Cool, gray day upsets streak of warmth

Amid the warmth of a curiously pleasant winter, Friday almost seemed out of place; a cool, gray intruder from a climate and latitude of dampness and drizzle.

With a high of 47 degrees, the day became Washington’s coolest this month, and a reminder that even in a winter such as this, not every day will follow the script or stay on message.

Through Thursday, March temperatures have been about 5 degrees warmer than average. January temperatures were about 7.7 degrees above average, and February mercury readings clocked in about 6.6 degrees above average.

But Friday seemed to have the look and feel of a day that, usually, would not seem out of place in any wintry month or perhaps in a village on the breezy shore of a cold sea.

Gray and damp at 10 a.m., it proved grayer, mistier and wetter at 6 p.m. And at those hours, and all the hours in between, the mercury remained in the 40s.