Looking Back at January 2023 published on February 19, 2023

I realize that we are past mid-Februray and I recently presented the NOAA Seasonal Outlook, but it makes sense to review January of this year. In this article, I will first take a global perspective and here I rely on the large volume of information that is issued by NOAA (NCEI Div) and then I will take a look at the state rankings in January. The state rankings look at how each state’s January 2023 temperature or precipitation fits in terms of its 129 years of recent history.

Although NCEI seems to think that the important information about January is that it was the seventh warmest on record, that may fall into the category of a given and we will discuss that at the beginning of the article. What I found most interesting was the information on sea ice.

U.S. and Global Weather were very different in January of 2023