Observer Comments
11:42 Mon Mar 07, 2022
February 2022 by the Numbers
March has arrived, so it's a perfect time to look
back and summarize February. A few words I would use to summarize February's weather conditions on the summit are warm, foggy,
and windy. Let's look back at some of
the stats for the month.
Our
average temperature for the month was 8.1°F (-13.3°C),
which is 2.2°F above the 1991-2020 30-year climate normal for our station. Our warmest temperature recorded
in February was 38°F (3°C), occurring on Feb. 18. Our coldest temperature recorded during the month was -24°F (-31°C) on Feb. 14.
In terms
of total liquid equivalent precipitation (the liquid collected
from rain and by melting the freezing and frozen precipitation types collected
after measuring their depth) during February, the summit of Mount Washington
received 4.65 inches, which was 0.80 inches below the 30-year normal
for our location. The summit received 32.7 inches of snow/sleet, which was 10.6
inches below the 30-year normal.
We've received several questions recently about how our snowfall has been doing at the summit. For Mount Washington,
our snowfall season goes from July 1 to June 30 (all year!), so our season
is far from over. Looking at the numbers from July 1, 2021 to Feb. 28,
2022, the summit has received 167.8 inches of snow/sleet, which is 20.5 inches
below the 30-year normal for our location.
That deficit might seem
like a lot, but it can still easily be made back up. Statistically speaking,
March is our second “snowiest” month, and we will also typically see snowfall in April, May, and even early June. According to the 30-year normal from March 1 to June 30, we can
still receive upwards of 93.5 inches of snowfall. So, yes, we are down but far from out.
In terms
of winds during February, our average was 45.4 mph, which was 0.8 mph above
the 30-year normal for our location. Our highest gust recorded during the month was 125 mph, occurring on Feb. 19. February had
19 days with gusts of 73 mph or greater, and of those days, nine had
gusts that were 100 mph or greater.
As for
our weather during the month, we averaged 36% of the possible sunshine. The
summit had one day that was noted as clear or mostly clear, and there were three partly sunny days, with the remaining 24 days being filed under mostly cloudy,
cloudy, or obscured (fog). We had 26 days with at least some amount of fog
recorded during a 24-hour period. We had four days with rain/freezing rain and 20
days with snow/sleet.
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Sunrise with undercast conditions on 22
February