Most Of World Has Been Warm Lately, But Great Falls, Montana Is New Global Ice Box

The departure from normal of temperatures across the globe Tuesday.
Blues and purples are below normal, oranges and reds are
above normal. Almost everywhere except the United States was warm.

It's been pretty damn cold over the past month in much of the United States and parts of southern Canada.

That's especially true in the northern Rockies and northern Plains of the United States and adjacent areas of southern Canada. Those areas have been consistently the coldest place on Earth, relative to average.

Of course, this area isn't THE coldest spot on Earth, but just the furthest below normal, just to be clear.

Montana seems to be the epicenter of this extreme and long cold wave.

In the opening days of March, some areas in this region had their coldest temperatures on record for the month. Elk Park, Montana was 46 below this week. If verified, that would be the coldest temperature on record for the entire state for March.

Cities in Montana that set their all-time March low temperatures this week include Eureka at -23, Miles City at -31 and Livingston at -27.

Elsewhere, North Platte, Nebraska reached 25 below early this week, setting a March record there.

To give you an idea of how miserable it's been in Montana, let's dig deep into the city of Great Falls. On Sunday, the city had a high of -8 and a low of -32, which is incredible 50 degrees below normal. I don't remember the last time I've seen a departure from normal that big anywhere.

For comparison, if it were 50 degrees below normal here in Burlington, Vermont yesterday, the high and low temperature would have been -14 and -32, and that would have established a record for the coldest day of any day in any month on record. Thank goodness that didn't happen and it was only 11 degrees colder than average Wednesday!

Back in Great Falls, each of the past 31 days have been at least 15 degrees colder than normal and 20 of them were 30 or more degrees chillier than average. You think it wouldn't snow much at such low temperatures, but Great Falls had 32.3 inches of snow in February. It's certainly been a winter to remember in Montana.

It'll sort of warm up in Great Falls and the rest of Montana later this week, but it will still be a good 10 to 15 degrees colder than normal. The number of consecutive days below freezing there is now 32 days, which is a new record, and that streak will grow this week.

I'm sure Great Falls is lovely, but I'm glad I'm not there.

As the Weather Channel points out, the United States is sticking out like a sore thumb in global temperature maps this week, as you can see in the illustration in this post. Cold air which is normally up in the Arctic has been displaced southward by a ridge of high pressure over and near Alaska.

That high pressure has brought record warmth to the northern tip of Alaska. Most of the Bering Straight off the west coast of Alaska between the Pacific and Arctic oceans is ice-free, the first time anybody has seen such conditions in that part of the world this time of year.

Despite the cold in central North America, preliminary data indicates that February, 2019 will likely come in as the world's third warmest on record. Part of the counterbalance came from Alaska, much of Siberia, parts of western Europe and Australia, which have reported record warmth over the past month or so.