The seasons don’t officially change until next week when the spring equinox occurs at 10:06 p.m. (central time) on Tuesday, but meteorological winter is already over and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has now confirmed what seemed obvious on many days these past few months.
“Meteorological winter was the warmest winter on record for the contiguous U.S., with an average temperature of 37.6 degrees F — 5.4 degrees above average,” NOAA said in its summary of the previous three months. “Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, North Dakota, Vermont and Wisconsin each had their warmest winter on record. Twenty-six additional states saw their top-10 warmest winters on record.”
Meteorological winter covers the coldest three months of the year, running from December 1 to the last day of February. The more familiar astronomical seasons are determined by the sun’s alignment with the equator, and the spring equinox can occur on March 19, 20 or 21.
A warmer winter was anticipated after water temperatures in the Pacific rose high enough last summer to create an El Niño weather pattern, in which the heat from the ocean water pushes the Pacific jet stream south.
“With this shift, areas in the northern U.S. and Canada are dryer and warmer than usual,” the National Weather Service (NWS) explains. “But in the U.S. Gulf Coast and Southeast, these periods are wetter than usual and have increased flooding.”
According to the NWS, “El Niño had a significant influence on temperatures this winter.” Beyond even without El Niño, climate change has led to not just warmer winters in recent years, but winter is warming faster than other seasons. Last week, the European Union climate agency Copernicus reported that “February 2024 was the warmest February on record globally… [and] the ninth month in a row that was the warmest on record for the respective month of the year.”
Cities around Iowa experienced their hottest February on record this year, but it won’t be until the state climatologist publishes his analysis that we will know if this February was the hottest since records began to be kept in Iowa, or just the second-hottest.
Either way, February in Iowa was dry, offering no relief for the state’s drought conditions and erasing the gains made by a wetter-than-average January. With only about one-fifth of the state’s average precipitation for the month, this February will rank among the top three driest for Iowa.
“Drought has been present in parts of the state since July 2020, which makes it the longest drought in about 70 years,” Iowa Capital Dispatch reported. “Conditions have improved since a peak of dryness in September, but the state is still by far the driest it’s been in recent years leading into the corn and soybean growing seasons.”
About 80 percent of the state is currently experiencing drought conditions.
