January Was Very Warm In Vermont - And In A Lot Of Other Places

Warm temperatures this January in Vermont encouraged mixed precipitation
over snow for most of the month. Here, ice accumulates on a bush
with berries on January 12 in St. Albans

Well, that wasn't so bad. At least if you don't like bitter winter cold.

January, normally the coldest month of the winter, was quite warm, at least relatively speaking here  in Vermont.  Very many other places around the world were unusually toasty in January, too. I'll get into that in a minute.

In Burlington, Vermont, January's  average temperature came to 26.1 degrees which was a substantial 7.4 degrees warmer than normal.

Even with that amount of warmth, Burlington didn't quite make it into the Top 10 list of warmest Januaries.

The 10th warmest was 26.4 degrees in 1950. The very warmest was 31.2 degrees in 1906.

This January, the coldest it ever got in Burlington was minus 4, which is nothing, considering most daily record lows in Burlington are in the minus 20s.

Elsewhere in Vermont, both Montpelier and St. Johnsbury were 5.9 degrees warmer than average during January. Morrisville was 6.5 degrees warmer than average, Springfield was 6.8 degrees on the toasty side.

The January warmth in Burlington was part of a nationwide toasty opening to the year. Arctic air stayed bottled up in northern Canada and Alaska for almost the entire month, and warmish Pacific air kept flooding the contiguous United States coast to coast.

Dozens of cities across the nation had one of their top 10 warmest Januaries.  A few places in the southern Plains and Tennessee Valley, and maybe a couple in the Pacific Northwest set all-time records for warmest January.

There are already signs of spring.  Trees in the far Southeast are starting to leaf out two or three weeks ahead of schedule. Daffodils have been blooming in Atlanta much of this month.

Much of Europe was incredibly toasty in January as well, arguably more so than in the United States.  Moscow, Russia had its first January on record in which the average temperature was marginally above freezing. Every day in Oslo, Norway got above freezing. It reportedly did not snow all month in Oslo and in Helsinki, Finland.

Hamburg, Germany also is reporting its warmest January on record.  In Amsterdam, flowers than normally start to bloom in early April are blossoming now.

The only really cold spot I could find in the world in January was Alaska.  Even there, despite the consistent cold, it wasn't as extreme as you'd think. The "warmest" temperature for the month in Fairbanks was 4 degrees, which is the lowest "highest" temperature for January. Still, January in Fairbanks was only the 17th coldest on record, says climatologist and Alaska expert Brian Brettschneider.

It will be interesting to see how January ranks globally for temperatures compared to the past. I think it has a real shot of being the warmest on record, globally.

Back here in Vermont, precipitation wasn't as extreme as the temperatures.

It was also a sort of wet January in the Champlain Valley but a little on the dry side elsewhere in Vermont. . Burlington had 2.61 inches of rain and melted snow and ice, which is about a half inch above normal for the month.

Places like Morrisville and St. Johnsbury were slightly on the dry side.

As always, we can't tell from this vantage point how February will shake out. This morning, the first day of February, it felt like the winter had already advanced a bit toward spring.  Outside my house in St. Albans, Vermont,  we had a dusting of sugar snow overnight. It was very mild for an early February dawn - upper 20s -  and the air had an aroma that I strongly associate with early March.

Temperatures are forecast to remain above normal at least through the entire first week of February, and there's a good chance the relatively mild weather could extend beyond that.  

Cool Weather Returns To Vermont, But Much Of World Has Had Hot Spring

Extreme warmth in the Arctic (dark red) more than offset
relative coolness in central North America, southern South
America and parts of Asia during March

Here in Vermont, after a relatively warm spell during the middle of this month, we're back into a cool regime.

High tempereratures this time of year should be around 60 degrees, give or take.

Highs over the past couple of days have been closer to 50 degrees or so, and that state of affairs should continue most of this week. 

Meanwhile, some other parts of the nation have been quite chilly, with two snowstorms having already affected part of the Plains and Midwest in the past few days. A third snowstorm is brewing in the Rockies and High Plains of Colorado and Wyoming over the next couple of days.

Vermont, or the Northern Plains, are not the entire world, of course. The world, it turns out, has been having a generally very warm spring, in keeping with trends over the past few years and even decades. Climate change is at least partly to blame for that warm trend.   (And yes, I'm fully aware it's autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. Work with me here.)

We can start by looking at March. That month was a little chillier than average here and Vermont and it was quite cold compared to average out in the northern Plains and northeastern Rockies of the United States. Montana was especially chilly with mean temperatures as much as 10 degrees below normal.

But the world as a whole had its second warmest March on record, says NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information.  March was also tied for fifth place in the list of all months with the greatest departure from normal on the hot side, so March was a pretty remarkable month globally.

March also seemed awfully extreme, with notable cold actually popping up, as noted in central North America and to a lesser extent around India.

This chill was more than offset by incredible warmth for the season in Alaska, northwestern Canada, most of Europe and northern Asia, especially Siberia, southern Africa and Australia.

April data isn't available yet, since we have a couple more days to go in the month. Still, there have been some pretty impressive pockets of early season heat.

Vietnam just in the past week recorded its hottest temperature on record - 110 degrees. It's normally in the 80s this time of year in the part of Vietnam that was so hot.

This tmight be temporary, but Arctic sea ice extent was the lowest on record for the season as of mid-April. Greenland was as much as 36 degrees warmer than normal earlier this month, and the summer melt season got underway too early for sure. Whether these worrisome trend continues into the summer depends upon weather patterns and cloud cover over the next few months in the Arctic.

Wildfires have started up in weird places for April, including moors in West Yorkshire, England during a record Easter heat wave. Those record and near-record Easter highs in Great Britain ncluded 74 degrees in Edinburgh, Scotland, 70 degrees in Northern Ireland and 76 degrees in London.

In northern and central India, intense heat has settled in and is expected to last into May.  While punishing heat waves always occur in this region before the seasonal monsoons set in, this year is similar to recent years in which the heat arrives earlier in the spring than what had long been considered normal.

As always, with or without climate change, there have been some cold patches, too.

While part of Australia had that record late season heat in mid-April, a sharp cold front from Antarctica brought very chilly air into western Australia and New Zealand earlier this month. Parts of southeastern Australia had its coolest morning in three decades for so early in their autumn season.

Of course, it remains to be seen where big heat waves next develop around the world. With summer fast approaching in the Northern Hemisphere, we run the risk, especially with climate change, of seeing frequent, intense, near record heat waves like we did in 2018.

In all depends upon the underlying weather patterns and cycles.