BTV February Recap

After taking a look at this winter's weather at Burlington International Airport (BTV), I wanted to examine what we saw this February at the same site, so lets get right to it.

Temperatures

The average maximum temperature at BTV this February was 30.0 °F, when the normal value is 30.6 °F, giving a departure from normal of -0.6 °F. That bucks trends that we've seen in the previous few months, as temperatures have tended to be much above normal at the airport. The average minimum temperature was 13.7 °F, when the normal value is 12.5 °F, so minimum temperatures ran a bit above normal. And the average mean daily temperature was 21.8 °F, when the normal value is 21.5 °F, so average temperatures were 0.3 °F above normal.

(NOAA Regional Climate Centers/xmACIS)

In the above temperature graph, you can see how maximum temperatures had several days where they did not reach the "red zone" of above normal temperatures. This helped contribute to the below normal average maximum temperature for the moth. Also, we had no ridiculous heat spells or cold snaps this moth, as shown by the temperatures failing to reach record levels.

February had 18 days where the maximum temperature was less than or equal to 32 °F, when the normal value is 15.6 days, and there were 27 days where the minimum temperature was below 32 °F, when the normal value is 25.9 days. Lastly, on three days the temperature dipped below 0 °F. In a normal February, we would have 5 of those days.

Overall, I'd call this February a fairly normal one at BTV temperature-wise. We had no ridiculous heat or cold, and temperatures were fairly average. We saw temperatures that ranged from -6 °F to 44 °F, which is only a 50 °F range.

Precipitation

We saw 1.55 inches of total precipitation this February, when the normal value is 1.76 inches, giving a departure from normal of -0.21 inches. As is typical in February, there were no days with extremely impressive precipitation accumulation - there was only one day which featured greater than 0.50 inches of precipitation. That occurred when we had 0.62 inches on the 16th.

Snowfall

As for snow, it was a snowier than normal month at BTV. We had a total of 23.7 inches of snow, when the normal value is 16.4 inches, giving a departure from normal of 7.3 inches.

(NOAA Regional Climate Centers/xmACIS)

As you can see in the above chart, things got off to a quick start with significant snow at the beginning of the month, and they did not look back.

We had 6 days with snowfall greater than 1 inch, and the snow stuck around. The average snow depth for the month was 13 inches.

Wrap up

It was nice to see a more "normal" February at BTV and in Vermont this year after a slow start to winter. March is looking to trend a bit warmer, but we'll have to wait and see what the month has in store for us!