Despite Daily Snows Over Past 6 Days, Odd, Dry Vermont February Unfolding

Dry, bare ground on the shores of partly frozen Lake
Champlain in Georgia, Vermont on February 13. This
has been a very dry month so far. 

 Briefly heavy snow showers very early this Monday morning meant that today was the sixth consecutive day with measurable precipitation in Burlington, Vermont. 

Barely measurable, though.  

Melt down the snow we've gotten only a quarter inch of liquid in those six days. The month's total precipitation so far is just 0.28 inches.  

February is normally the driest month of the year, but so far this February is shaping up to be among the driest on record.

That's a big departure from everything since late June.  Most months since then have been decidedly on the wet side in Vermont.  I suppose we needed the break.

What makes this dry February unusual is that it's happening during an unusually warm month. 

Almost all of the top driest Februaries on record were very cold. You'd get a constant feed of Arctic air during those arid Februaries.  That frigid air from northern Canada is almost devoid of moisture. And that northerly flow blocks any wet storms that want to invade from the south or west.

During warm Februaries, we often see moist winds from the south and southwest, and storms going by just to our west to bring rounds of precipitation. Often in those warm Februaries, that precipitation is rain or ice and  not snow, but still, it's stuff falling from the sky. 

The only other warm February I could find that was warm, but also very dry was 1991. That month only had about a half inch of precipitation, making it the fifth driest February on record in Burlington.  February, 1991 was decidedly on the warm side, coming in 3.6 degrees above normal. I did find a couple other very dry Februaries that were only slightly colder than average. 

This February is really warm, though, despite the colder weather we're experiencing today and tonight, the month is running nearly 9 degrees warmer than average so far.  

This won't be the driest February on record. Those honors go to the frigid February of 1978, with only 0.21 inches of precipitation in Burlington. (Northwestern Vermont mostly missed out on the epic New England Blizzard of '78 that month. It did hit central and southern Vermont).

The next chance of any precipitation around northern Vermont isn't until Thursday or Friday. So far, that  storm doesn't look very impressive, either, but you never know.

As I mentioned, February is a dry month, with the average precipitation coming out at 1.77 inches. Burlington's  tenth driest month on record logged 0.75 inches of precipitation.

 It would take only one mid-sized storm between now and February 29 to take us out of the running for making it into the top 10 list of driest Februaries. I said February 29 because this is a leap year. 

Even so, this is so far yet another very odd month for weather in Vermont. At least this time, the oddness is pretty benign, and we're not suffering through any destructive storms which have seemed so frequent since last summer.