EYEWITNESS NEWS (WBRE/WYOU)— It’s no secret that this past month has been incredibly warm, but we did end up setting a record for both temperatures and snowfall at the airport.
Eyewitness News spoke with the National Weather Service today about the records and why we’ve seen such warm weather.
“For the month of January 2023, it’s going to go down as a pretty warm one. The fourth warmest on record, where at the Wilkes Barre Scranton airport the average temperature turned out to be about 7 to 8 degrees above average. We had 2.5 inches of snow for the month of January this year. That is the least we had in January since 1989 and the fourth lowest on record,” stated Mark Pellerito a National Weather Service Binghamton warning coordination meteorologist.
“So what causes a mild winter like the one we’re seeing right now?,” asked Battle.
“We are in a La Nina winter. This is the third consecutive La Nina winter. What that means, El Nino La Nina is a worldwide weather pattern that is determined by the temperatures over the pacific ocean. the water temperatures have worldwide impacts,” answered Pellerito.
The strength of those impacts can vary from year to year.
“For us what La Nina usually means is that the storm track goes directly over the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast,” added Pellerito.
Those tracks and the mild temperatures have brought us very little snowfall and incredibly warm weather.
“For this particular winter, we got locked into one of those warmer patterns for a good chunk of the month. It wasn’t warm the entire month, but the first half of the month it certainly was including that 61-degree reading we had on January 4th,” Pellerito continued.
Some may point to climate change, but it’s important to note that we can’t point to just one season.
“Climate is averaged weather over a long period of time, but what we can say is that when we look at that climate over the course of many many decades. You go back over a hundred years the global average temperature has risen by a couple of degrees,” added Pellerito.
We do have two other climate sites at Williamsport and Mount Pocono. Mount Pocono setting its new all-time warmest January record and Williamsport not even cracking the top 10.
