After this past weekend in the upper 70s, you may have put those down vests back in the closet, but not so fast! Already we have 30s in the forecast tonight with some areas to the north falling close to freezing. In our recent history, you remember the big February freeze of 2021(13° on the 16th)....the good news is that after that week in the Teens and 20s, we never froze again the rest of the season. And there was the freezing Christmas week of 2022 (15° on December 23rd) but then the whole of 2023 we never froze again!
I bring this up because this past January we dropped to 25° on the 15th, 18° on the 16th and 20° on the 17th. If that past is any guide, then another hard freeze is very unlikely.
However, dropping into the mid 30s will happen as early as tonight and then again this Sunday and a few locations north might have a light freeze right at 32°. So a light freeze for outlying rural areas is possible this weekend:
The American Model follows suit with cold temps tonight and Sunday morning but that’s it for the rest of the month (the model runs to Feb 28th, so almost the end of the month! Don’t forget that darn Leap Day!).
Looking at the Climate Prediction Center forecasts, we’ll be Near Normal the next two weeks and normal lows are in the upper 40s:
I don’t see that anything will change with the February-April outlook either, which was published last month:
I am not going to give any gardening advice, but I think we are safe from another hard freeze this season. A light freeze here and there? Possible but we should get to March without too much cold weather!
Frank
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