Thunderstorms Over the Southeast U.S. and Northern Rockies; Critical Fire Weather Conditions in the Plains

Isolated severe thunderstorms and showers will bring a flash flood threat across the Southeast. Scattered severe wind gusts are expected across the northern Rockies into the Plains. Elevated to Critical fire weather conditions are expected across the north/central Plains and Upper Midwest. Read More >

Believe it or not, we've already reached meteorological spring. Before we get too excited about warm weather, blooming flowers, and thunderstorms, (wait, we've already had all that...) let's take a look back at February.

February 2017 turned out to be very warm in southern Wisconsin. In fact, based off of the average temperature, February 2017 was the warmest February on record in Milwaukee. The average temperature of 35.5 degrees was nearly 10 degrees above normal, breaking the previous record of 35.2 set way back in 1882.

It was also very warm in Madison. The average temperature of 32.3 degrees was about 9 degrees above normal, putting February 2017 in a tie for 4th place on the warmest February leaderboard.

Precipitation was pretty similar to normal. However, given the extremely warm temperatures, the snowfall at both Milwaukee and Madison was a good deal below normal. In fact, February 2017 was the 5th least snowy February on record in Milwaukee.

Toward the end of the month, we saw an extraordinary stretch of days where we broke temperature records daily. For more information on that, check here.