Your thinking is right! The winter of 2009-10 had a number of events. From the earliest measurable snowfall on record in December, to the deep freeze in early January, and the 6th coldest February on record with another measurable snow. The El Nino pattern was in full swing this winter as system after system rolled up the Texas coast with plenty of rain, clouds, and too many dreary gray days to count. Even though it is now March, we still can’t seem to shake the cold, or the rain. I, like many others are anxious for Spring to get here!
Let’s start with temperatures. Overall the winter was colder than average. When you take the 90 days of climatological winter (December, January, February), the average temperature is about 53.8 degrees. This number comes from averaging all of the normal highs and lows for those months. This winter we finished at 49.0 degrees. Almost 4 degrees below normal, which is pretty significant for a three month average. In south Louisiana we don’t have any average highs that are below 60 degrees, but this year we failed to reach a 60 degree high 52 times! In fact only 26 of the 90 days did we have an above average temperature day! We dropped below the freezing mark 17 times this winter, compared to only 7 times last winter. We had almost as many days below freezing this winter as we’ve had for the past three! There weren’t any breaks this year either. We’ll go warm, then cold, then warm again in a normal winter. When I’m talking about breaks, I mean a day where it hits 70 or higher. Over the past 10 years, we’ve hit 70 degrees about 33 times on average. This year, only 17. 80 degrees? Forget about it…last winter we hit 80 once, this year..0! By the way, February 2010 was tied for the 6th coldest February on record. Only 2 days were at or above average. The average temperature was 47.4 degrees, normal is 54.3. We had 6 days in January where we dropped into the 20s. The lowest temp of the winter…20 degrees on January 10th, sandwiched in between a pair of 21s on the 9th and the 11th. And you wonder why everything is brown outside!
Snow…Twice this winter. December 4th and February 12th. We’ve had two snows in one winter before, but never three. I was really hoping to break that record last week, but the snow never came. December 4th we picked up 0.5″ of snow, and on February 12th we picked up 0.4″.
Rain…Above normal for the winter. A total of 18.62″, or a little over 3″ above. We had over 10″ of rain in December, almost 6″ in February. We caught a break in January with only 2.02″. Probably because the first 10 days of January were so cold that the air couldn’t hold any moisture!
March is coming in like a lion with the rain, and eventually this afternoon the wind. It should be cloudy tomorrow, with sunshine returning Wednesday and holding for the rest of the week. Temperatures aren’t expected to climb to normal until late this weekend when we might hit 70 on Sunday.
StormTeam3 Meteorologist Dave Baker
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