Our cold winter rolls on for another day with temperatures that only climb to around 30° this afternoon. For perspective, we should be around 40° in mid to late February. Not only are temperatures cold today, but that stubborn breeze is back after a short break yesterday. Northwest winds will gust to near 30 mph and make it feel closer to 20° this afternoon.
No, it’s not your imagination, this has been a cold winter. Not just with cold days, but persistent cold days. Usually in New England, even in the cold winters, we get a random warm day here and there. That hasn’t been the case this year. In the graphic below, we get our “average first” day by lining up all the first days that happened in history, chop off at both ends until we get that middle date. So on average, we get our first 50° day in mid January and our first 60° day in early February. We’re still waiting for both of those this winter!
If (and a big if) we don’t make it to 50° by the end of the month, it will be the first time since 1977 that Boston will go both January and February without seeing 50°. It’s only happened four times since weather records began back in 1873! I say if because we do have a warm up in store for the upcoming work week. While we do climb into the 40s, hitting 50° is not technically in our forecast, but it’s not off the table either.
That persistent cold has us on pace to see the coldest winter in ten years! The last time we had a colder winter than this one was the winter of 2014-2015, subsequently the Blitz winter that many of us would like to forget for both the cold and the snow.
We do warm things up day by day through the weekend, but only by a few degrees each day. Temperatures this weekend will still be in the 30s but the wind will back down again for Saturday, making it a nice winter afternoon. A slight breeze will be back for Sunday but not to today’s level. I mentioned the warm up for next week and this gradual temperature climb. By Monday we’re back in the 40s where we’ll stay for the up coming week. If we do get one shot at 50° that would be on Tuesday, but right now we’re keeping our forecast high temperatures in the upper 40s.
