It sure looks like somebody flipped a big switch in the sky to end the frigid weather we had in January.
Actually, it has to do with the position of the jet stream, but that’s above my pay grade. The warmer temperatures started in late January when it changed from 22 degrees below zero to one degree below zero on Jan. 26. Prior to that we had a string of 13 days in a row of 20 below or colder.
February 2025 doesn’t quite make it into the top-10 in warmest Februarys, but it sure is a welcome relief, and our Thanksgiving snow is finally shrinking away rapidly. We even had an official 50 degrees on Feb. 7, which missed breaking the record by one degree. Normal high temperatures in early February are in the high 20s and low 30s.
The details for February 2025 are as follows: High temperatures (Tmax) averaged 37.5 degrees compared to the long-term average of 31.2 degrees. The record for Tmax is 48.5 degrees set in 1954. Low temperatures (Tmin) averaged 6 degrees compared to the long-term average of 1.4 degrees below zero. The average temperature was 22.1 degrees, relative to the long-term 14.9.
Thus, temperatures were 6-7 degrees above long-term averages. The warmest February average temperature is 51.4 degrees, set in 1937.
Our February 2025 total of 8 inches of snowfall is close to the long-term average of 9.7 inches, and our moisture content was 0.84 inches compared to the long-term average 0.76 inches. You’ve probably forgotten the snow since it all fell in a couple of days in mid-February. Recall that Gunnison only gets about 10.5 inches of moisture annually, with most of that in July, August and September, and the total includes the winter snow moisture. You might be surprised to learn that February is the second snowiest month up in the Town of Crested Butte with 33.9 inches of snowfall average, although all the winter months’ snowfall totals are close.
(Bruce Bartleson is a retired emeritus professor of geology at Western Colorado University. He spends most of his time now watching the weather.)
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