ST. LOUIS — We shared this on Thursday, and it still remains true – we have started off the year the 8th warmest in history (dating back to the mid-1870s)! Some people can understand why that's the case, others may have questions since it's been a bit cooler of recent.
Let's go back to the month of January to really set the scene of why we're so far above average. Just overlooking the fact that the first three days of the year were in the 60s and 70s, we wanted to highlight a main reason for why our overall temperatures have been so far above normal.
The overnight lows have really not been that cold for the last few months. Looking specifically in January, we only had three days start below 20 degrees!
While February had plenty of days in the 50s and 60s, there still wasn't an incredibly cold stretch in the region. Only two days in the teens, during a month that historically provides some of our coldest stretches of the entire year.
March, a month we would expect to be very warm actually transitioned us nicely into spring. Temperatures remained a bit warmer overnight, but in comparison to the 70s and 80s (and even 90s!) that we can get in the month of March, we didn't warm up all that much.
April is still a warmer month as well, but it's not record setting by any means. Several days in the afternoon in the mid 80s, but our recent cold stretch has kept us from the top 20 warm April months of all time.
Bottom line: The warmer than normal winter has propelled us to an above normal start to the year. We'll see what that means for the start of summer in a few weeks when we finally see 90 degrees for the first time.
