Seattle just had its coldest February in 30 years.
The average temperature at Sea-Tac Airport this month was 36.6 degrees, making it Sea-Tac’s third coldest February on record. It came within 0.3 degrees of the second coldest February on record, which was back in 1989.
The coldest February was in 1956 when average temperatures at Sea-Tac hit 35.6 degrees.
There was a particular spell of cold weather in mid-February when we broke low temperature records at Sea-Tac Airport three days in a row from February 9-11. We broke cold weather records outside Seattle too: Olympia Airport recorded a frigid low temp of 5 degrees, and Bellingham Airport got down to 15 degrees on February 10
It was just unseasonably cold throughout the whole month – our daily high temperature only got above normal one time, and that was on February 1. The rest of the month has been below normal, sometimes by as much as 17 degrees.
By the end of February, the normal average high temperature is 51 degrees, but Seattle hasn’t hit 50 ion four weeks.
However, it wasn’t just the cold that made February a particularly noteworthy month weather-wise. We also had the snowiest February on record at Sea-Tac Airport, which recorded 20.2 inches of snow. Most of that snow came over a four-day period from February 8-11 when 17.5 inches fell.
This all followed a prediction last fall from the national Climate Prediction Center, which called for an El Niño winter in the Pacific Northwest. El Niño is a weather phenomenon that’s associated with greater chances of warmer and drier than normal conditions. While that prediction held true in January, meteorologists were quick to point out that an El Niño prediction is not a guaranteed forecast.
As of February 14, the center predicted there was still a 55 percent chance weak El Niño conditions would continue through spring.
WATCH: What is El Niño?