North America Winter Temperatures Red = Hot – Blue = Cold

Video showing surface temperature January/February 2014. video: UCAR

Even out on the West Coast we all heard about how cold it was this winter? For West Coasters suffering a lackluster early season that was hard. Alabama was getting snow, but the mountains of the West weren’t?!

The video shows hourly surface temperatures from across North America. What is especially interesting about this video is that you can watch weather patterns, storms spinning down towards the lower 48 and, how warm it was on the West Coast. Even with all the media hype and coverage of snowstorms in the East this winter ranks as the 34th coldest in the past 119 years (since record keeping began.) The winter average was balanced by the warm winter temperatures experienced on the West Coast. Don’t forget that Los Angeles was threatened by wildfires in January fueled by warm, dry conditions.

Overall, this was a winter with extremes. A few towns in the Midwest tied or came close to setting new records for coldest winters and Detroit is less than 10” away from setting a new snowfall record. On the West Coast Las Vegas and Tucson both experienced their warmest winters yet, while record daily high temperatures in the 70’s and 80’s were seen across California. Globally, Germany has experienced the warmest winter on record and Norway struggled with its largest wildfire in nearly 100 years, in January!

The video was created using climate models which were updated with observed temperatures every six hours.

For more snow-related weather forecasts, updates, models, and news check out the SnowBrains Weather Section