Missing Your Snow Days? 

Article name: Missing Your Snow Days? So Are We.

Writer: Graceana Sewall Hardy

Missing Your Snow Days? So Are We.

Are the record highs we are experiencing a sign that we’ve reached the point of no return, or is something else going on? 

With this winter set to be the warmest in Wisconsin's recorded history, it seems like a huge part of what makes the Midwest the Midwest is disappearing. Record highs are continuously being broken. Tornados are forming during February. And people are feeling its effects, with farmers, ice fishers, and indigenous people all noticing the change. Why is this happening?

Calling this a warm winter is an understatement. In reality, the weather the midwestern area has been experiencing has been much closer to summer. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal, this winter is set to be Wisconsin's warmest in recorded history. Meteorologist Andy Boxell reports that “December and January's temperatures were 11.1 degrees above average”. 

Furthermore, for the first time ever, Wisconsin had tornados during February. Two tornados had been confirmed to have formed south of Madison on February 8th, a record-breaking day with a temperature of fifty-nine degrees. The tornados were significant, demolishing houses and barns, killing livestock, and trashing cars. Spectrum News reports how Andy Wagner and his 76-year-old father experienced those losses firsthand. Unable to make it to their basement in time, the pair watched as their house was destroyed. Andy says “It was like the house took a deep breath, and (then) the windows all exploded. I’m in the fetal position on the floor,” he said. “I thought I was going to die.” Thankfully, no significant injuries have been reported due to the tornados. Most tornados in Wisconsin occur during May and August, making this incident an anomaly.

So why is this happening? Is this the new normal? Well, yes and no. You might have heard your parents reminisce on how much colder winters were when they were younger, and in some ways they are right. According to Steve Vavrus, a director of the Wisconsin State Climatology Office, “The last two decades have been the warmest on record in Wisconsin, and the last decade was the wettest by far,” a trend that he says is likely to continue. 

But, this year is slightly different. We are experiencing a weather phenomenon called El Nino. El Nino happens when the surface of the ocean warms to an above-average degree. This causes the north of America to get abnormally warmer weather and the south to get abnormally colder weather. The last time El Nino occurred was in 2015-2016. In the past, scientists believed the occurrence of El Nino was linked to solar output. But, a new study led by Paul Wilcox, a scientist at the University of Innsbruck, shows that from 1970 onwards El Nino has been more influenced by man-made global warming.

This is a change the Ojibwe tribe has experienced directly. According to Grist, Jerry Jondreau and Katy Bresette are the last maple syrup producers of the Keweenaw Bay Band reservation. For context, historical records say that in 1865 the Keweenaw Bay Band sold ”453,252 pounds of maple sugar to non-Indigenous businesses and buyers”. The family harvests almost all of the maple syrup by hand before refining it using an extensive traditional method. The sugar collection usually starts in March, due to the trees temperature temperature-specific sap production. Now, the period the sugar can be harvested occurs earlier, in February, and the window of harvesting is much smaller. 

Another thing that is threatened is ice fishing. Grist interviewed Tim Sacka, someone who has been ice fishing for 35 years. He commented on the ice fishing season shifting from December to January. “We’ve lost at least a month,” Sacka said. “It makes me sad.”. As a result, ice fishers are having to travel further north to continue the hobby. The Ojibwe tribe does not have that privilege. Jerry Jondreau comments, “We as Ojibwe people don’t have the luxury of migrating with those trees that have been taking care of our people for thousands of years,”

 Even if you don’t participate in ice fishing, we all have to eat. Something you might not be considering is the agricultural impact that warmer winters have. You might think that a warmer winter would mean a longer growing season and that it would help farmers, but actually, the opposite is happening. Part of the reason the midwest soil is so fertile is because it freezes over in the winter. This process prevents organisms from breaking down the nutrients in the soil, keeping the nutrients in the soil. It also prevents bugs and diseases from becoming more of an issue like they are in the south, where they have a year-round growing system. With the warmer winters we’ve been having, scientists predict widespread disease growth across the Midwest, with Missouri being hit the hardest. According to a 2020 University of Missouri report, they predict that Missouri corn production is almost sure to cease by 2050.

No matter how much you stay inside during winter, the warm weather does affect you. It affects your safety, your traditions, and your access to nutritious foods. And while we might get more snowfall next year, the trends overall say that winters like this one will only be more and more common.

Picture by Graceana Hardy