This time I'll start with precipitation as the month came in bone dry looking more like Eastern Washington than Western Washington with just 1.86 inches of rain in a month that tends to produce closer to six inches. I did record 10 days with measurable precipitation but mostly drizzle aside from the 2 days with more than a 1/4 inch. The wettest day was the 28th with 0.64 inch that led the lion of March in, but that's a story for next month.
February managed to produce snow on the 24th, but a very meager 0.5 inch at my house. It turned out that this minor snow event was highly localized as some areas saw more than an inch of fluffy snow. Some arctic air hung over the area for nearly a week and the tiny dusting of snow stayed on the ground in the shady areas for a few days.
Temps were the real wild animal of February. Despite the overall month coming in at an almost exact statical normal, Pat Timm's expression of "normal is just a collection of extremes" was ever present last month. The warmest temp of the month was a daily record high of 64.2º on the 11th which was literally 1/2 degree off my local all time high for any February in the last 21 years. The lover's month produced another daily record high on the 12th at 61.5º for two 60+ highs last month. But February was just getting started and these two warm days were the top of the roller coaster. Some modified arctic air decided to float over the top of us later in the month and it managed to deliver a few daily records for chilly weather. From the 22nd to the 25th four straight local daily record lows happened. The coldest being a 14.8º mark that I though might be my 21 year record low for February but it was short by 0.1 degree. February is not noted for frigid over night lows but that arctic mass had other ideas. That was one of two mornings with temps below 20º last month. I even had one daily record low max temp when the mercury topped out at 36.4º on the 22nd. That day was a day of strange timing. A weather system moved through the area in the afternoon dumping a chilly 0.19 inch of rain. Had that disturbance come in a little earlier over the top of the 23º morning low, that could have been a 4 inch snow event.
There were only five days recording temps below freezing and the aforementioned two mornings with sub 20º marks. Also the two warms days above 60º. Six days last month managed to stay above 40º all day and night. There we only three days that failed to reach 40º at all but everyday managed to get above freezing. We had 10 rain days and 4 sunny days.
The very tail end of February saw some heavier rain and that lead into the first few days of March with drenching rains to start us off. We'll have to cover that next month.
