Up And Down January Proves Snowy; But Not THAT Much On Ground

The first day of January, 2019, featured no snow on the ground in
St. Albans, Vermont and it almost looked springlike, but......

January in Vermont has ended and February has begun, so it's time to assess the weather during the first month of 2019.

It certainly was an up and down month, as we'd go a few days with warmth, then a few days with cold, and back again.

There were never more than six days in a row with continuous below freezing temperatures. Thaws were frequent, but not huge or particularly long lasting.

Cold waves came in abundance, but they, too, were not anywhere close to record-setting.

In the end, Burlington's mean temperature for the month was. 17.3 degrees, or 1.4 degrees chillier than normal. Other locations in Vermont were a bit colder than that. Montpelier's 13.5 degree average temperature for January was 3.5 degrees colder than normal. St. Johnsbury was 2.9 degrees chillier than normal during January, 2019.

Even though temperatures yo-yo'd back and forth all month, we never did hit any super extremes. Burlington's warmest day during January was 44 degrees and the coldest was minus 16.  Neither of these temperatures came anywhere close to setting any records.

The frequent temperature changes during January hint at the idea there was a lot of storminess, and sure enough, the month was wet and snowy.

Burlington has 3.29 inches of precipitaition which was about 1.2 inches more than normal. It fell just outside the Top 10 list of wettest Januaries. Other places were wetter. Montpelier had 3.71 inches of precipitation, and St. Johnsbury was soggy at 4.64 inches.

Much of this precipitation came down as snow, of course, and Vermont was really snowy. Burlington's 41.8 inches of snow for the month made this January the third snowiest. Only the Januaries of 2010 (48.4 inches) and 1978 (42.4 inches) were snowier.

....by the last day of the month, there was nearly a foot of snow on
the ground in St. Albans after frequent snows during January.  

Because of the frequent thaws, there was never that much snow on the ground despite the amount of flakes coming from the sky.

The most snow on the ground in Burlington was briefly 18 inches. There were only five days during the month in which the snow depth exceeded 10 inches.

If you go a little higher in elevation, the snow stayed on the ground a little better.

On the final day of the month, there was 33 inches of snow on the ground in Waterbury, 31 inches in Pomfret and 30 inches in Sheffield. The summit of Mount Mansfield had an impressive 98 inch deep snow cover.

Northern New England had a lot of snow in January, and southern New England had very little. Boston only had 2.1 inches of snow in January. Providence, Rhode Island only managed 1.6 inches.

There's no such thing as normal, really, since the normal for any period is the some total of a month's ups and downs.

Still, we like to compare things to "normal." Especially as we look ahead into this new month.  February usually is the point at which we start getting past the heart of winter. By later in February, the sun feels a little stronger, and thaws become a little more likely.

Then again, it can get brutally cold any time in February. It has been known to get into the 20s and 30s below any time during the second month of the year in Vermont. We had something like ten mornings in a row in Vermont during February 1979 when the temperature stayed almost continuously below zero, bottoming out in the 30s below zero. Some of state's biggest snowstorms have come in February.

On the other hand, there's Februaries like 1981, in which temperatures were in the 50s and 60s for more than a week. Or February, 2017, when temperatures soared into the 70s in Burlington and Bennington. Or even last year, when Bennington topped out at a summery 78 degrees.

Of course, it's impossible to know what this month will bring. It's off to a somewhat chilly start this morning, but nothing out of the ordinary for February. It's going to warm up starting Sunday, and the first half of next week will feature thawing. Beyond that is anyone's guess.