While the folks in Boston will remember the bone-chilling cold in mid-January that produced new gas demand records, this winter (December-February) will go down in history as being pretty average overall across the entire nation, according to a report Thursday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

In fact, population-weighted heating degree days for the storage withdrawal season to date (November-March) are averaging 4% warmer than normal and 5% warmer than last winter. The last three weeks of above normal temperatures nationwide are telling many in the gas industry that the winter is effectively at an end.

According to NOAA, the December-February period for the eastern United States was colder than normal, while warmer-than-average conditions affected much of the rest of the country, but no state was much warmer nor much colder than average for the season.

There were periods of unusually heavy rain and snow in parts of the country, and above average precipitation helped alleviate drought in some parts of the West, but precipitation was near average for the contiguous United States. Meanwhile, the global surface temperature was much warmer than the long-term mean for the December-February season, NOAA said.

NOAA scientists reported that the average temperature for the Lower 48 winter was 33.7 degrees F (0.9 degrees C), or 0.7 degrees F (0.4 degrees C) above average, the 42nd warmest winter since nationwide records began in 1895. NOAA said 10 states from Mississippi to Massachusetts were colder than average, while 13 states from Michigan to New Mexico and Montana were warmer than average. Nine of the past 10 winters have been warmer than the long-term mean for the Lower 48.

But January was very cold for some locations. Daily low temperature records were established in many places. NOAA said January 2004 was the eleventh coldest on record for the Northeast. But temperatures during December and February were warmer than average throughout the Northeast and temperatures for the season as a whole were closer to normal.

Overall, precipitation for the contiguous United States was near average during the December to February season, but periods of unusually heavy snow and ice storms affected many regions of the country. Heavy snowfall and winds more than 70 mph produced snow drifts up to 20 feet high in northwestern North Dakota in mid-February. A severe January ice storm in the Carolinas resulted in week-long power outages in remote areas of South Carolina, and more than a foot of snow fell throughout much of the Piedmont region of North and South Carolina in late February.

Winter precipitation in the West helped alleviate drought in some areas. At its most recent peak in fall 2003, moderate-to-extreme drought had affected 80% of the West, but the affected areas fell to nearly 50% of the region by the end of February.

Although most reservoirs remained below average due to four to five years of warmer and drier-than-normal conditions in many parts of the West, this winter’s precipitation resulted in average-to-above-average mountain snowpack levels in much of the Pacific Northwest and Intermountain West at the end of February. Snowpack was still below average in large areas of the Southwest and Rockies, and the most severe long-term drought impacts at the end of February were located in areas of the Southwest and parts of the Northern Rockies, especially southern Idaho and southwestern Montana.

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