For the first time since forecasters began recording data — at least 132 years — the mercury did not reach 70 degrees in downtown Los Angeles for the entire month of February.The average high for the month was 61 degrees, significantly lower than the historical average of 68 for February. That makes it the eighth-coldest February on record, said Ryan Kittell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.
The cold month — the city’s coldest in nearly 60 years — also brought snow to urban Los Angeles for the first time in several years, though it failed to accumulate.
Other regions of the country also experienced extreme cold earlier this year, with a polar vortex bringing temperatures so cold to Chicago that boiling water froze immediately on contact with the outside air, and clouds of steam rose off Lake Michigan because the lake was so much warmer than the ambient air temperature.
