If you are reading this in February there is a good chance the air conditioner is blowing when it shouldn’t.
This year has brought the earliest hottest temperatures on record to Jacksonville. Three records have been notched so far in February sending the average above normal for a second month this year.
This heat is so unusual that we are currently feeling the top 8th hottest month ever on record for February with an average temperature of 64.1 degrees as of Saturday, February 25. The warmest February on record for Jacksonville is 66.1 set in 2018.
Temps have been more common of late spring than winter with only four days so far being cooler than average in February. Freezes have ceased since the four during January.
The average temperature is running 17 degrees above normal for Jacksonville this month at 76° when typically it is 59 when combining daily mean high and low temperatures.
Our area has never had a 90 degree day before March but there is still the chance before the end of February.
Jacksonville is just one city swept up in a winterless winter that has erased much of the cold in the southeast this month.
Global warming has fingerprints all over city records this year.
Record high temperatures more than double record lows since the start of last year based on data from the National Weather Service climate records.
Just look at the hottest records so far for 2023:
84° January 19, new record
83° January 25, new record
87° January 30, new record hottest and earliest warmest temperature on record
86° February 17, new record
87° February 22, tied record
88° February 23, new record
88° February 24, tied record
We are on pace like last year when the total record highs in 2022 to record lows were outnumbered 9 highs to 5 record lows.
Neither of the six consecutive freezes we endured over Christmas week 2022 was cold enough to set records. In reality, that condensed period was the only taste of winter we will see.
In a stable climate, extreme highs and lows would each account for about half of all records. But since the late 1970s, daily heat records have become increasingly more common than daily cold records across the U.S.—a trend that is projected to increase with additional warming.