With last night’s frost, and this afternoon’s snowstorm, I’m trying to think back to the last time we had an 80 degree (F) day.
Oh, yeah — day before yesterday.
Which got me to asking whether this most-recent temperature swing was unusual. At Dulles Airport, they went from a high of 80F on Thursday afternoon, to a low of 27F on Friday night. Or just over 50F swing over the course of two days.
As it turns out, that’s perfectly normal. Below I’ve plotted the biggest two-day temperature swing, by year, at Dulles, through 2022.
Source: Analysis of NOAA data, downloaded via https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/
As you can plainly see, at least one event of this size seems to happen more-or-less every year. The upshot is that in this part of the country, going from shorts one day to winter coat the next (or vice-versa) does not count as a particularly unusual weather event.
