Is Ohio's Weather Changing?

6 hours ago
4 min read

We went down a rabbit hole to find out.

If this summer has taught us anything, it's that Mother Nature has been keeping things interesting.

Central Ohio has been hit with round after round of storms this season—heavy rain, high winds, flooding and severe weather that have left plenty of cleanup behind. After the storms we've experienced lately, it got us talking around the office:

Is Ohio's weather actually changing?

That question sent us down a bit of a rabbit hole.

First Stop: What Is Going On With These Storms?

You've probably heard people say that "Tornado Alley is moving east." With the severe weather Ohio has experienced lately, that statement certainly gets your attention.

And there's actually some research behind it.

A 2024 peer-reviewed study comparing tornado activity from 1951–1985 with 1986–2020 found:

Tornado activity has shifted eastward from portions of the Great Plains toward the Midwest and Southeast.
Researchers found changes in tornado formation, tornado days and tornado path length.
Tornado activity has also shifted somewhat away from summer and toward colder parts of the year.

So, is Ohio becoming the new Tornado Alley?

Not exactly.

Ohio State climatologists caution that it's more complicated than that. Better radar, storm spotting and reporting make today's tornado records difficult to compare directly with decades past. And the relationship between climate change and tornadoes is still an area of active research.

So no, Tornado Alley hasn't exactly packed up and moved to Columbus. But researchers are seeing an eastward shift in several measures of tornado activity and after this summer, that's certainly something that caught our attention.

From Summer Storms to First Frost

As crazy as it sounds, we're already approaching the point in the year when those of us in the landscape industry start looking ahead.

Summer leads to fall. Fall brings the first frost. Then comes winter. And somewhere in the middle of all that, we're already thinking about spring.

That brought us to another question:

Are Ohio's winters changing, too?

Here, the answer is a little clearer.

Winter is getting shorter.

Long-term weather records show some measurable changes:

Columbus's average first fall freeze has shifted about 2 weeks later since the 1970s.
Our first measurable snowfall now typically arrives around November 20, 1 to 2 weeks later than the late-20th-century average.
Ohio's frost-free growing season has lengthened by almost 2 weeks in recent decades. It’s getting warmer earlier.
Ohio's statewide average temperature has risen almost 2°F since 1900, with much of the warming occurring during winter and spring.

Put it all together and winter is getting squeezed from both sides. But here's where Ohio likes to make things complicated:

Shorter doesn't necessarily mean softer.

January 2026 gave Columbus an eight-day stretch when temperatures never climbed above 20°F, tying a record. We even dropped to -9°F.

And then March arrived...

7.9°F warmer than normal.

Same winter. Completely different extremes.

We Can Actually See the Difference

This is where things got especially interesting for us.

We went into Near map and pulled aerial imagery of the same Central Ohio property during March across different years.

March 22, 2016: Brown and just starting to bud | March 22, 2026: Green and growing

Same property. Same Day. 10 years apart.

The aerial images themselves don't prove anything about climate change. Ohio has always had plenty of year-to-year weather variability. But they provide a pretty fascinating visual example of what the long-term numbers are telling us: our winters and springs aren't necessarily behaving the same way every year and over the long term, the averages are changing.