North Georgia Weather Blog

02/17/18 - How Warm Has it Been?

2/17/2018

February 2018 Global Temp Anomalies

It's been warm this month, no question about that. But how warm has it really been and where do we stand as far as our warm records go?

The big world picture shows that for the month to date, February is running about 0.25º C above normal. This data comes from Temperature analysis (T319) from Japanese Met Agency (JRA-55 Reanalysis) and graphics from Dr. Ryan Maue's new website at http://wx.graphics/.

So far the year to date anomaly is 0.28º C or about 0.50º F above normal.

Lets look at February and see where we stand for the month. The three images below are the temp anomalies for the month and they show the max, min, and avg temp anomalies from left to right, and as always, you can click on any image to enlarge it. As you can see, the cold air has been confined to the central part of the country for the most part, while both coast basked in very warm temperatures. Overall the lower 48 states have averaged about 0.7º above normal. I would suspect the anomalies will go up some over the next 7-10 days before we return to more normal or even below normal temps.

Month to Date Max Temp Anomalies

Month to Date Min Temp Anomalies

Month to Date Avg Temp Anomalies

	Max	Min	Avg
Temp	45.19º F	22.66º F	33.92º F
Anom	1.05º F	0.33º F	0.69º F

The three images below come from the Southeast Regional Climate Center. Instead of showing temps or anomalies, these images show the temperature ranking for various sites across the southeast so far for February. Max is left, Min is center and Avg is right. So a ranking of 1 would be the warmest period in that sites data records.

The images below are the temperature anomalies for the month to date from the official sites. Again, max, min, and avg from left to right.

So we know February has been a little warm, but if we go back to the start of 2018, we begin to see a slightly different picture. We still see that the western part of the country was warm, but the east was normal to below normal. Keep in mind that these three images also include the warm February temps, so despite the warmth we've had so far, our year to date temps are still right around normal here, while a good part of the country was below normal.