Absolutely correct James. The National Weather Service website used to have a link to easily access historical climate data. It's mostly still there, but it takes some poking around to find it. Looking right now at a couple cities near me, 2012 was the warmest year on record overall. But No. 2 warmest was 1931, and No. 3 was 1921. Another city had 1931 as No. 1 warmest, and 2012 as No. 2. If Al Gore's father was around then, he was probably blaming the Great Depression on Global Warming.
What you see as you study the data is that there is nothing all that remarkable going on. Climate change has been happening at least as long as these records have been kept, going back to the 1800's. And it was certainly happening before that. There have been warm years and droughts. And there have been cold, wet years. Some with very heavy snowfall, and others not so much. But I still put my studded snow tires on every year, because I know we're bound to get hammered at some point, living downwind from the Great Lakes.
I've heard a lot of people making the claim that winter used to hit hard around Thanksgiving, and hold on tight until March. It does seem to start a bit later and end a bit later now. But if you look at those dirty lying detailed National Weather Service records and data, you can see that we had some tough persistent winters, like we did this past winter in 2017-2018. And we also had some milder ones where there were frequent thaws. Thinking back to when I first started hunting, there was often snow on the first day of Buck Season which starts on the Monday after Thanksgiving. But not always. I also remember a lot of anxious days after school hoping for snow so we could go sled riding, and have snow-ball battles, and build igloos and forts. I don't remember any of our snowmen or igloos lasting much more than a few weeks before a little thaw ruined them.
Kids today are going to have fond memories of texting and playing games on their phone.
I'll never forget the day a heavy downpour and a strong cold front was forecast for the first Saturday of deer season, and temps were in the high 40's. I was about 13 years old. My Dad told me that the soft hunters would be leaving the woods before the first raindrops started, but we would have the woods to ourselves. As the sky darkened and the wind picked up, he made a lean-to shelter next to a large rock out of a cheap 9' x 12' painters plastic drop-cloth as I gathered firewood. We started a small fire, and were dry and toasting ham sandwiches on the fire when the rain and wind started. As the rain loudly spattered on the plastic, and accumulating puddles on our lean-to poured noisily into the leaves, and as the wind whipped the plastic, 4 does came feeding through the hollow. They stopped abruptly when they saw or heard the commotion, and came running straight toward us. They stopped less than 10 feet away and stared at us for what seemed like minutes before slowly walking away. We saw lots of deer that day, but unfortunately no bucks. But I learned that day that game animals become much more relaxed, unwary, and active during a steady rain. And even now, when other hunters are calling it quits and heading for the tavern, I'm setting up my big camouflage umbrella that screws into a tree, and seeing game that others aren't. But how on earth could I even have this memory if we always had snow during deer season???
