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The National Park Service's Eastern Rivers and Mountains Network measures ecosystem "vital signs" in selected national parks in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York, and weather and climate is one of them. This is the network's summary of 2021 at Gauley River National Recreation Area.
Weather versus climate
Weather is the short-term change in the atmosphere, over minutes to months: what is happening outside right now. Climate is what to expect from long-term patterns of 30 years or more. The brief's shorthand: climate is a hot summer you might expect, weather a warm rainy day you get. So the question for 2021 is how it compared with a "normal" year.
The numbers
The brief uses county-scale data averaged over the counties around the park, Fayette and Nicholas counties in West Virginia, for the period of record from 1895 to 2021, courtesy of NOAA's Climate at a Glance program. It calls 2021 warmer than average with below-normal precipitation: the 15th warmest year and the 37th driest. Seven months were warmer than the long-term average, and December was almost 9 °F above it.
| Month | Average temperature (°F) | Departure from average (°F) | Total precipitation (in.) | Departure from average (in.) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 32.2 | +1.4 | 3.24 | -0.52 |
| February | 32 | -1.1 | 4.35 | +1.03 |
| March | 46.2 | +4.7 | 4.94 | +0.67 |
| April | 51.1 | -0.2 | 3.35 | -0.62 |
| May | 58 | -2.2 | 2.87 | -1.69 |
| June | 68.3 | +0.9 | 5.19 | +0.38 |
| July | 70.7 | -0.2 | 3.60 | -1.92 |
| August | 72.9 | +3.0 | 6.06 | +1.55 |
| September | 64.8 | +0.5 | 3.43 | +0.01 |
| October | 58.7 | +5.2 | 3.51 | +0.31 |
| November | 40.9 | -1.6 | 1.48 | -1.80 |
| December | 42.4 | +8.8 | 2.25 | -1.32 |
| Year | 53.2 | +1.6 | 44.29 | -3.90 |
Departures compare 2021 with the long-term averages for 1895 to 2020. In all, 44.29 inches of precipitation fell, 3.9 inches less than the long-term average. July and November were the driest months relative to their averages, and August the wettest.
A long view
Data for the two counties show annual average temperature rising by about 0.07 °F per decade, and annual total precipitation by about 0.12 inch per decade, since 1895.
Annual average temperature and annual total precipitation for the counties around the park, 1895 to 2021; dashed lines show linear estimates of change. Figure from the National Park Service's page.
National Park Service scientists have also used models to estimate that by 2100 the park's annual average temperature will rise by 2.9 to 8.8 °F, from the best-case to the worst-case scenario, and that annual total precipitation will rise by 6 to 11 percent, as reported by Gonzalez and others in 2018.
Sources
- National Park Service, Eastern Rivers and Mountains Network, "2021 Weather In Review: Gauley River National Recreation Area" (https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/2021-weather-in-review-gauley-river-national-recreation-area.htm); the photograph of the river gorge, credited to an individual, and the two seasonal ranking charts are left out; rewritten in hubnx's own words.
In these publicationsGauley River National Recreation Area
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from www.nps.gov
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