Cold Cutting Off

Temperatures have remained below freezing for seven out of eleven days this month with a big dip in the jetsream allowing arcitc air to flow in from Canada. Even Florida was feeling the bitter cold! The average high temperature from now through the end of the month is 34 degrees for Windsor Locks. That is the coldest average high temperature of the year, so you could say we are in the dead of winter right now. In February, the average high slowly increases.

But it looks like some milder air is on the way! The upper left square on the graphic below shows the 12Z WRF computer model featuring isotherms (lines of equal temperature). The green color shows temperatures climbing into the low 40s by Friday. That means temperatures will be above average! But neither the reccent cold weather or the milder weather represents something out of the ordinary. As my teachers in college always said in school (also a quote from Mark Twain), "climate is what you expect, weather is what you get". Climate represents an average of weather conditions over a period of time. So it is normal for temperatures to fluctute above or below the average on a daily basis.