Northern Virginia Monthly Temperature Variations
Barry A. Klinger, Winter 2015
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Winter 2014-2015 has been feeling awfully cold, so I was curious about how local monthly means this year and in the recent past stacked up to climatology. Here's an answer based on data from www.weather.gov/climate/ and http://www.erh.noaa.gov/lwx/climate/dca/. See figure above, where gray bands mark Oct-Mar.
February was indeed one of the coldest on record, and last winter (the one that popularized the "polar vortex") was pretty cold too. December 2014 was actually on the warm side though.
You may also remember some miserable recent summers in the DC area. We had a run of warm summers for 2010, 2011, and 2012, then close to average the last two years. It's funny, I remember 2013 as being a very hot summer because I was relieved to escape to coastal Maine in the middle of summer and then found that it was 90 deg F there too!
Using a running mean to give approximately annual and seasonal temperatures in DC (above left), we see longer-term variations. The temperature warms a bit over the period. Actual temperature values (above right) has a large seasonal variation every year.
Last modified: 20 February 2019