February Weather: What’s Typical, From Snow To Tornadoes

February brings a variety of weather including snow, tornadoes and big temperature changes as signs of spring begin to emerge.

Even if wintry weather dominates the month, the increased daylight becomes more noticeable and serves as a reminder that spring is coming. Here's more of what's typical in the month ahead:

There’s still plenty of snow. February is the snowiest month of the year in some locations, from the Northeast to the Plains and West.

Many major Northeast snowstorms occur in February. It's the snowiest month along the Interstate 95 corridor from Boston (average of 14.4 inches) to Washington D.C. (5 inches). In February 2015, Boston totaled 64.8 inches, making it the snowiest month on record and a big reason why the city set its record for the snowiest season that year.

It’s also the snowiest month in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains. Tahoe City averages about 3.5 feet of snow each February.

F​ebruary can also bring a giant mess to the rest of the country, including ice storms as cold air rides over pockets of warm and rainy weather across the South.

In late Feb. 2023, Winter Storm Olive dumped heavy snow from the Mountain West to the upper Midwest and northern New England. But Olive also laid down accumulating ice from Iowa to southern New England.

Temperatures slowly rise. The heart of winter has passed for most of the United States as February begins. For most locations east of the Mississippi River, the coldest time of year is in January, while much of the West gets the coldest temperatures in December.

Average highs begin to warm slightly in February, but remain chilly overall. Teens become more confined to northern North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota, while 60s expand into more of the South and into central California. Average highs in the 70s return to parts of the Southwest.

Signs of spring begin to emerge due to these warmer temperatures, including flowers blooming in some areas. However, low temperatures can drop below freezing for much of the country, so any early blooms need to be cared for during freezes.

February can still be bitterly cold, as we’ve seen in recent years. F​ebruary 2021 saw dozens of all-time record lows set in the Plains and about a week of below-freezing temperatures in some spots that typically only see smaller spurts of freezing weather, like Oklahoma City.

On the other hand, 2023 was one of the warmest Februaries since the late 1800s in the East.

Tornado risk area expands. The area at higher risk for tornadoes grows from January to February as the jet stream begins to shift and warm, humid air from the Gulf of Mexico surges north as low-pressure systems track eastward across the U.S.

Over the past 20 years, an average of 41 tornadoes have occurred in the U.S. in February, fewest of any month.

But, as always with tornado counts, there is substantial year-to-year variability. In 2008, the U.S. had 147 confirmed February tornadoes, and there were 59 deaths from those storms. Winter tornadoes can be particularly dangerous because they are often fast-moving, hard to see and/or happen at night.

February 2023’s oddities included a rare New Jersey tornado on Feb. 21 (EF2 in Mercer County), and the most February tornadoes on record in Oklahoma (11), all of which happened on Feb. 26.

There is a little more daylight. Maybe we buried the lead here. An increase in daylight can be counted on as the darkness of winter begins to lift, regardless of the weather pattern that sets up in February.

Much of the U.S. sees about an hour of additional daylight from the beginning of February until the end of the month.

Areas farther north experience the largest increase. The Northeast and Midwest see about an hour and 15 minutes more daylight by March 1 compared to the end of January, while the Pacific Northwest sees an increase closer to an hour and a half.

The increase in daylight is an average of 40 to 50 minutes across the southern tier of the Lower 48. However, farther north in Alaska, Fairbanks experiences an increase in daylight of more than three hours.

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