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.