And the Winter Is...

Warm! But you knew that already. Now that the three months traditionally used by meteorologists to calculate "winter" climate numbers are over, the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) has posted results for the nation as a whole and broken down by state and climate region. It turned out on average to be the 5th warmest winter on record for the United States, although as warm as it seemed here in North Carolina, while above average for the winter we weren't anywhere close to the top of the heap, clocking in with our 28th warmest winter out of 111 years tracked by NCDC. A good part of the reason for that was a rather chilly December here.

It's also been dry here, especially since a week or so into January, and North Carolina ended up with its 30th driest winter on record, below average but not extremely so, again due to active weather and substantial precipitation in December. For all kinds of details and maps showing the distribution of temperature and precipitation during the winter just ended, see this link to NCDC for an overview, and this one for a collection of descriptive maps.