Does NW Arkansas get as cold as the rest of the midwest? (Fayetteville: high school, live)

[gimme it]

Particularly interested in Fayetteville. Arkansas seems to be somewhere between the south and the midwest, but confused about the weather. Ideally, it's winters are not as harsh.

[Stormcrow73]

Originally Posted by gimme it

Particularly interested in Fayetteville. Arkansas seems to be somewhere between the south and the midwest, but confused about the weather. Ideally, it's winters are not as harsh.

Minimum temps in NWA are pretty similar to the lower tier of the midwest. Wind chill can be pretty darn cold for a good bit of the winter. However, winters don't last as long. It's usually giving up the ghost by March. Every few winters you'll get one last winter storm in March but typically spring is trying to break on through by then. In any given winter you'll get 3-5 decent little winter storms with accumulations of a few inches of snow but ice is more common. I think the longest I can remember snow or ice hanging around was about 4 or 5 days. The wintery blasts are often interspersed with short periods of moderately sunny weather that can get into the 40's or 50's. Everything shuts down all over AR during winter weather. I don't think any cities own a REAL snowplow, they use graders and those are horrible at the job. It is NOTHING like the upper midwest though!!! IMO, NWA winters give you just enough so you know it's a winter but not so much that you're get horribly bummed out by all the darkness, cold, and snow.

Edit add: Since you're in NYC this might help give you a picture: Think Mid-Atlantic (Southern Jersey to NOVA) without as much snow and not quite as long. This will also help you understand what the summer's gonna be like!

[gimme it]

Thank you Stormcrow. NYC is cold these days, but I haven't seen hardly any snow. I just hate the kind of frigid winters that make it unpleasant to go outside.

[Stormcrow73]

Originally Posted by gimme it

Thank you Stormcrow. NYC is cold these days, but I haven't seen hardly any snow. I just hate the kind of frigid winters that make it unpleasant to go outside.

I think the high in NWA today is expected to be in the mid 30's. That's fairly common. You get a few periods with highs below freezing. It's also not uncommon to have some sunny days with a high of 35 and a wind chill of 20!! That can be confusing to the senses! lol The breaks from the cold are both blessing and curse: sometimes it seems like spring will never finally arrive for real! You get a few days where you can go out without a coat (maybe even short sleeves!!!) only to have a big mass of cold air move back in.

[marmac]

----today is expected to be in the mid 30's. That's fairly common---

my weather book doesn't have NWA listed, however it does have Sringfield MO listed.

40 year average January high is 42. It would appear Springfield is warmer in winter than NWA. Does that sound right?

[Stormcrow73]

Originally Posted by marmac

----today is expected to be in the mid 30's. That's fairly common---

my weather book doesn't have NWA listed, however it does have Sringfield MO listed.

40 year average January high is 42. It would appear Springfield is warmer in winter than NWA. Does that sound right?

By fairly common I did not necessarily mean average, just that you can easily have high's in that range. I think we can all agree that when you have a fairly wide max and min distribution that the mean can be well above even a substantial population of low end values. However, if you use the median, then you can correct for volatility of the sample.

A quick lesson in statistics:
If I have a population of say 14 days and of those days half are 32°, 2 are 40, and 5 are 55, then the average is 41 but the median is 36. 32° days are the most common but I still have an average near your quoted value.

My population is rather small, obviously, but this type of behavior is common in even exceedingly large populations of somewhat volatile data (and weather is typically quite volatile). This is the reason we have such a large number of statistical analysis methods in science. It is usually useless to point out average numbers without the addition of the standard deviation.

So no, Fayetteville is NOT colder than Springfield, in fact, it's extremely similar.

[marmac]

Yup------good pont

I guess median temp would give me more info than average.

[Stormcrow73]

Originally Posted by marmac

Yup------good pont

I guess median temp would give me more info than average.

Yep. Average is good to know, but standard dev. will give you an idea of the data spread while median will give you the bias (are more data points lower or higher than avg).

I think everyone should have to learn statistics in high school. Then maybe our politicians and the like could have much less chance of lying to us.

[bchris02]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow73

By fairly common I did not necessarily mean average, just that you can easily have high's in that range. I think we can all agree that when you have a fairly wide max and min distribution that the mean can be well above even a substantial population of low end values. However, if you use the median, then you can correct for volatility of the sample.

A quick lesson in statistics:
If I have a population of say 14 days and of those days half are 32°, 2 are 40, and 5 are 55, then the average is 41 but the median is 36. 32° days are the most common but I still have an average near your quoted value.

My population is rather small, obviously, but this type of behavior is common in even exceedingly large populations of somewhat volatile data (and weather is typically quite volatile). This is the reason we have such a large number of statistical analysis methods in science. It is usually useless to point out average numbers without the addition of the standard deviation.

So no, Fayetteville is NOT colder than Springfield, in fact, it's extremely similar.

True. This month is a good example of what you are talking about. This January started with mild, spring like conditions, but after the first arctic blast in the second week, it has been very cold at normal or below every day. This year we seem to be bringing more consecutive very cold days than usual, despite the mild start of the month. Usually, there are pretty frequent swings between very cold days, cool days, and mild days during winter. It looks like we will catch a break finally next week with highs going up into the 50s, but not before extremely cold air and another winter storm arrives at the end of the week.

I'm looking forward to next week because this kind of cold weather for a prolonged period of time like this gives me cabin fever. I could never live up north.

[TaJasMi]

Take it from me...(born and bred)
one day it could be 20 degrees and the next 70degrees.
no joke. I remember one Christmas eve it was below freezing...Christmas day it was 60 degrees....It is kinda fun.