February 2021 and Winter 2020-2021 St. Cloud Weather Summary

After having an extremely mild December (6.0 degrees above average) and January (8.0 degrees above average), arctic air surged into much of the US to the east of Rockies for most of the first 3 weeks of February. The consequences of that outbreak were severe to our south, producing some record cold temperatures and two major snowstorms in Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee, producing major accidents, power loss, and deaths from road problems and hypothermia.

However, for the Northern Plains, this will pass as a typical arctic outbreak, with only the length of the cold approaching record length. There were 5 straight days when temperatures remained below zero all day, the longest streak since 1996, and within the 17 longest streaks on record. The 8 total days with a high of zero or colder was nearly double the seasonal average. There were 13 straight mornings with a low of zero or colder, the longest streak since January 3-15, 1999, and one of the 45 longest streaks on record. There were 5 lows of -20 or colder, including the -28 on February 14. However, no record cold lows were broken. St. Cloud did manage to break a couple of record cold highs (-6 on the 12th, -5 on the 13th) but that's because the old records were relatively mild (-5 on the 12th, -2 on the 13th).

Through February 20, the St. Cloud February temperature was below -1 degree, which would have ranked around the 2nd coldest February on record. However, after the main source of arctic air in North America got pulled into the US and warmed up, there wasn't any more arctic air in reach. The dramatically milder temperatures pushed the February average to 7.6 degrees, ranking as merely the 19th coldest February on record. That cold was offset by the earlier two months, so the meteorological winter average temperature was 8.4 degrees, 1.4 degrees milder than the average. The Twin Cities also had a prolonged period of below zero temperatures (St. Cloud doesn't have hourly records, since there were no hourly temperatures taken before automation in the 1980's).

During the arctic cold, the main storm track remained well to our south from the Central Rockies to the Gulf Coast or Southern Plains, then to the Mid-Atlantic States. That allowed the two snow and ice storms to hit the South Central US, but kept most of the snow out of Minnesota, until the last day of the month, when a poorly forecast snow band dumped 4.4 inches on St. Cloud and 6-9 inches just to the south of St. Cloud. That was the largest St. Cloud snowfall since the early season snowfalls on October 20 (7.0 inches) and November 10 (7.2 inches). That snow brought the monthly total up to 8.4 inches and the seasonal snowfall through February 28 to 37.1 inches. There were an additional 2.2 inches from another storm early on March 1, pushing the seasonal snowfall to 39.3 inches. The average through the end of February is 34.2 inches.

The true test of the length of the winter in our part of the world is how long we are staring at the snow. St. Cloud began a streak of at least an inch of snow on the ground on December 24 and it has continued through March 3. That is 71 straight days with at least an inch of snow on the ground. The St. Cloud average is 86 consecutive days. We are unlikely to make it to the average, since mild weather is expected throughout the first 10 days of March.

February 2021 Statistics

Winter (Dec 1-Feb 28) 2020-2021 Statistics