January 2025 St. Cloud Weather Summary

Minnesota's average temperature for two months in a row has acted like the Vikings of 2024, before the last two games of the season that we wish to forget, rallying from below average to finish milder than average. In each case, St. Cloud's average monthly temperature was colder than 3 degrees below average by around the 20th of the month. However, both December 2024 and January 2025 had a late month warm surge that overcame the brief cold streak. Both the mid-January coldness, featuring a true arctic air mass, and the late January warmth, which did not have persistent fog like the December warm-up, were both more intense than during December, but the net effect was the same: St. Cloud has now registered 21 straight months with a milder than average temperature (see table below):

The final January 2025 average temperature at the St. Cloud Regional Airport was 12.4 degrees (22.9 degree average high; 2.0 degree average low), only 0.6 degrees from average. Since April of 2023, the only other month that has been within a degree of average was July 2023. Still, the mild streak went on. Between May 2023 and January 2025, St. Cloud's temperature has averaged 50.0 degrees, the mildest 21-month period on record. The closest previous period was May 1930-January 1932, with an average temperature of 48.3 degrees. 2011-2013 had an average temperature of 48.2 degrees. 2005-2007 (6th), 2015-2017 (4th), and 2022-2024 (5th) round out the top 6.

The arctic cold happened during January 18-22, which ended up producing the coldest weather Minnesota had seen in a couple of years. And, it was supposed to be part of a persistent pattern. But, the really cold air was gone in 4 days. By the end of the month, St. Cloud had a 4 day streak of temperatures more than 17 degrees above average including the January 30 record warm high of 49. The old record of 44 was tied last year.

This winter was predicted to have a 'La Nina' weather pattern with frequent steering winds from northwest-to-southeast from northern Alaska or the Yukon Territories into the central US. Even though Minnesota and much of the US to the east of the Rockies have frequently been trapped within northwest-to-southeast steering winds, Minnesota experienced only the one mid-January arctic outbreak. There have been a series of air masses steered from north central Canada into Minnesota during the month, but only the outbreak rivaled a typical arctic air. That's the only cold surge that captured air that had been sitting over the Arctic Ocean for at least a month (mostly no color over Arctic Ocean in mid-January on the Alicia Bentley Northern Hemisphere 850 mb temperature anomaly map (blue colder than average, purple much colder than average; use left arrow to go back in time to mid-January). During late January, there has been arctic air that has been cold, even for the Arctic Ocean (blue and even purple on the Russian side of the Arctic Ocean), but that air has been steered into Siberia, where recent temperatures have frequently been in the -50's (see NWS Ocean Prediction Center Pacific Ocean 14-day loop and zoom-in on the northwest portion of the map; green numbers are the temperature). Also, when cold air has pushed southeastward in North America, it has typically been moving quite quickly. iSo, our period of sub-zero readings only covered two complete days and we only had 4 straight days with a sub-zero low, 2 with a -20 degree low.

Mid-January Arctic Outbreak in St. Cloud (January 18-22; see NWS January 2025 daily high-low temperature table or 30-day graph of St. Cloud temperatures from MesoWest; NWS: last 72-hours of St. Cloud observations)

• 2 complete days with temperatures colder than zero
  • 68 straight hours: 5 PM Saturday through 1 PM Tuesday
  • Longest period since Jan. 14-15, 2024 (yes, there were about 9 cold days during the mild 2023-2024 cold season)
  • Average sub-zero days in a cold season: 4.3
• 2 days with a low temperatures of -20 or colder
  • Last low of -20 or colder: Jan. 26, 2022
  • Average -20 lows in a cold season: 5.4
  • -27 degrees on Tuesday: coldest since Jan. 7, 2022
• 16 January days with a low of zero or colder
  • 21 days for this cold season so far
  • Average 0 or colder lows for a cold season: 42.7

It takes a stalled arctic low to persist near the US-Canadian border (the dreaded 'polar vortex') to keep circulating air from above the Arctic Circle into the US persistently. The longer streaks of sub-zero highs or sub minus-20 lows had that weather pattern. So, this January outbreak did not rival some of the more extreme cold pushes, including:

Arctic Outbreak Failed to Produce:

• Longer Consecutive Complete Day Streak Zero or Colder
  • Three: Dec. 21-23, 2022
  • Five (and 8 Days out of 10): Feb. 11-15, 2021
• Last high of -10 or colder: Jan. 6, 2014 (only 3 days since 1995)
• Last low of -30 or colder: Jan. 30 and 31, 2019
• Last lows of -40: Jan. 19 (MLK Jr Day), 1994; Feb. 2, 1996 (reached through NWS Twin Cities NOW Data; set to summarized data for a month)
• Any daily record cold temperatures:
  • -9 January 20 high was short of the -14 record
  • The only January temperature record broken was the January 30 record warm high (49, beating 44)

The 'La Nina' temperature anomaly (tropical Pacific Ocean temperatures colder than average; blue in the diagrams within the linked slide show from the NWS Climate Prediction Center) was forecast to be relative weak with temperatures mainly only half a degree to a degree colder than average. In this year's La Nina, the lack of snow cover from central Minnesota and South Dakota southward (set duration to season on the NWS NOHRSC National Gridded Snowfall Analysis; longest period with snow cover, at least an inch, 18 days in January for St. Cloud) have also allowed temperatures to be milder, since less sunlight is reflected back to space. And, there's always the fact that the tropical Pacific Ocean pattern isn't the only thing that affects the Northern Hemisphere cold season weather pattern (and we haven't figured out all of the factors yet!).

Among the really cold outbreaks from the past, often occurring in late January and early February (that's why the coldest average temperatures are then) cold outbreaks happened in late January and early February:

1. The record-producing cold of January and February 1996 (on NWS Twin Cities NOWData, set to St. Cloud area, daily data for a month, and 1996-01 and -02), producing St. Cloud's last -40 low and last -20 high and the state record low of -60 on Feb. 2. There were also 20 straight days with a sub-zero low and 6 straight days with a low of at least -30. There were 5 straight days remaining below zero.
2. January 2004: 5 straight days with a sub-zero low (2 complete days below zero) with a -31 low on January 30.
3. January and February 2014: 18 straight days with a sub-zero low (2 complete days below zero) despite a +30 high on January 31.
4. January and February 2019: 10 straight days with a sub-zero low (3 complete days below zero) with 2 -30 lows at the end of January (-34 on January 30)
5. February 2021 (outside of the average): 13 straight days with a sub-zero low (5 complete days below zero). Coldest low: -28 on February 15

Now, parts of the southern US and the Gulf Coast had an extremely cold January. Some of that, including the Gulf Coast snow and ice storm on January 21, happened because our arctic cold moved onto the East and South Coasts of the US. However, the earlier snowstorms that hit Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, and Tennessee were merely produced by air that was about 10 degrees colder than average pushing to the interior Gulf States (no matter how many times 'polar vortex' is used in the descriptions of this system).

Continued Dry and Relatively Snowless, Unlike Parts of Central and Southern US

Minnesota continued the dry streak that began in September. Snowfall was scant state-wide. St. Cloud did a little bit better on snowfall for the month than parts of Minnesota further to the south, because we caught a chunk of the central Minnesota snow band on January 11-12. The January total was 3.4 inches, but that was still 5.4 inches below average and tied for the 10th least snowy January in St. Cloud records. For the cold season so far, St. Cloud has seen only 13.7 inches (despite a Halloween start to the snow season). That ranks as the 9th lowest snowfall total through January, but is still well ahead of the 9.1 inches (5th lowest), last cold season's 2023-2024 snowfall through January. Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport only had 1.7 inch of January snow and its seasonal snowfall is merely 9.8 inches. Northern and northeastern Minnesota have seen more snow. Duluth had 10.9 inches last month, but that was still 5.9 inches below average. The cold season in Duluth has produced 24.5 inches, less than half of the average 52.4 inches. Over the Continental US, only the northern half of Minnesota have as much seasonal snowfall as Kansas City, St. Louis, and Louisville (set duration and data file to season on the NWS NOHRSC National Gridded Snowfall Analysis). Some parts of the area from Houston to New Orleans to Pensacola (blue) have seen as much snowfall as southern Minnesota and more than northern Iowa.

The reasons snow storms have mainly missed Minnesota, especially the southern half, are also locked within our dominant steering wind pattern. When we've been affected by northwest-to-southeast flow throughout the US to the east of the Rockies, storms traveling from Alaska to the Great Lakes haven't been able to pick up much moisture from the south. Even when we've had south winds, that flow has merely blown leftover cold air that pushed to our south. That did allow our milder periods, but the arctic air hadn't picked up moisture from over the Gulf of Mexico. The northwest to southeast flow also tended to steer storms away from most of California, contributing to the severe fire conditions that dominated the month.

The other weather pattern that dominated January was a pair of storm tracks with a southern one mainly extending from the Pacific Northwest to the Southern Rockies, then pushing northeastward to the Ohio Valley (set month to January on the NWS Water Prediction Center Continental US precipitation map). That pattern had air dry out over the Rockies, but new moisture coming in for precipitation from eastern Texas and Oklahoma into Kentucky and Tennessee. Neither pattern allowed moisture to get into weather systems. We frequently had strong and gusty winds as the pressure difference between the low pressure systems and the highs, especially the cold ones, were large, but most storms only produced narrow bands of accumulating snow.

Relatively Good for Lake Ice...

The mainly dry conditions avoided some of the lake ice problems seen over the past two cold seasons, as the colder periods in December and January have made some good ice cover. That's a change from last season, when ice was hard to make due to persistent warmth, and the 2022-2023 season, when record snowfall before thick ice could form kept conditions treacherous.

...Poor for Spring Soil Moisture

The lack of snow has the potential to cause consequences, beyond hurting the recreational snow industry and people who earn their winter income from snow removal. If the lack of snow continues, area lakes and rivers will have below average water levels during the spring, since there will be much less than average water from snow melt. However, the ground water situation isn't affected much by the snow cover, especially in a cold season like this one. Since the ground froze deeply before the snow fell, most of the melting snow water will not be able to penetrate into the ground. However, given the dry last 4 months of 2024, ground water will need help from a wet spring.

January 2025 Statistics

Posted February 2, 2025