Quote:
Originally Posted by rsmlp
I'm not a statistician but a cursory review of the data may not support the hypothesis that ice outs are occurring earlier. The difference in dates from awhile to now may not be "statistically significant".
Having said that, it is interesting. Thank you
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Well, if you take April 26 as = 125 (number of days since Jan 1) and April 13 as 102, the difference is 13 days. That amounts to an 11.3% shortening in 131 years. I'm not a statistician either and I don't know how you'd determine statistical significance based on a single set of 131 years of data. But it feels like an 11 percent change is pretty significant. The cause? I'll let others debate that.
It would be interesting to try and superimpose 10 year avg low and high April temperatures (if you can find reliable temperature data back that far) to see if there is correlation, though maybe a combined March-April average would be a better view of temperature effect on melting. One could definitely get lost down this rabbit hole if they had the time.