WeatherSmart: Boston’s warmest February on record, 2nd-warmest winter

That’s it. That was winter.

One might be forgiven if they’re wondering whether Old Man Winter decided to skip past southern New England these last three months.

With the calendar flipping from February to March, we can now look back on just how warm and snow-less this winter was for Boston. While spring doesn’t officially begin until March 19, meteorologists measure seasons by month, and so the end of February marked the end of meteorological winter.

Happy Meteorological Spring! And what a beautiful #sunrise in #Boston. While astronomical #spring does not begin till Mar 19, this marks the end of meteorological #winter for 2019/20. What are your highlights from this winter? We would love to see your pictures! #mawx #riwx #ctwx pic.twitter.com/YUbVdIdNg2

— NWS Boston (@NWSBoston) March 1, 2020

Boston finished this winter with an average three-month temperature of 37.6 degrees, according to preliminary data from the National Weather Service office in Taunton. That was good enough for the city’s second-warmest winter on record (again, that’s averaging the full months of December, January and February all together), and February’s average monthly temperature of 38.1 degrees tied it for the warmest February in city history with 1925 and 2018. Official meteorological records in Boston date back to 1872.

The snow side of things painted an equally un-Bostonian picture of winter. Only 15.1 inches of snow has fallen so far this winter season, a whopping 19 inches below average and good enough for the 15th-least snowy winter on record.

Even worse — at least if you’re a snow-lover or a kid severely deprived of snow days — is that about half of this winter’s snow (7.1 inches) came way back on the first three days of December. Since Dec. 4, Boston’s seen a grand total of just 8 inches of snowfall, a remarkably low number for the peak months of a Boston winter.

If you’re hoping to see any late signs of winter, though, there’s not a ton to point to. This week is generally looking mild and wet, with one potential snow chance by Friday night into Saturday. Right now, though, even that snow chance doesn’t look especially promising, although it bears watching.

In the meantime, grab the umbrellas and leave the parkas: highs on Tuesday will be near 60 degrees, but a soaking rain moves through, starting late on Monday night. A breezy cool-down starts on Wednesday night, but even then temperatures drop back to near 50 degrees for highs on Thursday and Friday, a few degrees above the average for the first week of March.

If you push a little further out, though, the Climate Prediction Center’s (CPC) 8-14 day outlook puts Boston and New England firmly under the warmer (and wetter) zone for the second week of March. And the CPC’s 30-day monthly outlook for March also has Boston and New England — you guessed it — warmer-than-average.

In other words, there’s not much pointing to Boston’s warm and snow-deprived winter getting any sort of a significant March revival, although it’s probably still a tad early to completely call this winter a dud.

But it’s also hard to say winter’s over when it never really seemed to begin in the first place.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/2Terrce