Meteorological winter goes into the record books as the warmest in recorded history
The end of February, even with the extra Leap Day, brought an end to meteorological winter. The meteorological seasons run every three months for easier stat keeping and lines up a bit better with our weather instead of the astronomical seasons. After the warmest December on record we had been tracking the winter warmth for a few months. January was also mild but February took the cake as the warmest on record by nearly two full degrees. That means that winter 2023-34 goes down as the warmest on record beating the old record of 1931-32 by a massive two degrees!
Checking out the top six warmest winters on record our previous winter also makes the list. The winter of 2022-23 is in sixth place with an average temperature of 31.2*.
Not only was our winter the warmest on record, but when you break it down by temperatures you see us break numerous records. A couple of impressive ones were the days with highs above 32* at 80 days and even more impressive nights with lows above freezing at 39 nights - both new records!
In addition, we saw more highs during December, February and January in the 50s, 60s and 70s than ever before. We recorded 15 days at or above 50* during those three months which beats the old record of 14 set twice during the winters of 2001-02 and 1879-80.
With all of the warmer temps over the winter months, we barely had any snowfall. Our biggest snow came at the beginning of January but our season snow total over the three winter months only reached a measly 19.5" which is below last year's low number of 26.4" and almost 20" below the average of 37.1"! It goes down tied as the 22nd least snowy meteorological winter on record!
Even though we were lacking on snowfall for the winter months, we did get a few good rain events and when it did snow the snow had a high water content so our total precipitation for December, January and February reached 6.33" which is almost a full inch above average for the three months and goes down as the 41st wettest meteorological winter.
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