Where is Old Man Winter?
By Russell Russ
The start of our eighty-first year of weather observations continued to see abnormal winter weather for Norfolk. Where is all the snow and where are all the cold temperatures? Winter seems to be vacationing in Alaska and Europe this year. In many locations throughout the Northeast it was the warmest January on record. It was warm in Norfolk, but it was only the tenth warmest January for us. We are way behind in our seasonal snowfall as well.
While the smaller ponds froze over in late December, Tobey Pond didn’t freeze over until January 9. Wangum Lake didn’t freeze over until January 16. Typically Tobey and Wangum freeze over within days of each other, but continuing our strange winter weather, Wangum froze a week later than Tobey this year.
With an average mean temperature of 26.0 degrees January was 5.2 degrees above normal. The warmest January for us was January 2002 with an average mean temperature of 32.4. The month’s high temperature of 51 degrees was observed on January 7. The low temperature of minus 3 degrees, our coldest temperature of the season so far, was observed on January 15.
January’s total precipitation amount was 3.82 inches, 0.24 inches below normal. The monthly snowfall total of 11.4 inches was 9.6 inches below normal and far from last January’s 50 inches. The snowfall total for this winter season to date, October through January, is 38.5 inches. This is 7.3 inches below normal. We still have a couple of months to go, but there is a strong possibility that our largest snowfall of the season might have come prior to Halloween.
