When I derive long range outlooks especially in winter, the responses are usually something like "January is Supposed to be cold. What's the big deal?". The cold this month is much different. Usually we don't get into serious, longer stretches of cold until the third week of the month. Historically, the cold to starts to January typically are accompanied with small breaks with temperatures in the 40s.
Here are the high temperatures for each day through the 15th over the last 20 years in January.
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| Overall High Temperature Forecast for Cleveland, Ohio Through January 18th |
Back on December 7th, the signals were strongly pointing to long stretches of cold to arrive around the 1st of the year. Notice the cold air draining south from the Arctic Circle with no breaks across the eastern half of the US.
Again, this cold has staying power. The pattern across the continent is locked in through the middle of the month. Here is a look at the number of days below normal for the first half of January over the last 25 years. The years on the right side are 13 of the top 25 coldest January years on record for comparison. I also differentiated between the number of days below normal and the number of days 10 degrees, 20 degrees and 30 degrees below normal.
A few things to note:
* The last time we had a first half of January with more days below than above normal was 2018
* The period between 2009 and 2018 featured more days below normal than 2018 through 2024
* Only three years had EVERY DAY below normal between January 1 and January 15th:
1981, 1977, 1970
* We average about 5 days below normal in the first half of January over the last 10 years
What about the second half of January?
Below normal days in the second half are more numerous since 2018 versus the first half of the month. Extreme cold days are also more frequent even in the historically cold years in the 1970s and 1980s
