Oregon Public Broadcasting

While the Midwest and East Coast of the U.S. have been repeatedly socked by severe weather this winter, the Northwest has been quite mild by comparison.

According to numbers from the National Weather Service and Oregon State University, January in western Oregon was extremely warm.

Medford had the warmest January since records began in 1911. Astoria and Salem had only one warmer January in the last 120 years. Portland’s was the third warmest January since the 1920’s.

Paul Tolleson with the National Weather Service points to the cyclical El Niño effect – rather than global warming – as the responsible party.

Paul Tolleson: “You can never say that El Niño is the only driving influence here. It undoubtedly was the dominant one. But there are other oscillations and phenomena, some of which we know a little bit about, some that we maybe haven’t even discovered yet.”

Tolleson noted that Portland didn’t see a single day below freezing in the entire month of January, and had only 11 days below 40. 

It was also a little warmer than usual in Eugene and Corvallis. Average temperatures in both cities were the fifth warmest since records began.