Marquette just recorded its least snowy January on record (1857 – present)! The official station at the Water Treatment plant recorded a mere 3.5″. Normally, we receive almost 30″.
Melting that snow and combining it with whatever ice and rain also fell, amounted only to 0.77″. That’s less than half the 30 year normal amount of 1.83″.
Also, the mean monthly temperature of 24.7° in January ties for 8th on the list of all time warmest with 1878.
Here at our station near the Jacobetti Home for Veterans, we recorded 10.4″ of snowfall (0.72″ of liquid) in January. Whereas the last 3 winters we averaged 29.4″.
Our station’s monthly mean temperature (as measured from 8 AM to 8 AM and rounded to whole numbers) was 23.9°. That’s +5.5° compared to our station’s normal.
Only a cooling trend at month’s end saved Marquette from having, perhaps, the warmest January ever.
It looks to be cooling down even further this upcoming weekend and the first part of next week at least. A strong arctic system moves down from Canada with lows below zero. Could we see a daily high below zero? It’s possible at this point.
Meanwhile, we had about 10 mostly to entirely sunny days in January. For us lakeside dwellers, that’s quite the number this time of year! That’s not including days that began or ended sunny either. We’ll be able to tell you more in a few years after we’ve gathered some additional solar data. Going off memory, though, there were at least twice as many sunny days as normal. Made for some nice dog walks!