HARTFORD–The year is over, and it’s time to reflect on what happened in the past 365 days.
In 2015 we saw some strange weather; we started the year with record cold and heaps of snow, but ended by shattering the old records for December heat.
The hottest temperature of the year was 96 degrees on September 8–nope, we didn’t hit 100!–and the coldest was -9 on February 21.
Read below for the insanity of “the tale of two months” — February and December, but first, here’s the weather year in review:
February was the coldest month in Connecticut on record, while December was the hottest December on record in the state.
In February, we tied 1934 for the number of days that reached above 32 degrees, which was 10, but exceeded the record number of days when we didn't quite reach the freezing mark; the previous record was 19 in 1934, and the record we now set for 2015 was 22.
In fact, not only did we have an abnormal number of freezing days, but we also created a new record for the average temperature throughout the month: on average, it was only 16.1 degrees in Hartford in February! The old record was 16.5, set in 1934.
In case you're interested, the normal monthly average temperature in February in Hartford is 29.7 degrees.
Then we came to December, when we're supposed to start returning to those freezing temperatures. But we didn't. Instead, we beat records for heat across the board; actually, we shattered the records.
We saw 18 days that were above 50 degrees this month beating the record of 13 set in 2006. We also tied 1998 with five days of temperatures that soared above 60 degrees.
We only tied with 2001 for the highest minimum daily high temperature reached--there were no days that didn't reach 32, or freezing, last month--but we also never got colder at night than 23 degrees. The last record for the highest daily low temperature of the month was 20 degrees, set in 1923.
We also had an unusual number of days in which we never hit freezing temperatures at night: we saw 21 days that the lowest temperature of the day was 32 degrees or greater. That shattered the record of 17 days set in 1923.
Here's the full breakdown:
