January 2015 Saint Cloud Weather Summary

January 2015 St. Cloud Weather Summary

After the relatively mild bulk of December, St. Cloud began a cool down that produced 10 straight days of below zero lows and an average temperature through January 13th that was more than 9 degrees below the January average. However, the weather pattern flipped a switch, shunting the cold air masses into eastern Canada and the Northeast. The resulting warm up gave St. Cloud 16 straight days with an average temperature at least 10 degrees warmer than normal with 5 days having an average more than 20 degrees above normal.

The final result was a January average temperature in St. Cloud that was 16.5°F, 4.9°F above average, 11.8°F milder than January 2014, and 3.3°F warmer than January 2013.

On the heels of the mild December, the combined December-January average temperature in St. Cloud was 20.4°F, the 11th mildest Dec-Jan in St. Cloud records and nearly 15 full degrees warmer than last Dec-Jan, which tied for the 9th coldest on record with 1981-1982.

January 2015 did have 1 day with a low of -20 or colder (the -22 low on January 13) and 10 days with a low of zero or colder. The average is 16 days. Thus far, this cold season has far fewer extremely cold days, especially compared to last winter, which ended up tying for the 5th coldest winter on record.

While the brunt of the cold air masses started to miss Minnesota, a split storm track dominated Minnesota for the second straight month. Since most of the moisture was tied up in the more southern storm track, storms came through Minnesota with very little moisture. That produced the second straight month of only 2.5 inches of snowfall. That was more than six and a half inches below the average of 9.0 inches. The total December-January snowfall of 5.0 inches was 13.2 inches below the average of 18.2 inches. That's the 12th lowest December-January combined snowfall in St. Cloud records. So, after January 31, central Minnesota has no snow cover, less than in Omaha, Chicago, St. Joseph, Missouri, and several other places. Because of being in the center of the heaviest snow in the November 10-11 storm, St. Cloud's total snowfall is 22.6 inches, only 4.6 inches below average. That's more than 18 inches less than last season at the end of January. While it is about 2 inches more than we had in 2012-2013, that year had the second most February through April snowfall (57.8 inches).

With the snow cover melting by December 22, there were only 7 January days with 2 inches of snow on the ground and 6 days with less than an inch on the ground. So, the longest streak of consecutive days of snow cover in 2014-2015 has been 35 days, as noted above. By the end of January, the 2012-2013 season had 54 straight days, on the way to 120 straight days, and the 2013-2014 season had 60 straight days on the way to 127 days. There have been 71 total days with at least an inch on the ground in 2014-2015, but we'll have to refresh the snow to resume that list.

The total melted precipitation in January was only 0.24 inch, less than half of the average total of 0.65 inch.

Not Much Change in Sight

The start of February has been fairly cold, but without a snow cover, it will be difficult to get far below average. There doesn't appear to be a threat for significant snowfall through the end of the work week with temperatures possibly above freezing by the end of the week.