For the Western U.S., A Winter That Has Felt More Like Spring

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/for-the-west-a-winter-that-feels-more-like-spring-18700

By Andrea Thompson
Feb. 25, 2015

From San Diego to Seattle, February has looked — and felt — a lot more like April. Flowers that normally wouldn’t start to bud until well into spring have already started to blossom and grow. Residents have been walking around in t-shirts and shorts, a rarity even for Southern California winters.

“Winter has seemed to have completely forgotten about us out here,” Kathie Dello, deputy director of the Oregon Climate Service at Oregon State University, said during a press teleconference last week.

While the unseasonably warm weather is pleasant for now — certainly compared to repeated snowstorms and bitter cold in the East — it comes with an ominous tinge. The heat is doing nothing to help the severe entrenched drought, which has failed to improve during what is normally the region’s wet season.

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Record warm temperatures have been piling up across the West this year like snow in Boston. The town of Sandberg, Calif., outside Los Angeles, had nine straight days with highs above 70°F this month, besting the previous record of seven such days set last year. Salt Lake City had 43 straight days of above-average temperatures. Portions of western Oregon had a record warm January.

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California, for the second year in a row, saw it’s warmest December-January, with a monthly average temperature 5.1°F higher than its 20th century average. With that heat having continued into February, it’s almost certain to be the warmest winter on record in California, surpassing the previous record set just last year.

“In the 121-year period of record, never have there been back-to-back Dec-Jan periods that were record warm for California, making this unprecedented in the state's history,” Jake Crouch, a NOAA climatologist, said in an email.

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