This morning’s balmy 27 degrees belies the weather situation a year ago today. Here’s what I wrote that morning:

At 6:30 am on Monday, it’s 8 degrees and cloudy in Lowell.  By this time yesterday, the National Weather Service had already issued a blizzard watch for eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island (since upgraded to a blizzard warning). Just moments ago, Matt Noyes on New England Cable News just said that the snow will begin late this afternoon and will intensify later in the evening.  Snow will continue throughout Tuesday and into Wednesday.  Travel tomorrow will be “nearly impossible.”  By the time the storm is over, parts of southern New England will have received 2 to 3 feet of snow.

Jan 28, 2015

Forty-eight hours later, on Wednesday morning, the snow had ended, the sky was slate gray, and it remained very cold. Here’s what I wrote then:

The National Weather Service reports that Lowell received 31 inches of snow in this storm, a figure I won’t dispute.  It began Monday night and ended on Tuesday night so we had almost 24 hours of continuous snowfall with the temperature never rising above 16 degrees.  Strong, gusty wind caused the light, fluffy snow to drift into artistically sloped piles.

Jan 28, 2015

That wasn’t the first snow we received last winter. While very little fell before Christmas, we received two inches of heavy wet snow on January 4, 2015 and six inches of snow fell on January 24, 2015. After the January 26-28 storm, which by my yardstick dropped 33 inches of snow, we had another big snowstorm on February 2, 2015 which closed Lowell schools for two days; five more inches on February 8, 2015; fifteen inches on February 15, 2015; three inches on February 22, 2015; and two inches on March 2, 2015. Through it all, it was very cold with early morning temperatures as low as five below zero the norm.

That all started a year ago today. Please check out our running commentary on that big January 2015 storm.

Happy Anniversary.