January continues year of above normal warmth
Jack Hughes
Average temps over last 12 months
January continued a trend started almost a year ago with temperatures across a large portion of the United States coming in well above normal.
The warmth covered the entire eastern United States from Maine to Florida and west to California. Only the extreme northern states and the Pacific Northwest region had a cooler than normal January.
Across southwest Pennsylvania, January temperatures averaged 34.6 degrees and this was 6.2 degrees above normal. Temperature departures from normal of a few degrees can sometimes go unnoticed, but a departure of over 6 degrees will have most folks talking.
Warmer than normal temperatures also allowed much of our precipitation to fall as rain rather than snow. A trace of rain or snow fell on 29 of the 31 days in January with measurable amounts on 22 of those days. Only 2 days had no precipitation.
The last time our area had below normal temperatures was in January of 2015 when temperatures averaged 1.7 degrees below average. Starting with last February every month had temperatures above the average.
Many scientists claim last year was one of the warmest ever. It certainly was across our area and much of the planet. The question now becomes will this warm trend continue or is it just part of our ever changing climate? Don鈥檛 forget that at one time ice covered much of northern Pennsylvania and at another time dinosaurs roamed our woods. The bigger question is what influences if any are human activities playing in this warmth?
Looking ahead the NOAA Climate Prediction Center is calling for above normal temperatures in February across most of the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The only exception is New York and New England.
Lastly, it should be noted that the our area did not record any below zero temperatures during the month of January. The coldest reading was +2 on the Jan. 9.