February National Weather Full Of Drama, Here in Vermont, Yawn

February, 2021 in Vermont featured several light snowfalls,
like this one in St. Albans, Vermont on February 9.

February's weather statistics are in the books, and for much of the nation, it was quite the wild ride.  

Much of the nation, especially the middle third of it, had a very cold February overall. Though the beginning and the end were warm, that intense cold wave mid month really drove the average temperatures down. 

At least 154 cites in the Lower 48 had one of their top 10 coldest Februaries on record. Nine stations had their coldest February, never mind Top 10. 

Winter storms blasted most of the nation, and heavy precipitation for February had led to flooding on a good chunk of Appalachia.

It was a February to remember in the weather department, except here in Vermont. 

In the Green Mountain State, temperatures in February came out right near normal.   There were no real extremes of heat or cold.  Precipitation was below normal, but not by all that much. Snowfall was near normal. 

In Burlington, the mean temperature for February came out at 21.8 degrees, just 0.3 degrees on the warm side. Montpelier was an outlier, coming in more than two degrees cooler than normal, but that is probably because of missing data from February 27 and 28.

Places like St. Johnsbury and Springfield came out very close to normal.

The highest and lowest temperatures of the month were nothing special, either. The coldest night in Burlington got down to minus 5 and the warmest day was 44 degrees.

For perspective, the coldest February temperature on record in Burlington is minus 30 and the highest was 72 degrees. Yeah, we never came remotely close. 

Now, as of March 1, it's meteorological spring. That, as I've said before is for neat record keeping for climatologists.  Meteorological spring runs from today to May 31.

The character of March in Vermont usually, but not always, changes markedly from the opening day to the closing bell on the 31st. Often, we are deep in the depths of winter on the opening day and it's spring by the 31st. 

We'll see how this year turns out, but, judging from the start, it March seems to want to take its usual course 

The opening week of March in Vermont will be cold and dry. There are uncertain signs that things will start to warm up in the second week.  

March is fickle, though. Many of our biggest snowstorms on record were in March. Think the Pi Day Blizzard of 2017 (30.4 inches in Burlington); the big snowstorm of March 6-7, 2011 (25.8 inches) and Blizzard of '93 (22.4 inches)

Yet, it's been as high as 84 degrees in Burlington and elsewhere in Vermont (1946 and 1998). And it can get more than nippy. It was 37 below on March 4, 1938 in St. Albans, the coldest it's been anywhere in New England in March. 

Severe floods have happened in March, too. (See: March, 1936 and Montpelier in 1992). 

So expect anything.