ST. LOUIS — Now that we are done with 2023, it's time to look back on the year in weather. While it was a pretty quiet year around St. Louis to some degree, it was the "quiet" aspect that probably made the most impact on us heading into 2024.
That "quiet" was caused by the warm and dry conditions that we had through most of the year. We finished the year tied with 2016 as the second-warmest year on record in St. Louis. These temperature records go back to 1874.
The only warmer year was 2012, and that was a year that had several days with temperatures over 105 and overnight lows over 85. So this was a pretty significant achievement for us this year.
We had a handful of temperatures over 100 degrees this year, but the 104-degree reading occurred with a nice heat wave at the end of August, right in the middle of our significant drought.
We were very dry for most of the year but mixed in a few decent rains from time to time. Just over 33" of rain for the year puts us at the 37th driest of all time. The two statistics that really stood out to me were the fact that we've only had 3" of snow all year, and the coldest it got was 11 degrees! The lack of snowpack and cold air masses really allowed us to warm up in the winter months pretty easily.
The St. Louis-area has only seen the coldest temperature of the year over 10 degrees three times in history. No surprise, 2023 shared another commonality with 2012.
So how did we get to this point? Discounting the warmer oceans and overall warmer temperatures throughout the entire planet for now, I would like to focus on how exactly we get this warm consistently all year and end up in the second spot all time. Obviously, it was not a very cold winter....at all. An above-average January, combined with a top-five February vaulted us into a warmer spring pretty quickly, and we were off to the races from there. Also, our overnight lows were pretty warm too. Not just in the winter months, but summer months as well. Temperatures starting above freezing in the morning were pretty common in the cold months, and I can't count how many times I said "We are currently at our average daytime high already at this hour."
Only four days, our temperature never climbed above freezing. There were only 55 days where the temperature dropped to or below freezing. Both of those stats are the least amount of days for any year in the record book.
We had several lows in the 80s this year, and that brings our average up overall throughout the summer months. Then finally, we had a pretty significant drought for much of the year. Anytime it's this dry, it's pretty easy to warm up, and without many rainy days (or clouds). for certain periods, we warmed up quickly. Hopefully, we can pick up some more precipitation and find a way to get closer to where we should be.
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