How cold was February 1-17 compared to other years?

I have reported that this winter is so cold that no conclusions can be drawn about the effects of the shutting down of the nuclear reactor at Vernon upon the freezing of the Connecticut River.

I took the time to graph out the data for the average mean temperature, according to the Weatherunderground, for the past 73 years, at Northampton, MA.   The data show that this February 1-17 has been the coldest in record by far at 13.    The average temperature is about 26, with the range of 20-34.  The information is shown below:

My brother Tim  asked if I had done a standard deviation calculation, so I found a program, and this is the result:                                                                                       

This years average mean temp of 13 for the period Feb 1-17 is more than 3 standard deviations from the norm!   This is certainly a very unusually cold  winter at this time.

Today these suspicions were confirmed by a blog on the weather underground that record cold weather is being found throughout the eastern US because of the Siberian express, coming directly over the North Pole to us.

The cold weather story was discussed in Slate:

The west coast is warmer than ever, and the east coast is colder than ever.   Much of the weather data is based on a few days.   What is interesting about this report is that it looks at a time span of over two weeks.   I will report at the end of the month.  It appears that more cold weather is on the way.

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