Thru the 20th, we are on track to be very close to the coldest March in Portland weather history (since they began keeping records in 1941). In Harpswell, we will likely be around 6 degrees below normal for the month if current forecasts hold. This will be the 7th colder than normal month out of the last 8, and the coldest by far (relative to normal) on my weather station.
Normal temperatures on this page are based on Portland normals, which NOAA currently calculates using the period 1981-2010. Based on those three decades, February was the 6th colder than normal month of the last seven, as shown by the red bars below. But, if NOAA didn't keep updating their normal temperatures each decade and was still using 1951-1980 (shown by the blue line), only one of the last 38 months was colder than what was normal in those three decades. Since NOAA adjusts what it considers normal to be based on the latest three complete decades, comparisons of current temperatures to the NOAA norms understates the extent to which climate is warming.
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SOURCEWeather statistics are based on 5-minute readings at an Ambient Weather station near Mill Cove off of upper Harpswell Sound. Archives
December 2015
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