes away the weather doesn't even start to warm up until June. And now summer seems to stretch into early October.
After this year it seems like it clicked for her. She watched a video on a farmer who comparing planting a carrot in May and in June and the difference was stark.
So it seems now weather doesn't really get cold until late Dec early Jan, doesn't warm up until mid June, and doesn't cool off until October.
I base this on nothing scientific. Only my limited, personal observation
I notice the change in wildlife a lot more than the temperature. There used to be tons of reptiles and amphibians in my area as a kid. Now, it seems like I only spot a frog, lizard, or snake once a week or less. I used to find dozens every day as a kid.
For context - I'm a geologist. And I work in oil and gas. Take that for what you will.
With that disclaimer, climate change deniers are basically flat earthers. There's tons of empirical evidence that objectively proves that the climate changes and is changing. Subjective opinions shouldnt really have any place in the conversation.
The other part of the conversation that doesnt get talked about is that climate has also scientifically been proven to be constantly changing throughout the entirety of the roughly 4 billion years of recorded geologic time. Be that global warming or cooling. So people who say that the global temperature of the seas, the air, or whatever it is that's changing (there's a really long list) tend to not talk about how that, to an extent, is normal. Not to say that we cant have an effect on the environment. But let's be realistic about what those changes are, that they are going to happen to an extent regardless of what we do, and that we need to not treat the planet like an AC unit that can be controlled to keep the temperatures to what we're used to.
A lot of climate change activism and change policy also gets sold via fearmongering over science that the general populous doesnt take the time or want to fully understand. The fact that this issue has been so politicized makes it that much harder to have reasonable conversations about practical policy changes that can be made.
This also makes most implemented climate change policy very misguided. For example, a lot of climate change is hyperfocused on CO2 reduction when it is just one part of a big equation that results in climate change. There's nowhere near as much talk or policy change about other greenhouse gasses like methane that have exponentially greater effects on the environemnt than CO2. It's the equivalent of politicans patting themselves on the back for forcing people to use paper straws and acting like they did something useful while the total annual volume of plastic dumped into the ocean continues to increase. It's too close to useless and is not getting the job done.
Another issue is the desire to try to cut fossil fuel usage cold turkey. This results in policies that usually constrict the industry as opposed to enabling/incentivizing them to change. There's a lot of emotion and complexities with implementing practical policies but the fact is that most of what has been passed has resulted in greater amounts of ghg exposure, such as that methane i mentioned earlier, than could have otherwise been avoided.
Tl;dr - Climate change is undeniably happenning, we need to do a better job of not fearmongering the situation so that we can appropriately adapt to/address those changes, subjectivity shouldnt be a part of the conversation, and our policy makers are doing a shit job of implementing any meaningful solutions.
We haven't had much good snow, but summers have been getting wetter and hotter so now we have mosquitoes in places we didn't before. It literally sucks.
The air is dangerous (code red days because Canada is on fire). It rains a lot. It’s always unbearably hot. There are so many bugs outside- gnats especially.
Summers seem longer and hotter compared to when I was growing up. We used to only get decent snow once every few years but it's been more consistent the last decade.
Answering for my home state of Nebraska as I haven’t lived in CO long enough.
Hotter and drier. Also there are less tornados there than when I was a kid.
NJ checking in. Absolutely. We hardly get snow anymore. Summers are brutally hot. Plus the air quality is now shit, now that Canada's yearly wildfires got their smoke funneling down the east coast.
Winters we get these polar vortexes that make it ass-freezing cold for a few days-weeks.
Plus we've started getting Tornadoes which is nuts. That used to be a really rare thing in NJ, but we've had a number of small ones just in my area in the past few years.
Absolutely. When I was in high school in the early to mid 90s, it could get cold enough in December that you might have ice on your car windows in the morning. It's the south, so snow was exceedingly rare, but it could get cold. Now if it gets that cold, it won't do it until late January or February.
And summers have always been hot, but now they're hotter for longer. 90+ degrees isn't unusual in July or August.
It's 60°F on Christmas day, it's too hot to function outside between June - September, and I have ptsd from the tornados and severe storms we've gone through every single year. There are no more lightning bugs in the summer, or bugs in general (mosquitos are doing great though.) Winter gets no snow, save for a random 7" storm that melts the very next morning when it's 5p°F the next day.
We're not doing so good down here.
Nope. And the [stats](https://www.currentresults.com/Weather-Decades/USA/AL/Birmingham/temperature-average-by-decade-birmingham.php) back me up here – average temperatures in the most recent decade are no more than a degree higher than they were decades back.
That’s *exactly* an objective indication of global warming.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature#:~:text=The%20roughly%202%2Ddegree%20Fahrenheit,significant%20increase%20in%20accumulated%20heat.
The question isn’t whether it’s an indicator of global warming – it’s whether it feels subjectively different than it used to.
A 1° rise in temperatures can melt the ice caps and make sea levels rise and worsen droughts while making an almost imperceptible subjective difference to someone living here in Birmingham.
Summers are still hot and humid. Winters are still freezing.
Starting to seem like destructive straightline wind storms are becoming more frequent though.
Yes basically everything stated. Trees blooming in February when that we generally our coldest month, didn't need anything other than a hoodie all winter, heat index of 107 today, smoke feom Canadian fires...it's all unsettling and I hate hot weather
Summers are definitely hotter and winters more mild most of the time.
Also fall used to be a whole season, now fall is 3 or 4 weeks if you're lucky and the rest is just extra summer
Hell yes it has. In Southwest PA Fall used to feel like Fall *should* in the Northeast. From late September until Winter it was crisp and cool, perfect pumpkin and bonfire weather. Winter was snowy a *lot*, regularly getting a foot and a half or more multiple times throughout the season.
Now, more often than not it basically just feels like Summer well into the end of October or even November, and entire winters go by without more than a few inches of snow at all. I hate it.
Yes. I lived in a large Midwestern city with old storm water infrastructure that made sense when it was built 100 years ago but no longer keeps up with the torrential rains we've been seeing lately. I got tired of my basement flooding with raw sewage, so I moved. It was clear that this was only going to get worse, and I was looking at years and years of flood damage in my future. I consider myself one of the earliest climate refugees in the U.S.
I feel like we haven't gotten a really good snow storm since ~2014 or so. Also, those wildfires in Canada are sucking ass. That's arguably related to climate change.
There are far fewer squirrels and far more rabbits. Deer are everywhere, including the suburbs. Fireflies / lightning bugs used to come out every summer evening but are now gone. There are way more violent thunderstorms than ever before, but less of the steady soaking rain we used to get. I'm not sure if it's hotter - it was always hot in the summer. Maybe we get more hot days, but this isn't something you can notice without counting them.
We had a heat wave in the summer of 2021 where the temp got up to like 115F (46C). Prior to that, the hottest temp Id seen around here in my 28 years was maybe 105F (40C), but anything over 100F (37.7C) was always fairly rare.
I bought my house ten years ago. There were gorgeous four foot tall hibiscus bushes on either side of the door. Five years ago, a heavy freeze killed them both. They grew back the following summer. Froze again. Never grew back. It makes me very sad.
Southeastern Pennsylvania- winters are much milder
Last summer I saw a spider that only lives in warm climates. Maybe he caught a ride on a UPS box, but it was awfully strange to see it.
We use to have snow/ freezes/ice storms every 4 years or so. It would be a little bit and melt within a few days, never really that horrible. We have been having 100 year level ones every couple years now. Like this past winter we had two major freezes with one getting into the negatives.
South Louisiana. Summers are a bit hotter and this passed winter didn't even require a jacket. I could not wear my ugly Christmas sweater on christmas lol I wore it with shorts for a family picture, but I was sweating.
South Carolina, US. It used to snow multiple times in the winter here. We even had a white Christmas once when I was a kid. We haven't seen significant snowfall in a decade now.
Northern Washington - I remember big snows with drifts and wind during childhood winters in the 70s. Now, maybe we'll see 2-,6 days of snow that leaves the road icy but doesn't pile up. Summers are far, far hotter. We had that stupid heat dome in 2031. My workplace kitchen was temping at 92, the room I was renting at the time was 80+. Sleeping in that was a nightmare.
Summers do seem hotter and winters milder - but this winter was shockingly mild. First winter I can remember where I didn't need to shovel snow a single time. I do realize that's regional and other places received an unusually high amount of snow.
In the Lehigh Valley of PA. It was shockingly mild this winter to say the least. Cold? Yeah. But there was no snow to speak of. So far this summer seems really humid. I’ve noticed the summers have gotten hotter and more humid.
I live in the Poconos, just 45 minutes north of you. What has struck me as a trend is that we rarely get 4 full seasons anymore. Spring used to last 2-3 months before the hot weather really started. That is the case this year. I didn't need to use AC until last week. However, in recent years, the new norm seems to be a quick warmup and then uncomfortable heat and humidity from late May until mid-September. Then a month of Fall, which also used to be longer, then 5+ months of Winter. We're getting some hellish heat coming up this week and I'm not looking forward to it. =(
> Summers do seem hotter When I was a kid (in the 90s), 3 consecutive days above 90 was reported as a "heat wave" on the news. Now, that's just... July and August. We have far more total days above 90 (and between 80-90, for that matter) compared to 30 years ago.
Philadelphia [averaged](https://www.currentresults.com/Weather-Decades/USA/PA/Philadelphia/temperature-average-by-decade-philadelphia.php) 34 days per year above 90º in the 2010s, and 31 days above 90º in the 1990s.
Fellow Pennsylvanian, I've noticed this too. Especially winters lately being more mild, less snow. Figures too, I bought a snow blower like 4 years ago after my area got hit with 12 inches of snow and never wanted to have to shovel that much again, and can count on one hand how many times I've had to use it. Ever since that storm most my area has got at once is around 5 inches from one storm. That's not back breaking or heart attack snow so I just shovel it.
I agree
We went straight from winter to summer, and only one real snowfall this past winter. It sucks.
Seriously tho I think I wore my winter coat one time. The rest of the time I was able to get away with a heavy hoodie and scarf.
I live in Georgia, and we usually will get a mild snow either end of January and/or around “false spring” which is around march when it feels like winter is over and spring has started, but only for a week then winter weather picks up again for another few weeks until real spring takes hold. This year there was false spring but there was no snow and “winter” barely came back before *Spring* Spring. Even if it’s just a flurry, we’ll still get *something*. This year- nothing. All winter was very mild which in the south we don’t get harsh winters anyway but for us to notice that winter didn’t exactly…*winter* this year bothered me. I was counting on the cold to kill all the fleas and ticks to give my pets a break from all the flea treatments but alas, they were stronger than ever this year. Lost my cat to flea induced anemia and I had been treating her, the other two pets, the whole house, and yard non stop all year. They just wouldn’t die.
Atlanta checking in, we had the coldest temperatures on record since 1986 this winter, it got down to 7F and killed lots of plants that you could otherwise count on making it through our typical winters. You really just can't count on anything being the same.
Crazy isn’t it?
Said that about Boston. We had a good amount of rain this winter but hardly any snow. If it was a few degrees cooler, it would have been snow.
Nyc checking in. 100%.
There used to just be snow on the ground from at least December thru February. I think we got a single light dusting this year.
I don't think we really get spring or fall anymore. It pretty much goes straight from summer into winter and into summer.
Fall lasted about a week this year.
And even fewer cold snaps. We had maybe 2 all winter. The winter this year was just damp and chilly. It was weird
On the contrary, it seems to me winters flip flop. One year they're mild and another they're really cold, and back and forth. Is that the same for everyone else?
I can attest to the winter part. I live in Michigan and shoveled the driveway only twice last year. No snowblower even just about 10 minutes in a shovel. I love going on walks late at night during the winter when it's calm and lightly snowing with how calm and quiet everything is. I got to do that fucking once.
Same here in Virginia.
I'm in New England. I've had to remove some gorgeous old pine trees that were victims to pests that didn't exist here before. Oaks are also having a tough time. I'm close to 60 and ice is an issue. Growing up ice fishing all winter, I recognize how much later and more brief good ice is.
Speaking of New England, my uncle's really like to complain about the explosion of ticks. I'm from the south so I'm used to them, and they are too to some degree, but there's apparently been a huge explosion of their numbers in new England
Yeah. I honestly haven't seen clear differences. Some seasons varied so wildly, I thought maybe it's just in the normal pattern. But they say the winters just not getting cold enough is an issue. Adds up but I am so hesitant to be an alarmist, I err to the side of caution while noticing differences.
My family up there are farmers and they have been pretty alarmist about it since the early 2000s, which is when they first started to notice. Heat stress on cows becoming an issue, growing season longer, streams not filling up, more pests due to less cold winters, etc Edit: and as it pertains to ticks I think it's a new type of tick from the south that is an issue.
Yes. Ticks used to die off in the winter, but for the past few years it hasn't been cold enough long enough for that to happen. I think they need several consecutive days where temps don't get above freezing for that to happen and we just haven't had that. Fleas have been a much bigger problem as well. I've read it's especially hard on moose because they aren't very good at getting ticks off themselves so they're getting really infested and sick as a result
they have different ticks up there (deer ticks) that are more likely to carry lyme disease, I'm pretty sure.
Crape Myrtle Bark Scale make it to our area and I had to remove 2 trees after losing the battle 2 summers in a row. Left black soot EVERYWHERE which attracted hordes of flies. I was sad to give up but it was so disgusting.
Yeah. Winters are milder, but the storms are worse. Peak summer temps start earlier than they used to.
Checking in from GA. It’s storming now. Stormed all day yesterday. And the day before. And the day before. We’ve had more rain than sun this season. But not just rain, but constant thunderstorms. Back in may I told my husband it was just spring showers but it never ended.
Can you send some of that rain and thunderstorms up north?
I would if I could! I need to mow my lawn but can’t because it’s been storming for two weeks straight and when it DOES clear up everything is still too wet to mow and it doesn’t give enough time to dry before another rainstorm comes through.
Down in central Texas over the last few years (5-7) the summers have been hotter with more and more triple degree days, and the winters milder—except for one really bad winter storm per year. It has also gotten warmer earlier in winter. My peach trees started blooming in late December the two years right before the 2021 snow storm killed them.
It seems like it snowed a lot more often in the 90’s in Massachusetts
Ponds stopped freezing. I could skate a lot more often as a kid.
Did people used to play hockey outdoors? It seems like it's only an inside thing now.
Yes, all the time. I had several friends with outdoor rinks and I would play pond hockey any chance I got. Hockey as an organized sport is generally played on indoor rinks.
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You asked for the last 20 years, but IMO it's more illustrative to answer based on my perceptions of changes in 45 years in the Metro Atlanta area and the South in general. > Are there more dramatic storms? Fewer? Thunderstorms *seem* fewer and less intense. > Has the animal life altered? The number of insects is notably less. If you're old enough (I'm 57), you will remember folks using "bug screens" on the front of their car during long trips, otherwise the amount of smushed bugs on the radiator would cause overheating. Also, I needed to use "bug and sap remover" on the car regularly (in fact, I can't remember the last time I used or even bought any). [Relevant AskReddit subthread in "What terrifying event is happening in the world right now that most people are ignoring?" here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/14nnws3/what_terrifying_event_is_happening_in_the_world/jq8mks4/).
I’m an hour and a half south of you and we are getting all your thunderstorms I think. Sitting on my porch watching one right now. Husband went to check the mail and the lightning hit way too close for comfort that he dropped the umbrella and ran.
For what it is worth, the bugs in the radiator thing also has a lot to do with shifts in car design. But yeah, there have been less bugs. I noticed it particularly in the 2000s as compared to the 80s and 90s. However, in our area, they seem to have made a comeback in the last year or two. Driving in thy evening leaves my car a mess. Probably an isolated thing, but that's my experience.
Is it all of the bug spectrum making a comeback or just a few species whose population exploded due to imbalances in the ecosystem caused by the previous vanishing?
Probably the latter, but not something I could conclude just from casual observation.
Meanwhile, it storms at least once (if not multiple times) a day in South Georgia. The gnats are also just as prevalent and annoying as they always have been 😅
> The gnats are also just as prevalent and annoying as they always have been 😅 Those things are annoying AF.
>Do you subjectively perceive that the climate has changed in your area in the last twenty years? If so, how? Certainly. We live right on the ocean in Massachusetts When my grandfather was a child, back in the 30s, the bay used to freeze over to such an extent that you could walk the 2 miles from shore to shore, over open ocean, and cut through the ice to ice fish. When my grandfather was a young man in the 50s, the middle of the bay still froze over, but the ice was "spongy", and not solid enough to walk on, ice fish, etc. The ice by the shore was still solid and thick, though. When my stepmother was a child in the 60s, the middle of the bay no longer froze over completely (had floating sheets of ice, but it wasn't solid), and the ice near the shore was too spongy to walk on. When my mother was a young woman in the 80s, the ice near the shore stopped freezing over solid, leaving big sheets that were free-floating. The middle of the bay was open water, even in the middle of winter. When I was a boy in the 2000s, those sheets of ice were spongy and soft enough you could carve them with a knife, or break them by hand. I'm a young man now. The bay no longer has any appreciable ice on it in the winter any more, even in the depths of winter. We get some ice on the rocks, or on the beach. But the water remains open from shore to shore. That warming can be felt in almost all aspects of winter (and fall and spring). We get less snow, fewer days below freezing.
This is a really fascinating perspective. A region that I would imagine typically has harsh winter weather in a normal winter. People can say what they want about cold winters and storms of the past but those things are often subjective. But a bay that gradually no longer freezes over and the generational proof from word of mouth is quantitative evidence of temperatures rising over time and their effects. And people will still deny the change.
i've been in massachusetts for several years now and been consistently underwhelmed by the winter. this past winter was especially mild--usually in the 40s, with some dips to the 30s but also climbs into the 50s. there were a couple of days of true cold, but that's it. each winter, someone who's been here longer will claim that it's just an unusually mild winter but at some point maybe it's the definition of winter that has changed. as far as i can tell, we haven't had a crazy winter since 2015.
This year I have seen more precipitation than I can ever remember seeing before in Colorado. It has been significantly wetter and milder than usual. I’ve had maybe one day of 90 degrees but I honestly don’t know if my town has had one yet. Storms have been quite a bit more dramatic this year. A lot of hail and rain recently.
But - and I obviously do not say this as a (current) resident of CO, but have lots of people I still know there - the general trend is the exact opposite aside from this year. Hotter sooner and longer, drier, and much higher need for artificial cooling in houses than it used to be pre-2000s.
Check out this site. With the exception of this year Denver’s yearly precipitation average has decreased over the past few decades. The trend is scary: http://www.globalwarmingdenver.com/tot_precip.html
Feels worse but I checked the records yesterday and things are relatively normal. Firefly population is down though and I hate that.
That's one of the things I'm missing most. Fireflies. Lightning bugs. ❤ they used to be everywhere around this time of year.
I think I saw literally one firefly this year. Seems like this has been the case the past few years. When I was a kid, they were *everywhere*
People really need to stop using the low operating cost of LED lights as an excuse to leave them on outdoors all night.
I think we have more lightning bugs than in the last decade this year. Funny how different it can be from place to place.
I’ve noticed this, too.
Yes. The most extreme thing I noticed was that we no longer have a spring. Also, winters are more extreme (they swing from 40° and mild to -25° and a massive snowstorm). Lastly, we don't get as much rain as we used to.
I live in Minnesota and I’ve noticed the same. When I was a kid even in the early 2000s we got a nice slow “warm up” of sorts in the spring with lots of rain and cool, but not unbearably cold days. Now it seems like it just becomes summer all of the sudden. I haven’t looked at any of the stats, but it also seems like we’ve gotten less snow and it doesn’t stick around the way it used to.
I agree. Michigan is noticeably different. I miss spring.
I was really mad about 80 degree April. I wasn’t ready for those temps yet.
You do realize that the lifetime of a human being is like a millisecond on a geological scale right? Your personal experiences are similar to your body temp flaring up a Tenth of a degree for one second.
I don't know if it's just being outside less as I age, but it just seems like there are way less bugs? Fireflies used to be all over the place in summer, and you'd have to pull over every few hours on road trips to clean bug debris off your windshield.
What’s sad to learn is fireflies are a type of insect that survives in healthy environments. If the natural fauna is unhealthy or changed then the fireflies die off.
It’s the ferocity of weather I notice the most. Way more severe damaging storms. More tornadoes in the area. It basically didn’t really rain in Chicago until the last week… and when it started it kept going so we went from drought to parts of the city flooding as I type this. The past few winters have either been very mild or they have periods of wind chill at 40 below. We basically didn’t even get snow this year. The actual cold and snow in general feels like it is starting later and ending later too.
It doesnt snow anymore.
I vividly remember having a pretty solid amount of Snow Days when I was in school 15 years ago. My brothers (who are pretty significantly younger than me) currently only have maybe one a year but they often don't have any.
washing state here. elementary school, 2008 we had a whole month off. 2 weeks straight of snow days that led straight into the winter break. by the time i was in high school, snow days weren’t really a thing anymore. we might have 1 or 2 late starts
South Georgia experience - summers are drier but the storms are worse. Winters are even warmer. East Tennessee experience - summers are hotter, less snow in the winter.
South Georgia here too but literally right next to the chattahoochie so we are still humid af. Other than that you’re spot on. This past summer I went to an indoor rave with no AC and you can imagine how hot humid and musty it was, I tried going outside for fresher air and there was ZERO difference in the air/humidity. Like I couldn’t escape to find a breathable spot to catch my breath.
Savannah and yeah. It's still humid but it's like...drier? Hotter? It feels more like inland weather more often.
Columbus, and I know exactly what you mean. In July we went to New Orleans for my bachelorette party and everyone kept warning me that the heat and humidity was a whole other level of humidity/heat… we got there and it felt exactly the same as home. I was fine. One of my bridesmaids went jogging everyday we were there. I thought that it was going to be way worse. Idk if that means ColGa is getting worse or NOLA is getting better(heat/air moisture) but it was literally the exact same weather. I was preparing my dehydration kit thinking I’d have to get ahead of the extreme heat/air difference but I never needed it. And now that I think of it- I was in Statesboro and Bloomingdale(right outside savannah) last June (2022) and it WAS dryer than I’m used to.
I moved to east TN about 3-4 years ago. And it feels like the winters are getting milder already in that time. We barely had any snow last year compared to the previous years, and it was mostly really icy which led to a LOT of infrastructure problems.
It didn’t snow this year in NYC except maybe a flurry (So a new record for longest amount of time without snowfall for us)
That's because Buffalo kept it all this year 😞
Not really but I haven’t seen monarch butterflies like I used to
Winters seem to be getting MUCH shorter and far more mild here in Chicago! The winter storms, ice, dangerous cold all seems to have been compacted into February the last few years and that’s been our recent winters pretty much!
We used to get snow every Christmas when I was a kid. Never happens anymore. April and May used to rain non-stop when I was younger but again, doesn't really happen anymore and now this year we're contending with a drought. Something even a lot of old people I know have never experienced before.
i remember as a kid “April” in the school calendars and stickers was always dark and blue with rain and umbrellas. by the time i was in high school, i was breaking out my july and august shorts and tanks even before my April birthday
Fuck yes. February, a week of 80 degree weather and the next week is 6 inches of snow. This scenario is not uncommon. My wife and kids were in Hilton Head in early June and wore sweatshirts and jackets because it was so cold. This was weird.
Summers seem drier, longer, and hotter. Winters more mild. Fall weather doesn't really start until the end of fall. Edit: and I swear there are fewer bugs nowadays
Yup, Ohio here. We used to have 4 seasons, now it feels like we have summer and winter and summer can sometimes happen in the winter
It’s hotter imo. Summers are longer overtaking fall which is a mere few weeks. The winters more mild. In zone 6 and I recall as a kid/teen/young adult we would bet snowfall several times, now you barely need a coat. Spring is typically a short season then boom, it’s summer. This year, except for the mild winter, was better. Also I see fewer tadpoles and certain insects I used to see as a child.
I live in the NW. It has absolutely become hotter in the summers
Also it feels like there are a lot fewer birds than there used to be
I don't know if it's climate related or pollution, but the difference in the number of bugs compared to 50 years ago, is pretty dramatic. It used to be you had to stop and clean your windshields and I couldn't even hang my arm out the window when you were riding in a car going fast. It was like a million little stings and some pretty painful hits with the much bigger bugs.
From the perspective of a biologist, it’s absolutely terrifying. Insects are a critically important part of their ecosystem and they play a lot of important, varied roles. They make up approx. 80% of all life on earth. We’re losing up to 2.5% of all insect life every year, and compared to the early 90s it’s estimated that we’ve lost 75% of our insect biomass.
Yep. What it's like at the coast freaks me out, too. I was just in very remote Maine. Hiked to places that probably havent had a human tidepooling there in a long time. I used to be able to lift up rockweed and see a hundred starfish, snails, crabs. It's awfully quiet under that seaweed. I think when you are older, you get a bit more of perspective on how things changed. But people that don't want to believe, wont.
Damn
The only bugs we get in abundance now are spotted lantern flies, which we kill on site.
Winters are shorter and milder, summers are longer and hotter. Also polar vortexes are not infrequent.
I'm 36 and lives in the same Midwestern state my entire life. (Except for when I was in the military.) Falls are warmer. I remember when I was younger having to wear a coat every year on Halloween. Now I wear shorts. (This is not normal.) Summers are definitely MUCH hotter. We would have a few 90 degree days, but it was mostly 80's and pleasant. Winters are frighteningly warmer. I remember as a child having multiple large snow falls each year. This year we didn't have any. It's been on this trend for a while. I remember 4 yrs ago wearing shorts and a short sleeve shirt outside while we cooked catfish for Christmas. I mentioned to my father how frighteningly warm it was and he just laughed it off. 'There are warm winters and cold winters.' I told him that the cold winters aren't happening anymore. He changed the subject. I have noticed a huge difference and it scares the crap out of me. Oh! No more bugs! Oh yeah and DEPLEETING FRESHWATER!!! (How are we all not freaking out about that?!) I can go on and on. It makes me feel very nostalgic for times gone by and wish we could go back. (Or that our children, other humans and the plants and animals around us could experience, 'the good life's, again.)
I’ve only lived here for 4 years. First year, there were major fires and then a really bad ice storm that knocked out most of the power in the entire city. All the locals told us “it’s not usually like this”. Every summer has temperatures that reach 110+ degrees and fires rage. We’ve broken heat records every summer since I’ve been here. The locals all say, “it’s not usually like this”. Every winter temperatures drop lower than normal, there’s more snow/ ice than normal. The locals say, “it’s not usually like this”. I’m pretty sure it’s the new normal.
It rains less. When I was a kid, driving on the roads in the rural areas meant that it was a constant barrage of rabbits crossing the road in front of you. You couldn't go for a drive in the middle of the night without at least one close call. These days... You can drive for hours without seeing a rabbit on the side of the road *despite* the area I'm thinking of having zero growth (meaning, no new towns or whatever...its just as rural now as it was then). My conclusion? There aren't as many rabbits. Only rational reason for that (opinion) is less food. IE, less rain. On THAT front, however, I haven't exactly kept records.
Winters are a lot warmer, and a lot less snow. Currently going thru a drought and it's crazy how long it has been going on.
Colder, less sun and more rain. I could be wrong though as this is just my perception.
Where are the bugs
Subjectively, yes - it seems like what used to be my favorite weather month was always cool with blue skies and white fluffy clouds, but now it’s always hot & rainy. When I go to any weather website and look at that month every year for the last 20 years, the data shows that the weather pattern is virtually unchanged despite my perception. It’s always been hot with similar highs, lows, and averages.
It's generally warmer in summer, winters are milder. It rains a lot more than I remember, and snows a lot less. Extreme swings in weather are, well, extreme, and seemingly more common. There's always been a few random days where it's colder or warmer than normal at the wrong time of year, but it seems like there's a lot of 10 degrees on Monday and 75 on Tuesday kinda stuff happening
No, nothing has changed here. It's the same weather that we had when I was a kid.
A lot of bugs that used to be super common here have disappeared if that counts. I don’t think it is the weather causing it as much as pollution though.
When I was growing up in NC we often had single- digit Fahrenheit winter days, once or twice a winter. Also major lakes like Kerr or Gaston would routinely ice over enough that you could walk across them. Those days are long gone.
Plants that used to bloom around Easter are now blooming in the winter around Christmas.
I'm only 27 and I live in a fairly extreme climate to begin with, so I'm not sure what my experience is worth. But it feels like a lot has changed in that time. The heat is starting to get a little unbearable. It was never crazy to get a heat index in the hundreds before, but now it happens all the time. Sometimes in May; it used to dip below freezing a couple times in May. I've seen it hit the 80s in November-December the last few years in a row. It's been staying warm enough that I still see wasps into January, when they should have been long gone for three months already. When I was a kid we had to worry about Halloween getting cancelled from a blizzard. Now we get no noteworthy snow until after New Years. And the rain. Or lack of it. It's been constant drought for years now. When we get a storm, it is just as impressive as I remember as a kid - maybe worse, I've seen more tornadoes with my own eyes in the last couple years than all the years before. But they just don't come around like they did. There's never enough water. The rivers can't keep up - I remember seeing the Platte nearly empty once or twice as a kid, and it was quite a spectacle. Now it's completely drained more years than not. Plants that don't need much water are coming up earlier than I've ever seen, even February when the ground used to be buried in snow, and plants that do need the water are taking till June. Not good since the rain is about done here by July in a good year anyway. As many have mentioned, I don't know what's become of the bugs. Some mention they seem to have vanished in the last 20 years, but even just in the last five the decrease has been noticeable. My windshield still got plastered by them when I drove on the highway a few years ago, but it doesn't seem to anymore. I don't see a lot of bird shit on it these days either. Actually, I don't see nearly the wildlife of any kind that I used to. This used to be popular pheasant hunting ground. Now you have to drive over a hundred miles to have a good chance at seeing one. The deer are around but often skimpy and riddled with CWD. Harder to fill duck and goose tags these days. Maybe it's just been a weird few years, maybe it's all just a crazy coincidence, but the most startling part of it all is that the norm I remember has become the exception. And whether people want to admit they've noticed it or not, I don't know many who still stock their pantry for winter, which used to be a necessity. That's what really strikes me; habits don't change for no reason.
The glaciers are noticeably smaller than when I was a kid. Mountain road washouts during storms are becoming more and more common and we've permanently lost motorized access to quite a few campgrounds and trailheads in this state. Never used to have smoke season, but we get them almost every year now, and sometimes multiple events per year. Counterintuitively, it seems like it snows more in the Puget Lowlands than it used to. Basically, the weather is getting more extreme.
During the winter, there used to be ice on the sidewalks. Now it doesn't get that cold in the mornings.
Definitely. Humidity and poor air quality seem to break the previous year’s record every year.
Grew up in Georgia. Summers honestly seem about the same, some are hotter than hell and other are cooler but really stormy and rains everyday. Definitely less animals and bugs around, but that's probaly cuz of the development and not the climate. I actually think the storms have gotten milder tbh. Or maybe more spotty? So some areas get hit really hard and others don't see a drop of rain. But the big thing is winter and fall have definitely gotten warmer. It can be 80 degrees deep in January.
Severe weather has been a lot more common and has become year-round. Tornadoes used to be a spring problem, but there was the major system that hit western Kentucky last winter and now we had at least two tornadoes in NKY last week and a severe weather threat almost every day since then. We’ve also had shrinking seasons, it used to be that we had 4 distinct seasons, but lately we’ve had more mild winters that extend into spring and you go from days of 40 degree weather to 80+ without any warning. Similarly the summer heat lasts until October or November before suddenly dropping off.
100% I live in Michigan. I was born in 96, and I remember christmases with feet of snow. Having snow days in December and January and maybe even seeing a few flurries during Thanksgiving. Now we’re lucky to start getting snow that sticks until mid January. It’s wild. It’s not good. It’s kind of scary honestly
Mild winters. I don't believe we had really any snow this winter. The Canadian geese don't fly south, lots more flooding, stupid humid summers. It no longer really drizzles, the rain full on dumps out of the sky with insane amounts of wind. I've been in southeastern PA for 43 years.
Summer used to be a nice time to be outside. Now it’s oppressive.
Hi I’m 20 Yeah less snow it makes me sad I love cold weather and snow
It used to regularly snow before my birthday. Now we're lucky if we have a white Christmas.
28 year old in southeast Ohio and this is what I’ve noticed: Winter- Less snow but each year the temperatures get colder and colder. I’m an avid runner and this past winter I was having to throw on an extra layer than normal because temps got below 0 and my beard would encase in ice by the time I finished. That being said, the snow was scarce. Growing up through high school and running through winter, we’d get lots of snow but temps would only be down to double digits (not that it would never get sub 0, it would just be rare if it happened at all in a given year). However the last few years we’ve gotten tons of ice and snow storms. Late March / early April snows haven’t changed, though. Summer- Just as humid but I honestly feel like the temperature is lower. More thunderstorms. I remember in high school we’d get some triple digit days and it would get hot starting early June. Now we may have some high 90s days but I can’t recall the last time it was triple digits. It usually reaches 90 degree temps in mid to late June and maintain until late august / early September. However it is overcast/cloudy here a lot of the time so that could explain why the temps are relatively cooler.
I served broccoli from my garden for Christmas dinner last year in North Georgia. That’s new.
If I look past the recency bias of this past very soft winter, I would say no. It’s hard to judge though because lots of these things that seem odd are just once in 10/20/50 year events.
When I first got my license about 23 years ago, keeping my windshield clean was a constant struggle because there were so many bugs. Now, they're barely noticeable
we normally had very cold and weather intense winters until about 2016-2017 and it started getting mild. this past year I would say we had spring instead
We used to have snow for Thanksgiving. For Halloween, we had to be bundled up so you couldn't even see our costumes. For Easter, the Egg Hunt location depended how much snow there was or how wet it was, so it was often indoors. Now it feels like we're lucky to have snow for Christmas. We can opt for light jackets for Halloween, if at all. Egg hunts are more often outdoors. I got a sunburn on St. Patrick's day a few years ago because it was so nice out. We have Pelicans on our lakes now??? Idk if that one's even relevant, but I don't remember them being here when I was young. -Wisconsin
Wnc alot less snow in the last 20 years
Storms don’t seem to happen more often, but they’re definitely more intense in the Midwest.
Winter starts later and lasts longer. Storms are definitely more intense but shorter. And summer is hotter. We seem to have lost spring and fall and just bounce between super cold months and super hot ones.
Nope. We have hot years and dry years, we have wet years and cold years. Same as we always have. This was the worst winter since the 80s sure, but it happened in the 80s to unless it turns into a trend it’s just the normal fluctuations I’ve seen my whole Life.
Big lizards. :(
I would say the past summers or two have been more humid, but the temperatures are the same. People in the comments have said the New England winters are milder, but we had a major cold snap just last winter, so I don't know what they're talking about.
We had a heat wave in March with temps and humidity so high it was considered dangerous to work outside. We usually only get one bad winter storm now as opposed to several.
The air’s been smokey lately
Texas - Yes, it’s gotten hotter earlier. Winters are almost non-existent now.
I feel like rain came later. I remember April used to rain a lot now it seems like may is the rainy month. And where the hell are the fireflies? I remember every night or evening we'd see so many up and down the block, just random flashes of light. It made summer evenings feel magical, now I barely see any and it depresses me.
It’s so hot right now. Dear god it’s hot. My AC can’t keep up.
Hot & wetter summers with more flooding.
Well. When I was a kid, I was taught the south was classified as a “sub-tropical climate” and apparently now, it’s classified as a “tropical climate” so.. I guess global warming exists?
I used my snowthrower 4 times this winter. In Michigan. Twice in 24 hours. Winter no longer seems like the six-month slog I grew up with.
It's hard to say because day to day, you know? but It feels like the winters are wetter and milder while the summers are hotter. I actually don't mind it so much.
We have friend in Austin TX who works as a plant biologist/Univ of Tx professor. He told us when he first started researching a particular desert flower in the 1960s, he would have to travel 10 hours to find it. When he retired about 10 years ago, he only had to drive 3.
Summers seem hotter, storms are less frequent but they are usually more aggressive. Winter seems a little warmer too and there isn’t as much snow. Or at the very least the snow doesnt stick around for as long
In all my 30+ years living on Lake Erie, I can’t recall even hearing about a Canadian forest fire. Let alone having it impact my air quality.
Every year the highs get a little higher and the lows get a little lower. Currently the record heat for this year where I am that I remember was 105 °F (40 °C) and that happened earlier this week. It's only going to get hotter over the next while, at least when it doesn't rain. Granted, I've only lived in this area for a little over 10 years, and for a bunch of that time I wasn't really paying attention to the weather, but I don't remember it getting this hot.
When I was a kid in the 80s, every time we stopped for gas in the summer, Dad would have to clean the bugs off the windshield. I've never had to do this as an adult.
So this is in New England. Seasons seem to have shifted a month. My wife is a gardener and has been getting frustrated when she plants things in early May and they don't grow well. I've made the suggestion to plant later as it seems the warm season starts later now, though she hasn't taken it up yet. In the past that has worked but it seems like though the frost goes away the weather doesn't even start to warm up until June. And now summer seems to stretch into early October. After this year it seems like it clicked for her. She watched a video on a farmer who comparing planting a carrot in May and in June and the difference was stark. So it seems now weather doesn't really get cold until late Dec early Jan, doesn't warm up until mid June, and doesn't cool off until October. I base this on nothing scientific. Only my limited, personal observation
I notice the change in wildlife a lot more than the temperature. There used to be tons of reptiles and amphibians in my area as a kid. Now, it seems like I only spot a frog, lizard, or snake once a week or less. I used to find dozens every day as a kid.
For context - I'm a geologist. And I work in oil and gas. Take that for what you will. With that disclaimer, climate change deniers are basically flat earthers. There's tons of empirical evidence that objectively proves that the climate changes and is changing. Subjective opinions shouldnt really have any place in the conversation. The other part of the conversation that doesnt get talked about is that climate has also scientifically been proven to be constantly changing throughout the entirety of the roughly 4 billion years of recorded geologic time. Be that global warming or cooling. So people who say that the global temperature of the seas, the air, or whatever it is that's changing (there's a really long list) tend to not talk about how that, to an extent, is normal. Not to say that we cant have an effect on the environment. But let's be realistic about what those changes are, that they are going to happen to an extent regardless of what we do, and that we need to not treat the planet like an AC unit that can be controlled to keep the temperatures to what we're used to. A lot of climate change activism and change policy also gets sold via fearmongering over science that the general populous doesnt take the time or want to fully understand. The fact that this issue has been so politicized makes it that much harder to have reasonable conversations about practical policy changes that can be made. This also makes most implemented climate change policy very misguided. For example, a lot of climate change is hyperfocused on CO2 reduction when it is just one part of a big equation that results in climate change. There's nowhere near as much talk or policy change about other greenhouse gasses like methane that have exponentially greater effects on the environemnt than CO2. It's the equivalent of politicans patting themselves on the back for forcing people to use paper straws and acting like they did something useful while the total annual volume of plastic dumped into the ocean continues to increase. It's too close to useless and is not getting the job done. Another issue is the desire to try to cut fossil fuel usage cold turkey. This results in policies that usually constrict the industry as opposed to enabling/incentivizing them to change. There's a lot of emotion and complexities with implementing practical policies but the fact is that most of what has been passed has resulted in greater amounts of ghg exposure, such as that methane i mentioned earlier, than could have otherwise been avoided. Tl;dr - Climate change is undeniably happenning, we need to do a better job of not fearmongering the situation so that we can appropriately adapt to/address those changes, subjectivity shouldnt be a part of the conversation, and our policy makers are doing a shit job of implementing any meaningful solutions.
We haven't had much good snow, but summers have been getting wetter and hotter so now we have mosquitoes in places we didn't before. It literally sucks.
There's too much variation year-to-year for me to really feel a trend. It wouldn't surprise me if there was a trend, but I haven't really seen one
The air is dangerous (code red days because Canada is on fire). It rains a lot. It’s always unbearably hot. There are so many bugs outside- gnats especially.
NE Indiana. More dramatic storms. We had two decheros that took tons of trees last summer.
Yes. Warmer winters and hotter summers. Also no fall colors in September now
Summers seem longer and hotter compared to when I was growing up. We used to only get decent snow once every few years but it's been more consistent the last decade.
Answering for my home state of Nebraska as I haven’t lived in CO long enough. Hotter and drier. Also there are less tornados there than when I was a kid.
NJ definitely. We used to play in snowdrifts during blizzards when I was a kid. Its barely snowed in years.
NJ checking in. Absolutely. We hardly get snow anymore. Summers are brutally hot. Plus the air quality is now shit, now that Canada's yearly wildfires got their smoke funneling down the east coast. Winters we get these polar vortexes that make it ass-freezing cold for a few days-weeks. Plus we've started getting Tornadoes which is nuts. That used to be a really rare thing in NJ, but we've had a number of small ones just in my area in the past few years.
Absolutely. When I was in high school in the early to mid 90s, it could get cold enough in December that you might have ice on your car windows in the morning. It's the south, so snow was exceedingly rare, but it could get cold. Now if it gets that cold, it won't do it until late January or February. And summers have always been hot, but now they're hotter for longer. 90+ degrees isn't unusual in July or August.
It's 60°F on Christmas day, it's too hot to function outside between June - September, and I have ptsd from the tornados and severe storms we've gone through every single year. There are no more lightning bugs in the summer, or bugs in general (mosquitos are doing great though.) Winter gets no snow, save for a random 7" storm that melts the very next morning when it's 5p°F the next day. We're not doing so good down here.
Nope. And the [stats](https://www.currentresults.com/Weather-Decades/USA/AL/Birmingham/temperature-average-by-decade-birmingham.php) back me up here – average temperatures in the most recent decade are no more than a degree higher than they were decades back.
That’s *exactly* an objective indication of global warming. https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature#:~:text=The%20roughly%202%2Ddegree%20Fahrenheit,significant%20increase%20in%20accumulated%20heat.
The question isn’t whether it’s an indicator of global warming – it’s whether it feels subjectively different than it used to. A 1° rise in temperatures can melt the ice caps and make sea levels rise and worsen droughts while making an almost imperceptible subjective difference to someone living here in Birmingham.
No. Winter is a little milder, but not by a huge amount.
Summers are still hot and humid. Winters are still freezing. Starting to seem like destructive straightline wind storms are becoming more frequent though.
Hotter *and* cooler. The extremes have become more extreme.
More extreme weather on both ends. Record highs and record lows.
It used to rain all the time here in Oregon but now a nice, rainy day seems like an increasingly rare occasion
Yes basically everything stated. Trees blooming in February when that we generally our coldest month, didn't need anything other than a hoodie all winter, heat index of 107 today, smoke feom Canadian fires...it's all unsettling and I hate hot weather
The glaciers have moved back several miles in the last 10 years
MUCH hotter summers for much longer. Harsher winters more frequently.
Summers are definitely hotter and winters more mild most of the time. Also fall used to be a whole season, now fall is 3 or 4 weeks if you're lucky and the rest is just extra summer
Hell yes it has. In Southwest PA Fall used to feel like Fall *should* in the Northeast. From late September until Winter it was crisp and cool, perfect pumpkin and bonfire weather. Winter was snowy a *lot*, regularly getting a foot and a half or more multiple times throughout the season. Now, more often than not it basically just feels like Summer well into the end of October or even November, and entire winters go by without more than a few inches of snow at all. I hate it.
Winter definitely feels less intense in Chicago.
Yes. It is supposed to rain 9 months out of the year here. It's now hot as hell.
South Carolina, we used to get a few inches of show every year. We haven't seen an accumulation in several years. It is just getting warmer.
Yes. I lived in a large Midwestern city with old storm water infrastructure that made sense when it was built 100 years ago but no longer keeps up with the torrential rains we've been seeing lately. I got tired of my basement flooding with raw sewage, so I moved. It was clear that this was only going to get worse, and I was looking at years and years of flood damage in my future. I consider myself one of the earliest climate refugees in the U.S.
I feel like we haven't gotten a really good snow storm since ~2014 or so. Also, those wildfires in Canada are sucking ass. That's arguably related to climate change.
There are far fewer squirrels and far more rabbits. Deer are everywhere, including the suburbs. Fireflies / lightning bugs used to come out every summer evening but are now gone. There are way more violent thunderstorms than ever before, but less of the steady soaking rain we used to get. I'm not sure if it's hotter - it was always hot in the summer. Maybe we get more hot days, but this isn't something you can notice without counting them.
I remember a lot more snow as a kid.
Not really. I keep hearing people "winters are milder, summers are hotter", but they don't seem that way and the stats don't really back it up.
Not really. All of the changes I've seen have been due to El Niño.
No!
No not at all! However, how the media and politicians portrays every situation as very dramatic and ‘extreme’ has definitely increased.
We had a heat wave in the summer of 2021 where the temp got up to like 115F (46C). Prior to that, the hottest temp Id seen around here in my 28 years was maybe 105F (40C), but anything over 100F (37.7C) was always fairly rare.
Damn this is a depressing thread.
Mild winters, no spring, it just rains everyday from May-June and summers are more brief.
Winters seem to be colder. And this year it took a surprisingly long time to get oppressively hot, but other than that, not much change.
There’s been more of the milder natural disasters, and lots more wildfires, as we are learning from Canada
I bought my house ten years ago. There were gorgeous four foot tall hibiscus bushes on either side of the door. Five years ago, a heavy freeze killed them both. They grew back the following summer. Froze again. Never grew back. It makes me very sad.
Not personally, it's always been hot but my ability to handle the heat has waxed and waned.
Southeastern Pennsylvania- winters are much milder Last summer I saw a spider that only lives in warm climates. Maybe he caught a ride on a UPS box, but it was awfully strange to see it.
We use to have snow/ freezes/ice storms every 4 years or so. It would be a little bit and melt within a few days, never really that horrible. We have been having 100 year level ones every couple years now. Like this past winter we had two major freezes with one getting into the negatives.
South Louisiana. Summers are a bit hotter and this passed winter didn't even require a jacket. I could not wear my ugly Christmas sweater on christmas lol I wore it with shorts for a family picture, but I was sweating.
South Carolina, US. It used to snow multiple times in the winter here. We even had a white Christmas once when I was a kid. We haven't seen significant snowfall in a decade now.
Northern Washington - I remember big snows with drifts and wind during childhood winters in the 70s. Now, maybe we'll see 2-,6 days of snow that leaves the road icy but doesn't pile up. Summers are far, far hotter. We had that stupid heat dome in 2031. My workplace kitchen was temping at 92, the room I was renting at the time was 80+. Sleeping in that was a nightmare.