D.C. area February outlook: Cold and snow chances could return mid-month

Publish date: 2024-07-18

February is off to a dry and relatively mild start in the D.C. area the next several days. But might it offer the kind of volatility we saw in January, which was one of the wettest in four decades and delivered dramatic temperature swings from intense cold to record warmth? Models are leaning toward yes, even if the groundhog hasn’t officially weighed in yet.

The way it looks now, we should turn colder during the middle part of the month, when the chance of snow could return, before potentially trending warmer again toward the end of this 29-day, leap-year-lengthened February. In the end, we favor February to average 2 to 4 degrees higher than the average of 40 degrees, and we predict somewhere between 3 and 6 inches of snow compared with a normal of 5 inches.

For total precipitation — rain plus melted snow — we anticipate approximately 2.5 to 3.5 inches, not far from the month’s average of 2.62 inches and not nearly as wet as January.

Model forecasts

Here is Thursday morning’s 15-day outlook for temperatures and precipitation, covering the first half of February, from two leading computer models:

Nationally, temperatures could challenge the warmest on record for this time of year. However, notice that the warmth in the Mid-Atlantic is not as intense as the central United States. Meanwhile, the models predict precipitation to be near or less than half of normal.

Longer-range models (see below) show less of a consensus for the second half of February. However, they do agree on the idea of a colder middle part of the month around Presidents’ Day weekend into the following week, before perhaps swinging warmer again.

For precipitation, the models favor a drier second half of February, but there are three reasons to lean closer to normal instead: (1) January verified much wetter than models predicted; (2) We are currently in a strong El Niño, which tends to produce wetter winters here; and (3) the mid-month colder period should increase the odds of storminess thanks to clashing air masses and an expected blocking pattern in the atmosphere that tends to favor East Coast storms.

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Our best chances for cold and snow in February look to be around Feb. 16-25.

January recap: A case of weather whiplash

Our first month of 2024 delivered significant weather volatility. After above-normal temperatures much of the first two weeks, a mid-month cold snap plunged the region into a deep freeze. Washington’s coldest low for the month was 16 degrees on the 17th, but just nine days later the city recorded its warmest January reading of all time at 80 degrees on the 26th. Coincidentally, the month’s previous all-time high of 79 occurred on the same date, Jan. 26, 74 years ago.

The month’s average temperature of 39.8 degrees was 2.3 degrees warmer than normal, making this January the 30th warmest on record. This was slightly warmer than the 36.5-to-38.5-degree range we predicted in our January outlook.

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The 5.88 inches of total precipitation, which includes rain plus melted snow, was 3.02 inches above normal. It was the wettest January in 45 years and seventh-wettest on record. This was 0.88 inches wetter than the 3-to-5-inch range we predicted.

The 7.8 inches of snow was 2.9 inches above normal and the fifth-snowiest January since 2000. The snowfall verified inside our January prediction of 4 to 8 inches.

Many daily and a couple of monthly records were set in January. Here is the impressive rundown, in chronological order:

Saturday, Jan. 6

Tuesday, Jan. 9

Monday, Jan. 15

Friday, Jan. 19

Friday, Jan. 26

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