As we start to reach the end of what will be one of the warmest February's on record, ending what will be a top 10 warmest winter on record, the natural question people have is: Does this mean we are in store for a blazing hot summer?
The simple answer is no. Well, we could, but it won’t be because we had a warm winter.
There is no correlation with a warm winter and a hot summer. The data clearly shows it, but it is also true because of how different the seasons are.
The jet stream pattern changes so much from winter to summer. That’s what makes Spring and Autumn so turbulent around here. It is virtually impossible to have the same atmospheric steering current from winter to summer just because of how much the jet stream changes and how warmer oceans water and longer days change our weather patterns.
Just for good measure, I looked at the top 25 warmest winter seasons in Charlotte from 1878-2017. Of those 25 warm winters, only four times did we then have a top 25 hot summer. That is not a correlation. Statistically, I’d like to see at least 50-percent or more of the warm winters followed by hot summer to be a correlation. Not 16-percent, like we have here.
Looking deeper for above, below, and near average summers following a warm winter showed that only around 42-percent of the time did we have an above average summer. Over half of the time (60%) it was near average or below average.
One funny side stat I found was that Charlotte is on pace for one of the five warmest February's on record. The warmest February on record was ironically followed by the second-snowiest March on record.So what does correlate to a hot summer?The biggest correlation to hot summers was actually drought or below average rainfall. The biggest driver of a hot or cool summer is cloud cover and rainfall. When we have a drought we get hot and that heat then dries us out more when then makes it even hotter.
"Drought begets drought" is the saying for this reason. Show me a dry winter and spring and I’ll show you a dry, hot summer. So if we want hints on our summer weather, look at the rainfall this spring and into the summer, not the temperatures we had during the winter.
