BTV January Recap

I'm a bit late to this one, but as I like to do at the end of each month, here's my recap of this January's weather in Vermont, focussing on data from Burlington International Airport (BTV).

Temperatures

Though it may not feel like it after your experiences at the very end of the month, mean daily temperatures in January 2021 were 4.3 °F above normal. Our mean temperature was 23.0 °F, when the normal value is 18.7 °F.

(NOAA Regional Climate Centers / xmACIS)

In the above chart, you can clearly see how the January started on the warmer side, and stayed that way for pretty much the entire month until the last few days. Temperatures were not anomalously warm; rather, they were slightly above normal each day, and did not cool much, causing a large temperature departure from normal for the month. Interestingly, the average maximum daily temperature was only 1.8 °F above normal (27.3 °F), which pales in comparison to the 6.7 °F above normal for the minimum daily temperature.

(NOAA / High Plains Regional Climate Center)

Even with the inclusion of data from the first few days of February, notice how much warmer than normal the minimum temperatures have been to start the year.
(NOAA / High Plains Regional Climate Center)

Our monthly maximum temperature was 39 °F, which we hit on the 15th and 16th, while the month's low temperature was reached on the 31st, at -7 °F.  In a normal year, there would be 8 days where the temperature drops below 0; this year, there were only 2.

Precipitation

It was a fairly typical month for precipitation, with 1.72 inches of total precipitation, compared to the normal 2.06 inches. The largest storm was on the 16th, when we saw 0.71 inches of precipitation that included some snow.

(NOAA Regional Climate Centers / xmACIS)

Snowfall

Lastly, BTV had a slightly snowier-than-normal January. With 23.6 inches of snow falling (compared to the normal 21.1 inches), the departure from normal was 2.5 in. The largest daily snowfall occurred on the 2nd, with 6.0 inches falling. Other than that, there were many days with slight accumulations of snow, as is typical of the Champlain Valley in January. In fact, there was at least a trace of snow at BTV on all but 6 days during the month.

Overall, it was a warm and dry month. Look for a much cooler trend for the start of February!