Cold Comfort – February Made the Weather Record Books

If you spent any length of time outside during the month of February, chances are, you felt the bone-chilling cold. In fact, February 2015 will go down as one of the coldest on record.

"We have statewide records that go back to 1895, and we are neck and neck right now with 1979 as being the second coldest February during that 121 year period," said Dave Robinson, New Jersey State Climatologist at Rutgers University. "We're 4 degrees away from February 1934, which was the coldest of any month."

Some parts of the state had it worse than other parts. Compared to average, the northern part of the state was colder than the south, according to Robinson.

"We're not talking in an absolute sense. We're talking compared to average, it was about a degree or two colder in the north relative to average in the south," Robinson said. "That's partially because during the first two weeks of the month, most of the south was mostly snow free while the central and northern part of the state had five to 10 inches of snow on the ground which helped refrigerate the air more."

During the morning of February 21, the southern part of the state was exceedingly cold.

It was 12 below zero in Berkeley Township, Ocean County and 7 below zero in Woodbine, Cape May County. A few days later, on February 23, Walpack, Sussex County went down to minus 20, Kingwood, Hunterdon County registered at 14 below zero and Hope, Warren County was minus 12.

"With this overall cold for the month with temperatures barely climbing into the 40s at any time, we had some extremely cold mornings, among the coldest in the last two decades," Robinson said. "There were 18 mornings in Walpack in February that started below zero."

Snowfall was above average in February which helped the state catch up to the average amount that normally falls during winter.

"We didn't see much snow after the Thanksgiving Eve storm in North Jersey. December was relatively snow free and it got snowy toward the end of January. Snowfall totals in February were five and six inches above normal. Were it not to snow another flake this winter, we'd be finishing the winter pretty close to average for the season," Robinson said.