2025 gets underway

 

A January view from National Harbor, Maryland

2024 was DC’s warmest year on record. It ended with a warmer and drier than average December. There will be a hard pivot to more winter-like weather as 2025 gets underway.

January is the coldest month of the year in the nation’s capital with an average monthly temperature (combining daily high/low temperatures) of 37.5°. NOAA recently updated its temperature and precipitation averages to reflect the 30-year period of 1991-2020. Since the 2010s were a much warmer decade than the 1980s, it’s not surprising that January’s average temperature increased by 1.8° when the 2010s replaced the 1980s in NOAA’s calculations.

DC’s coldest time of the year based on average temperature occurs in mid-January. The daily average high/low temperatures in the nation’s capital are 44°/30° for a six-day stretch from January 14 – January 19. The warmest January temperature on record was 80° that occurred just last year on January 26. By comparison, DC’s coldest January temperature was -14° on January 1, 1881.

Although the nation's capital averages 2.86" of January rainfall, Washingtonians have experienced below average precipitation in six of the last 10 January’s. That includes DC’s fourth driest January on record in 2018 (0.94”). However, January 2024 was DC’s rainiest January since 1979 with 5.88”. The January snowfall average fell from 5.6” to 4.9”, according to NOAA's 30-year period from 1991-2020.

It’s important to remember January doesn’t have to be colder than average to be snowier than average. January 2024, for example, was a snowier than average month in the nation’s capital with 7.8” of snow, but also finished 2.3° warmer than average. The nation’s capital hasn’t had above average January snowfall in consecutive years since 2009-2010.

NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center expects this month to be colder than average with near average precipitation in the nation’s capital. The right ingredients need to come together only once to produce an epic winter storm like what happened in January 2016, which was D.C.’s fourth largest snow event on record.