The mild winter weather continued on Tuesday with much of the state enjoying high temperatures above 50°F. The weather pattern has remained consistently mild over the past month or so with only brief bouts of cold. A daily feature last week indicated most of the contiguous US with record warmth since mid December. Persistent weather patterns typically have contrasting areas of departures with an analogy being a seesaw with one area of strong positive departures nearby to an area of strong negative departures. The negative temperature departure area has been much of Alaska and northwestern Canada and is the subject of today's featured time series of hourly temperatures from Fairbanks, Alaska. The shaded region represents the range between the daily average low and high temperature. It is hard to fathom the sustained cold shown with about a straight month below 0°F and a considerable period near and below -40°F. It remains to be seen if this seesaw will tip the other way and Iowa will experience significant and sustained winter cold temperatures.

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