Record-breaking high temps, then a record-breaking drop
One day after Wisconsin’s warmest February day on record, temperatures plummeted more than 50 degrees overnight.
On Tuesday, Milwaukee reached a daily record high temperature of 74, but an overnight cold front dropped temperatures to the low 20s by early Wednesday morning, said National Weather Service meteorologist Kevin Wagner. The quick shift in temperatures left the Milwaukee area with slick roads and a light cover of snow early Wednesday morning.
It was also the biggest 24-hour temperature drop ever in Milwaukee, according to a post on X from WISN-TV (Channel 12) News meteorologist Lindsey Slater. The post detailed that a 74degree high at 4:06 p.m. on Tuesday dropped to 23 degrees by 5:52 a.m.
The local National Weather Service believes that record to be correct, but shifts in the way temperatures are recorded bring some “muddiness,” said Taylor Patterson, a local meteorologist at the NWS. The slight uncertainty is due to changes in the ways temperatures are recorded, from morning observations to the now used Automated Surface Observance Systems, which now is the organization’s primary weather tracking tool.
Still, Patterson said the organization has been confirming the news.
Wagner described the quick change due to a “strong arctic cold front.”
That front came from Canada and followed a disturbance from the Rocky Mountains that brought breezy southerly winds on Monday and Tuesday, Local NWS meteorologist Andrew Quigley told the Journal Sentinel on Monday.
“Normally we don’t see these 50degree temperature drops this often. It does happen with a good strong cold front,” Wagner said.
Here’s what to know about the quickly shifting weather in Milwaukee.
How many high-temperature records were broken?
Quite a few, according to Wagner. Milwaukee broke its previous Feb. 27 high of 65 degrees from 1976 when it reached 74.
Other places in the state broke their records too. Wagner said Madison reached their daily record temperatures and in Kenosha the state daily record broke, with the temperature reaching 77 degrees. That broke the prior high of 72 degrees in 2017.
What’s Milwaukee’s forecast for the rest of the week?
We should be back to relatively warm temperatures later this week. Temperatures on Thursday are forecasted to be in the 40s and that should rise to the 50s and above by Friday.
Temperatures for next week are forecasted for mid to high 40s.
What are the chances for snow in the next week?
A weather system is expected to move through the Milwaukee area early next week. That’s the best chance for precipitation, but Wagner said it won’t necessarily mean snow and cautioned it’s too far out to read into it too much.
“Generally, it is looking like it’s on the warm side, at this time it’s mostly looking like we’ll get rain with it,” he said.
Why is it so warm this winter in Milwaukee?
The primary culprit behind Wisconsin’s unseasonably warm winter is a weather phenomenon known as El Niño.
An El Niño event is caused when sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean warm to above average for several months. During an El Niño, the polar jet stream is shifted northward, which limits cold air intrusions from the north, NWS explains.
In general, El Niño brings above-average temperatures to the northern United States, which often result in below-average snowfall in moderate-tostrong El Niño years.
Last year, the Milwaukee area NWS said this winter’s El Niño was on track to be one of the strongest on record.