Records broken in 2011

[Mike S.]

Hello everyone,

I know we had a lot of disasters in 2011 which brought high water, high winds etc. but were any records, that were not destructive, broken in your area?   Here in the Detroit area we had the wettest year on record.  In 1880 the record stood for 131 years at 47.69" of precipitation.  In 2011 we had 47.70",  How about your area

Thank you

Mike

[Mhayes]

Hi Mike,

Around my area, Wichita, Ks, we broke the 1936 record of the most triple-digit temperature: 53 days. The other record was the largest gap between the highest temperatrue and the lowest: 128 degrees spread between +111 and -17.

Margie

[Hannie]

Hi Mike,

Over here, 2011 was a year of weather records:

- springs 2011 was the dryest since 1984, very warm and sunny

- summer passed us by: not ever did it rain as much as last summer:  normally 225 ml; now 350 ml!

- fall was beautiful, warm, sunny and soft and not the usual rain and storms.  November was the dryest month since 1906

The winter seems to be a total change from last year as well: we have not had any freezing temperatures.  All the flowers on my deck are still in bloom and the willows, birches and hazelnuts are already showing catkins!  (much to the detriment of hay fever sufferers, they only had one pollen free month last year) 
Temperature today is 13C (54F)!

Hannie

[jesterjeni]

there seemed to be a lack of bee's here things did not grow as well as we thought they might. I had my first garden this year, I planted some sunflowers that grew to about 8ft tall. the bees liked the sunflowers and my garden done quite well, the woman behind me also planted a garden with allot of the same items and hers refused to grow because of the lack of bees to pollenate . she hand pollinated allot of her stuff and had very little success. I guess its strange but I missed those bees!

[Pat]

Hi Jennifer,

I agree with your observation regarding the decline in bees.  We have also noticed a great decline in the butterfly population over the last two years.  One of our favorite summer pastimes has been going to the botanical gardens to photograph the butterflies.  They just have not been as prolific as we are used to seeing.

Pat

[Tess (Tassie D)]

Well it was destructive to other areas but because of the levee the town built in 3 days we survived the 1 in 200 years flood in January 2011. The next record was 16 days straight with the temp above 30C/86F with the last 7 days of the year above 100F.
The first 2 days of 2012 at 110F.