January through October – 6th coolest and 19th wettest for Illinois

For the period from January through October, the statewide temperature for Illinois was 52.5 degrees, a full 3 degrees below the long-term average of 1981-2010 and the sixth coolest year to date on record with those records going back to 1895.  The five colder years were 1904, 1917, 1979, 1912, and 1978.

Of course, you may ask how can we be so cold during a phase of global warming. There are two answers to that. One is that most of the cold weather for 2014 was confined to the central US. While we were cold in the central US, the western US was much warmer than average.

glance1
Click to enlarge. Source: NOAA National Climatic Data Center.

… and the central US may go down as one of the few cold spots on average, of any place on earth for 2014 so far (see the blue patch on the global map below).

201401-201409
Click to enlarge. The global temperature covers the period from January through September. Source: National Climatic Data Center

In addition, while 2014 has been colder than average in Illinois (last dot on the time series plot below), it has been the exception to the rule since the early 1980’s.

glance2
Click to enlarge. Source: National Climatic Data Center.

PRECIPITATION

For the same period, the statewide precipitation was 37.47 inches, 3.67 inches above average and the 19th wettest on record. It was a very wet year so far across much of the rest of the Midwest/Great Lakes region, except for dryness in KS and MO.

glance3
Click to enlarge. Source: National Climatic Data Center

Below are the monthly temperature and precipitation departures by month for Illinois in 2014. Below the bar plots are the data used in the plots.

For temperature, January, February, and March were exceptionally cold, as was July. April, May, June, August, and October were much closer to average.

For precipitation, we had an interesting bipolar pattern of a dry month followed by a wet month that continued all the way to August before things became consistently wet through October.

*These numbers are preliminary and may change a little as more data comes in.

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Year Month Temperature Normal Depart
2014 Jan 19.3 26.4 -7.1
2014 Feb 19.4 30.9 -11.5
2014 Mar 34.4 41.3 -6.9
2014 Apr 52.4 52.6 -0.2
2014 May 63.6 62.7 0.9
2014 Jun 73.0 71.9 1.1
2014 Jul 70.3 75.4 -5.1
2014 Aug 73.7 73.6 0.1
2014 Sep 64.7 66.2 -1.5
2014 Oct 54.4 54.4 0.0
2014 Nov 42.5
2014 Dec 29.9
Year Month Precipitation Normal Depart
2014 Jan 1.72 2.07 -0.35
2014 Feb 2.22 2.06 0.16
2014 Mar 1.46 2.96 -1.50
2014 Apr 5.15 3.78 1.37
2014 May 3.29 4.60 -1.31
2014 Jun 6.77 4.21 2.56
2014 Jul 3.30 4.08 -0.78
2014 Aug 5.20 3.59 1.61
2014 Sep 4.08 3.23 0.85
2014 Oct 4.28 3.24 1.04
2014 Nov 3.47
2014 Dec 2.69

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