Capital Region above average temps recorded for 31 straight days

PHOTOGRAPHER: Erica Miller

Stan Mlodzianowski brushes snow off the roof of his car as it continues to snow on Front Street in Schenectady on Jan. 23. Warmer temperatures have kept snowfall in check so far this winter.

ALBANY — Local temperatures have been above historical averages for the last 31 days, the second-longest streak since 2010, according to the National Weather Service in Albany.

This current streak was exceeded by the 40 consecutive days that were recorded from Feb. 14, 2010 to March 25, 2010.

The latest streak began on Dec. 27 and is the sixth-longest on record, dating back to 1951.

“The weather pattern just set up in a way where we just fell into a warm weather pattern that actually resulted in all of those storms that hit the West Coast,” Neil Stuart, meteorologist for National Weather Service in Albany, said on Friday. “There’s been a lot of low pressure over the western United States, which has also resulted in high pressure over the southeastern United States and Mid-Atlantic. The general high pressure over the eastern United States that’s been centered south of us has been keeping some warmer air that’s been pushed our way the last month.”

Stuart says the above average temperatures have spared the region several snowstorms over the last month that instead turned to rain or mixed precipitation.

“What’s also been helping us to stay warm is that we’ve had so many cloudy days and it’s been excessively cloudy the last month,” he said. “That has kept our nighttime low temperatures quite a bit warmer than normal, which contributes to that whole average of keeping our temperatures above normal.”

The current streak is unlikely to tie the record set in 2010, as temperatures are expected to fall to daily lows in the teens and single digits as February begins.

“It looks like right now there is at least some signal that a pretty strong cold front will come through the middle of the week and cool us down to more typical winter weather,” Stuart said.