Here it is January 31st and we are closing down a month that has seen more 60 degree days than morning lows below freezing. It seems after December 22nd someone threw a switch and shut off Winter and turned on Spring and it has been that way ever since.

January 2006 will go down as the 5th warmest on record out at RDU since World War II. Our mean temperature for the month was 47.9 degrees. A whopping 8.3 degrees above the norm!

Here are some of the more interesting stats concerning the month of January.

We had 14 days where the high temperature was in the 60s. The warmest days were the 11th and the 13th where the high was 69 degrees. Oddly enough we never saw a 70 degree day this month.

We only had 9 mornings where the low temperatures were at 32 degrees or less. The coldest morning was the 27th where the low at RDU was 21 degrees. This by the way is the coldest we have seen so far this season.

We only saw 2.07" of rain at RDU. The rainfall deficit for the year stands at 1.95". The greatest amount of rain was recorded on the 18th with .45".

Could we be looking at a pattern shift this weekend and into the coming weeks? The following image is the 500mb pattern taken from the GFS model. It shows a definitive upper level low sitting over southern Canada and the upper Great Lakes by the 10th of February. Looking at the 18Z run of the GFS today, this pattern is one that would bring colder air into the United States. This may be a hint that our weather could turn colder in February. It is about time!!



On a different note, we were expecting some strong storms in South Carolina last night with some perhaps venturing into our southern counties. Some locations reported hail across the southeastern past of the state.





Larry Naylor from Sampson County sent us these photos he took around 2am as the hailstorm hit his Clinton, North Carolina home.