Warm and Sopping Wet Start to a New Decade!

The real "news" about January 2020 as far as local weather was the rain. Yes, winter in the Northwest tends to be a bit drippy, but we outdid ourselves last month with a solid bucket of rain nearly 9 inches deep. But soggy conditions were not the only story. It was downright balmy at times with pineapple express conditions. I had a few personal record highs and even a couple of record warm low temps!

All of this sub-tropical warm and wet was even countered with a little bit of winter in the form of a couple of weak snow producing systems that passed through mid-month. What a weather month!

Keeping with my monthly reporting tradition I'll start with temps for January. Overall the month was relatively warm, seriously warm. The average overnight low was 6° above my established normal and daytime highs averaged nearly 4 above. The warmest daytime high temp arrived on the 31st when my merc hit 59.2°, other areas around the metro were above 60°. That was one of 11 days that managed to break into the 50's and one of 4 days to set local daily record highs last month. The warmest overnight low came on the 31st as well when the mercury barely dipped below 50 with a 49.8° mark that is a daily record warm minimum temp for me. It was one of 7, yes SEVEN daily record warm minimum temps last month! On the cold side of the equation there wasn't much to talk about and no daily record lows or record cold highs were even remotely challenged. The coldest morning came on the 15th with a 30.9° mark, yeah, above 30 degrees for the coldest temp in JANUARY! That was one of only 2 days below freezing all month long. This is also only the third time I have recorded a January with a coldest low above 30°. The coldest daytime high arrived on the 13th when the merc topped out at 37.9° and wintry mixed precip was about. I can't overstate this rather warm January. 17 days had low temps above 40°. This has been the warmest 'mean temp' January I have had dating to 2002. In fairness, when you see the precipitation results below you understand why that happened.   

Before I mention the precipitation totals, it should be noted that the wettest months of the year in this area are typically November and December. Those two months average at my house close to 8 inches each. January and February are wet, but typically average closer to 7 inches. January 2020 manages to put 8.94 inches in the bucket, not a record, but genuinely wet. January 2020 was my second wettest January dating to 2006 when I had 11.43 inches in the bucket and narrowly edging out January 2008 when 8.93 inches fell.

The incriminating factor was the fact that I measured precipitation on every single day in January. Officially I had 29 rainy days because I don't consider less than 0.04 inch of rain as "rainy." It is also notable that I did not record a single sunny day. Yes a few times the sun cracked through for a couple hours, but the whole month was all about those Northwest clouds and their innate ability to trap warm air at the surface. I measured 15 days with a 1/4 inch or more or rain, 4 days above a 1/2 inch and two of those were over one inch. The rest of the month was a seemingly relentless drip from above. The wettest day came on the 25th when I measured 1.25 inch of rain. Snowfall was below average for January but snowfall in this area is a bit fickle. I had 6 days with snow in the breeze but only two of those produced any sticking snow and both of those events were light and short lived. The most sticking snow I received was about 0.75 inch that lay on the ground on the 17th and was all but deceased by lunchtime. That whole period from about the 12th through the 17th was a "snow warning" that really never materialized below 500 feet of elevation and really was limited to high elevations above 1000 feet. I did receive a total of 1.29 inch of snow but of that only 1.25 inch stuck on the ground.

Looking ahead to this month we were rather toasty warm last night when at 12:01 AM my thermometer was at 59.2° following yesterdays high at 11:59 PM. The temp started falling overnight and continues falling to this moment where I now stand at 47.7°. The NWS seems to think that cold air will infiltrate our region over the next two days and snowflakes may start flying again tomorrow. We shall see. February is typically our transition away from wintry weather but it is no stranger to heavy snow and locals may recall that three of the last six Februaries brought significant snowfall and led all months those years in snow totals. For me at my station, February 2014 had 11.10 inches, February 2018 had 8.50 inches, and last February had 7.50 inches. You never know when it's gonna snow. If February passes without any snow, March is also no stranger to wintry weather, but I have only had one March that had a lot of snow and that was in 2012 when 7.85 inches fell. In short, it is still winter and very well may continue to be winter for the next 4-8 weeks. Only time will tell.

Soak it up my friends, soak it up.

Happy New Year!

Well 2019 is toast and we are now marching into a new decade. December weather wise went out with a bit of a warm whimper.

December had no really cold mornings and daily averages were about 3 above normal on both ends of the day. We had a month filled with clouds and rain which is typical, but the amount of rain was still only about 65% of normal at my locations and similar results were measured around the metro area. Had it not been for a light round of flurries very late on November 30th that carried over to December 1st in the early AM I would have had the first December in five years with zero snow. As it was the snow was barely measurable and did not make it to sunrise.

We do really need some epic levels of precipitation. The last several years have been sub par on rainfall. I hope this new year provides some needed rain and snow.

Temps were not drastic on either extreme just a bit warmer on average overall. The average overnight low came it at a warm 36.95° more than 3° above normal and the average high was nearly equally warm at 46.25° nearly 3° over. The coldest overnight low was 28° on the 26th, which is a garden variety value for a cloudless night in December. Yawn. That was one of only three nights under 30° and just seven nights with freezing temps. The warmest overnight low was a shocker when the merc manged to stay above 50°, yes FIFTY degrees for the low. That occurred on the 20th when the thermometer bottomed out at a balmy 50.2° which ultimately led to the warmest day of the month when it reached 56.3° later in the day. The chilliest afternoon high was a crisp 38.5° on Christmas Eve which as it turned out was the only day that failed to reach 40°. December had four days that manged to push the red line into the 50's.

Overall we did not even come anywhere near any daily record lows nor did we come anywhere near the coldest daytime highs of Decembers past. It wasn't that the temperature was excessively warm last month, it was on average three degrees, it was just so consistently warm rather than a bunch of extremes.  It was simply warm for December, the whole month. I did set one local daily high temp record on the 20th when that 56.3° temp was recorded.

The precipitation side of last month was equally boring. We had one pineapple express event that dropped nearly half of the month's rainfall over a three day period from the 19th through the 21st during which 2.48 inches fell including the wettest day of the whole YEAR at 1.02 inches on the 21st. December yielded 9 days with over a quarter inch of rain and 14 days with measurable precipitation. The aforementioned snow was barely measurable with a total of just a few millimeters on the early morning of the 1st that briefly accumulated to about 0.1 inch.

The year ended with 138 sunny days, 107 rainy days, and 14 days with snow or ice. On the cold side we had 59 sub freezing mornings, 3 sub 20° mornings, only 13 days that failed to reach 40° and every single day in 2019 manged to make above the freezing mark by afternoon. The coldest overnight low was a chilly 19.4° and the coldest daytime high was 34.5° both of these were in March! A total of 8.3 inches of snow fell with nearly all of it coming in February. That snow total was a tad under my 19 year average. Rainfall for the calendar year of 2019 (rainfall is typically measure seasonally from September to August), was only 26.63 inches about HALF of my local normal of 53.36 inches. It's time for us all to do a rain dance, we need it!

On the warm side of things, we had absolutely no days at 100° or more, and only nine days that busted into 90s. 190 days managed to climb to 60° or more, and the hottest temp was 98.8°. The warmest overnight low was a warm and cozy, 65.5°.

We have a fabulous northern maritime climate here that just tends to avoid the extremes. 2019 was no exception. Think about this, 237 days in 2019 saw overnight lows of 50° or more. That is 2/3 of the year with toasty warm lows! 190 days in 2019 saw high temps at or above 60° which is more than half the year!

Looking forward into 2020 we are starting off mild with today's temp already tickling the 50° zone. Weather pros however are watching closely at things over Alaska. That notoriously cold state has been experiencing some of the coldest weather in a decade. The jet stream could make a correction and drag a bunch of that hyper frosty arctic air over the top of us and things can get wintry really fast. Happy New Year!