From Cliff Mass:
It's Bizarre: March was Colder than January In Seattle
Everything seems topsy turvy and unnatural these days, and there is a meteorological oddity that must be added to the list:
March was cold than January in Seattle this year.
I knew March was a cool one, but it was not until Dr. Joseph Zagrodnik, a talented atmospheric scientist working at WSU's AgWeatherNet organization, pointed in out to me, did I realize how unusual the past month had been.
According to Dr. Zagrodnik, the average temp in March at Sea-Tac Airport was 44.8 degrees F compared to 45.1 F in January.
How unusual is this? Rare, but not unprecedented. March has been cooler than January 8 times in the 126 years we have temperature records in Seattle, with the last time it occurred in 2006.
To appreciate this oddity visually, the graph below shows the numbers of year the March minus January temperatures fell in various bins. On average, March is about 5F warmer than January, but in some extreme years March has been as much as 17F warmer. That would get folks attention. Ten years were close to zero (within .5F of zero) and only a handful (3) were .5 to 1.5F cooler in March.
Not just cooler -- substantially so. Our sun is going through a quiet period and we need to prepare for the colder weather.
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