Not a warm February

Does it feel like something is missing this February?

February High Temperatures

This table shows High temperatures for every day in February going back to 1999. February 1918 is also included over on the right for some extra history.

The orange squares in the table represent days that had Highs of 0°C or warmer. Last February we had 11 of those warm winter days, in 2016 we had 20, and even a century ago in 1918 there were 11.

In 2018 so far we've had 2 days above 0°C (although one of those was really just a carryover from the day before - Valentine's day was above freezing from midnight to 5AM. At 6AM it dropped to -5°C and then kept falling). Right now the forecasts aren't predicting any big heatwaves before the end of the month, although we might get one or two more warm days.

February Highs of 0°C or Above

This chart shows the number of days with Highs of 0°C or more during February, going back to 1881. Every 4th year here was a leap year and has an extra day, so that skews the counts a tiny bit.

Looking at the 5-Year average we can see that the number of warm February days hasn't actually changed that much over the years. In the 1880s it was around 9 days, and then it climbed up to around 11 days, before dropping in the 1940s. Then it climbed again to hit 15 days in the early late 1980s and again in the late 1990s, and since then it has fallen a bit to a current average of about 12.

The 2 warm days that we have had so far in February 2018 isn't historically-low, but it is pretty uncommon. Since 2000 there have only been 5 years with less than 10 days: 2001 at 6, 2003 at 9, 2007 at 6, 2009 at 5, and 2014 at 3. And since 1881 there have only been 10 other February's with 2-or-less days above freezing - 1881, 1887, 1904, 1922, 1936, 1950, 1962, 1969, 1979, and 1993.

I don't want to give the impression that this is a super-cold February though. As the title says, this February is not-warm, but it also hasn't been extremely cold.

The Warm & Cold Days

This chart shows the 0°C-or-warmer days again, and it also includes the days with Low temperatures that were -20°C-or-colder.

Right now in February we've had 9 Lows below -20°C, which is a bit more than usual - the average is about 6. But recently 2004 had 13 and 2011 had 15, and if we go way back 1979 had 25 and 1936 & 1904 had 28. So February 2018 is not-warm, but it's also not cold.

The 5-Year averages in this chart show how the number of warm days (0°C) and cold days (-20°C) have changed over time. In the 1880s there were typically more cold days, but after that the warm & cold days bounced around each other for decades. By the 1980s the cold days had finally dropped off enough that the warm days were clearly in the lead. Right now the average number of cold days is around 6, while the average number of warm days is double that at 12.

Those are just averages though and sometimes we do still get more cold days than warm: 2009 had 5 warm days and 6 cold; 2011 had 10 warm and 15 cold; 2014 had 3 warm and 13 cold; and now 2018 currently has had 2 warm and 9 cold.

Going forward, lets take a look at March:

First things first: March does still get -20°C days. Recently the average has been about 4 Lows of -20°C or colder, although years like 2002 had 11, and 2011 had 9. But 2010, 2012, 2015 and 2016 all had 0.

But on the flipside the average number of days with Highs of 0°C or warmer is much higher, at 20. Recently that has ranged from 2011 with 11 and 2014 with 13, up to 2010 with 28 and 2016 with 2019.

2002 was the only recent March that had more cold days than warm days (11 cold versus 8 warm) and before that you need to go all the way back to 1932.

So March still isn't summer, but it should feel noticeably more warm than what we've seen this month. We'll be back at the end of February with with the monthly recap to see where things end up.