The mid-winter thaw continues

By Jared Shelton News-Press NOW meteorologist

A mid-winter thaw is in full force this week across two-thirds of the continental United States, as an unseasonably warm air mass has expanded across parts of the Intermountain West, Great Plains and Midwest.

Afternoon temperatures have reached the 50s and 60s since Monday here in St. Joseph, well above our climatological average, which usually runs in the upper 30s this time of year. While warm for late January, the recent trend for the mild side has yet to break local records but is proving to be a complete 180 from what was otherwise a very cold and snowy month.

Now that January 2024 is in the books, it’s time to go over the chilly stats that many would rather leave behind. According to temperature records from Rosecrans Memorial Airport, about seven days fell within a few degrees of average, seven more ran well above average and a total of 17 days ran well below average. Many of the coldest periods arrived mid-month when a 10-day stretch of subfreezing temperatures and nearly two-day stretch of subzero temperatures settled into Northwest Missouri and Northeast Kansas.

Snowfall stats for St. Joseph are a bit less cut and dry, as Rosecrans does not record these numbers. According to my measurements taken Downtown, the St. Joseph area received approximately nine inches of snowfall through last month. Much of this fell on Jan. 9, when a winter storm swept across the area bringing 4- to 6-inch totals, followed by smaller amounts that came down in four separate snowfall events. Unlike below-average temperature trends of the past month, total snowfall turned out to be above average by about four inches locally.

Now Groundhog Day is upon us, and the current stretch of mild conditions begs the age-old question of how long this year’s winter will last. Groundhogs across the country will give different answers, none of which have better odds of predicting prevailing weather patterns than flipping a coin at random. Nothing against Punxsutawney Phil, that’s just the way it is. Luckily, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center has been working to bring better odds to the table, releasing the latest monthly temperature outlook this past Wednesday, drafted using a combination of probabilistic modeling, statistical methods and historical analogs.

Much like the warmer-than-normal December pattern which dominated the northern two-thirds of the country, February also is likely to trend on the warm side. Much of this can be attributed to El Nino, the dominating atmospheric pattern marked by warmer-than-normal sea surface temperature in the Equatorial Pacific. Although confidence is fairly high in the idea of an overall mild February, another hiatus from the prevailing El Nino pattern is possible before the winter season comes to a close.