By John Simpson
The new year welcomed the Vail area with snow, and quite a bit of it. A storm moved in on New Year’s Eve and rain changed over to snow. By New Year’s morning, around 1-2 inches was on the ground. The second storm occurred just one day later on the 2nd and many reports of 3-6 inches were common. At my home, about 5.5 inches fell. Vail was on the western edge of this second snow event as much of Tucson did not receive much precipitation. The Tucson airport only recorded 0.4 inches of snow on the 1st and a trace on the 2nd for comparison. A warmer storm brought substantial rain on the 5th and 6th and smaller storm brought some rain on the 13th. The remainder of the month was dry.
For the month of January, I recorded 1.21 inches of rain (and melted snow). This is just above my eight-year average of 1.03 inches. The Tucson airport recorded 1.09 inches which is just above its 30-year average of 0.94 inches. 1 to 1.5-inch rain amounts were common across Vail and Tucson. On the temperature side, the airport was exactly at its 30-year average. The cold days at the first of the month and third week were balanced by plenty of warm days in the 70’s. This is a sharp difference from January 2018, which was the warmest in Tucson history since records began in the 1880’s. For next month, I will report on February and the three-month winter season. At the time of this writing, much of the Tucson area has already received its average rainfall for February in just the first
