State College ended its warmest year on record with second-warmest December
State College had its warmest year on record in 2021, with an annual mean temperature of 52.9 degrees Fahrenheit.
Steve Seman, an assistant teaching professor of meteorology and atmospheric science at Penn State’s University Park campus, said their records go back to 1893 and the weather observations are taken on Penn State’s University Park campus.
“It was warmer, it was not drastically warmer than other years. It just edged out 2012 and 1998 for first place, they previously had been tied for first,” Seman said. The previous highest average temperature recorded was 52.8 degrees Fahrenheit.
When he first looked at the data, he said he was surprised to see that 2021 was the warmest, because anecdotally it didn’t seem like it would be. When he researched it more, it showed that it was just persistently warm throughout the year. Though there weren’t any super heat waves — there was just one daily record high this year, which was in December — it didn’t get cool or cold often.
But, he said there is warming trend in the local temperature record.
“There’s definitely a warming trend in our local temperature record. If you look at the list of warmest years, ... there’s a lot of recent years in that top 10 or 20 warmest years,” Seman said. “The warming trend is most evident in nighttime temperatures. It’s less evident in daytime high temperatures. So the nights are warming more obviously than the daytime.”
There were seven daily record warm nights in 2021.
December 2021 was the second warmest December on record in State College, with a monthly mean temperature of 39 degrees Fahrenheit. December 2015 is the warmest winter month on record.
Alyson Hoegg, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather, said that though January is starting out a bit cooler compared to recent months, averages at this point in the year are in the mid-30s for most of the month.
“... Since it has been so warm, even if we keep temperatures in the upper 30s it feels much colder to people,” Hoegg said. But, it’s still above average, she said.
“It’s almost like a switch has flipped, that we’ve gone from an extremely warm pattern to a pattern that’s still above average, but it’s still much cooler than what we’ve seen. So it’s a little shell shock for people that ... it was so warm but we still remain above average at this point, but it is much cooler,” she said.
The winter season in State College so far has 2.9 inches of snow, Hoegg said, whereas the average snowfall by this point is 11.2 inches.
There have not been a couple of inches of snow on the ground at the same time. Seman said it’s just been small snowfalls that melted quickly, but added up to almost three inches throughout the winter season this far.
That is low, but that’s only ranked as the 18th least snowfall at this point, he said. December 2015 into January 2016, when there was a record warm December, there wasn’t any measurable snow at this point.
The lack of snowfall is due to a combination of a warmer December and less precipitation than normal, he said.
Hoegg said looking ahead through the next week, the best chance for snow will be a storm that forecasters are watching on Thursday into Friday.
“There are some other chances going forward here through the middle of the month. But we’re not looking at any big snow coming up. The Thursday/Friday storm could be problematic, but that is still yet to be determined if we’re going to see big snow from that one,” Hoegg said.
For the rest of the winter months, Hoegg said above-average temperatures can be expected.
