East Coast city went more than 9 months (!) without dipping below freezing

On March 1, 2020, the United States was less than 24 hours removed from its first coronavirus fatality, and the day's most popular tweets were about moves being made in the Democratic Party nomination race.

Now in early December, just about everything about today's world feels completely foreign to those simpler days before the pandemic, except for one thing in one East Coast city. From March 1 until Dec. 3, one spot in Arlington, Virginia, didn't see a thermometer dip below 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Not once.

Wearing masks, travelers walk to and from their planes at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2020, in Arlington, Va., in advance of the Thanksgiving holiday. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

According to temperature readings taken at Washington Reagan National Airport, the Washington, D.C., area stayed above the freezing temperature threshold for a whopping 277 days, making for the second-longest streak in the area's history.

The streak was snapped on Thursday as the temperature dipped to 31 F around dawn on a cloudy day.

AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Dave Dombek said the combination of a mild late winter and a comfortable November that came with extended warmth was a helpful contribution to the streak.

Had the nation's capital continued to stay above 32 degrees Fahrenheit through Sunday, the city would have broken its previous record, surpassing the mark of 279 days set in 2010.

So what's to blame, or thank, for such a long time between the frozen days?

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"March was more or less a continuation of the milder-than-normal pattern that we were in during last winter," Dombek said. "This past November, much of the cold weather was confined to the central and western part of the country, at least for a while."

Dombek pointed specifically to a stretch in the middle of November, between the 5th and 15th, when the weather was particularly warmer than normal for the month.

Similarly, temperatures in March also trended above normal after the first day, keeping a comfortably warm cushion above that 32 F daily minimum temperature mark.

According to the National Weather Service monthly climatological report for March, the average temperature was well above average, ranking as the fifth warmest on record and warmest since 2016. On that March 1 that had temperatures below freezing, the daily minimum bottomed out at 26 F. After that, no other day until November came even within 10 degrees of that.

For residents that had been missing those freezing days, fret not. Far colder days and wintry weather may be right around the corner.

AccuWeather Chief Broadcast Meteorologist Bernie Rayno said a dip in jet stream will bring an injection of cold air to the East Coast, all the way down through Virginia. While the D.C. area will not see the snow totals that residents in the Northeast will, that injection of cold air will be strong enough to quickly plunge the capital city into winterlike weather.

"It's going to occur too late for any snow in Pennsylvania, Virginia or Maryland," Rayno said of the storm's progression. "But as the storm gets off the Jersey shore and off the New England coast, here comes the cold air -- and that's where we're going to see precipitation change from rain to snow."

Come Monday, however, Rayno said an upper-level storm, or low pressure area, will be moving to the East, and that could bring snow to the D.C. area down through central Virginia.

"I think you've got to worry about at least some flakes falling from Washington, D.C., into central Virginia. Again, it all depends on where this goes," Rayno said. "But you never, never, never trust an upper-level low. So this means not only do you want to stay tuned to AccuWeather.com for the weekend storm, but we have to keep an eye on this for the mid-Atlantic on Monday afternoon through Monday night."

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