January 16th: The Dead of Winter

Yesterday, we talked about the looming arctic blast. Indeed, if you check out Matt's forecast - https://www.news10.com/forecast/01-16-2025-mainly-cloudy-cold-few-flakes-thursday/ - we are anticipating three frigid days to round out the 7-Day Forecast. So, on this Thursday morning, I thought I'd put things into perspective of where we are in the year, while also giving the warm weather lovers who are dreading the end of this forecast something to look forward to!

Starting yesterday, the average high temperature in Albany dropped to its climatological minimum - its lowest point of the year - and will remain at this 32° value through January 25th. Additionally, the average low dips to 15° starting tonight - also the lowest the normal drops to over the course of the season. The average low remains 15° through February 4th.

So, more or less, we are in the "Dead of Winter" through early February, with only a 1° increase in the average high temperature on the first of the month. Listen - February can absolutely give us plenty of winter weather and snow - Albany averages 13.7 inches of snow next month alone. At the same time, February is where milder temperatures start to become more favored, more common. By the start of March, Albany's average high temperature will climb back to the 40° mark. The rate at which the average temperatures climb accelerates during the month of March (One of many reasons we use "meteorological winter" to describe the coldest three month period of the year, excluding March - but I digress). By the end of the month - about a week and a half after the Spring Equinox, average highs are in the low 50s, with average lows getting very very close to freezing.

It's no coincidence, of course, that the increase in temperatures follows an increase in the amount of daylight we get. Temperatures are actually a lagging indicator of the increased sun - you've likely already noticed the sunsets are now some 25 minutes plus later than where they were at their earliest in mid-December.

It's been 74 days, just about 2 and a half months, since we fell back to standard time in early November. The sunset the day we made the change was 4:44 PM - our sunset is now later than that! We are less than two months away from springing ahead to those later sunsets that begin on March 9th.

At first, it was a very gradual increase in daylight, with the sunset time taking 2 or 3 days to increase by a minute. Now, we are seeing a minute, sometimes two, added onto that time each day. The noticeable difference in daylight over the past few weeks will only grow over the next several weeks. In four weeks, the sunset is close to 5:30 PM, and close to 5:45 PM in six weeks. This all happens prior to the time change on March 9th - that's when the sunset will jump to just before 7 PM!

Sunrises will also continue to get earlier until the time change. In less than three weeks, sunrises will be before 7 AM, and continue to get earlier and earlier. The sunrise will be around 6:18 AM before we spring ahead - which will create a setback and push the sunrise back to 7:16 AM. To put it in perspective, Our sunrise 8 days from now will be the same time that it is right after the time change. It will only take 10 days for the sunrise to once again occur before 7 AM.

In case there wasn't enough to look forward to above, this graph represents the total amount of daylight over the course of the year. We are still close to the bottom, with a long, long way to climb until the summer solstice. To put things into perspective, we have roughly the same amount of total daylight today (9 hours 26 minutes) that we will have Thanksgiving week - some 315 days or so from now! Hopefully, if you aren't a fan of the end of our forecast, I've given you renewed sense of optimism moving forward!