January is warming faster than any other month in Minnesota

When the mercury touched 47 degrees Tuesday at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, it tied a record that stood for 133 years.

More record January warmth is likely Thursday as the mercury surges again and threatens to eclipse the standing record of 48 degrees set in 1989. And that is no small feat.

At what is supposed to be the coldest time of the year in the Twin Cities, “it’s hard to set record highs,” said Jonathan Erdman, a meteorologist with the Weather Channel. “They don’t come around every day.”

Even without record-breaking temperatures, January is trending warmer in Minnesota. Since 1970, the average daily temperature across the state has increased by 8.9 degrees and low temperatures, on average, are 10.8 degrees higher than they were a half-century ago. January in Minnesota is now warming faster than any other month, said Pete Boulay with the Minnesota State Climatology Office.

Weather trackers have been rewriting the January record books more frequently in recent years. Since 2000, new high temperature records have been set on nine of the month’s 31 days, according to data from the Weather Channel. Two of those marks were set just last year, when thermometers at the airport registered 50 degrees on Jan. 29 and 55 degrees two days later.

“It’s kind of letting us down,” Boulay said, in a nod that January has been known as the state’s most brutal month in terms of cold and snow. “The trend [for higher temperatures] has been going up, in recent decades.”

Of course, the temperature will often sink below zero in January, as was the case for 66 consecutive hours in mid-January. The mercury fell to minus 19 in the Twin Cities for the first time since February 2021. But unlike 50 years ago, the frequencies of 35-degree below zero in northern Minnesota and 25-degree below readings in the south have fallen by 90%.

“That does not happen as often as it used to,” Boulay said.

Conversely, a January thaw, defined as two or more consecutive days in the month with temperatures above 32, has become common. At least one has happened for 14 straight years.

“We are more likely to have a January thaw than a white Christmas,” Boulay said.

A lack of extreme cold and a dearth of snow are big factors fueling warmer weather in January. The Twin Cities usually receives 11 inches of snow in a typical January. So far, the metro has picked up only 9.8 inches for the season, or about the same as places such as New Orleans and the Florida Panhandle that got dumped on earlier this month. Only 1.7 inches has fallen this month at MSP Airport, the official weather observation station for the Twin Cities.

Still, high temperature records are hard to come by in January because of “bitter air or snow, we usually have one or the other,” Erdman said.

With bare ground in January 2024 and again this year, the sun doesn’t have to melt the snow before warming the air, and with a sunny day and a strong south wind, temperatures can reach the 40s and 50s in January, Erdman said.

Warmer winters are not just happening in Minnesota. Climate Central, which studies the impact of the changing climate, found winter to be the fastest-warming season over the past 50 years in 185 of the 245 U.S. locations that the group analyzed. Most were in the Northeast, Southeast and Ohio Valley regions — disrupting snowfall patterns, the group said.

In the Twin Cities, the mild pattern leading to temperatures rising near or into record territory will continue for the next few days, but there is hope for fans rooting for a snowstorm and a cooldown.

A shift in the weather pattern favors below-average temperatures and above-average precipitation for the first 11 days of February, the Climate Prediction Center said.

Average February snowfall in the metro is 9.5 inches, and daily highs for the period are in the mid-20s. About 45% of the metro’s annual snowfall happens between February and April, with about 22 inches falling annually, Erdman said.

So don’t pack the shovels and parkas away just yet.

“If you are a winter fan, there is hope,” Boulay said. “There is a lot of winter to go.”