Cold weather settled across the West during the second week of January, following a barrage of storms that improved high-elevation snow packs. Below-normal temperatures persisted in the West through month’s end, accompanied by additional periods of rain and snow. Meanwhile, stormy weather largely bypassed the Plains but hammered parts of the Midwest with flooding rains and rare January tornadoes. Farther east, heavy precipitation in the Northeast contrasted with near- to below-normal totals across the remainder of the Atlantic coast states. Elsewhere, significant rain fell along and near the Gulf Coast.
Cold weather and high winds caused some damage to Florida’s non-citrus winter crops and ornamentals on January 3, but low temperatures were not a significant threat thereafter across the Deep South. January temperatures were persistently below normal but never extremely low in California, where light freezes were noted on as many as 10 days in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley. Elsewhere, January temperatures ranged from 5 to 10°F below normal in a few high-elevation Western valleys but averaged at least 5°F above normal in parts of the Northeast.
—Weatherwise Contributing Editor BRAD RIPPEY is the U.S. editor of the Weekly Weather and Crop Bulletin of the Joint Agriculture-NOAA Weather Facility.
