While we might remember the end of 2009 being so cold, not the whole year was that way. We saw some of the biggest swings that I can remember in the course of one year.

Both January and February were warmer and drier than we typically see in that part of winter, but things turned much wetter in March and April. Although Northeast Kansas got a winter mix from a late March storm, the state snowfall record was set in Pratt with 30″ of snow in late March.

We then went from the 7th wettest May ever to the 14th driest June, as we continued the back-and-forth pattern into summer. Despite the turnpike tornado in late April, it was a pretty quiet severe weather season across eastern Kansas in 2009.

The first week of summer turned out to be just about the only week of summer. Temperatures teetered around 100 in late June, then cooled off and stayed cool by summer standards…only hitting 90 five more times for the rest of the summer. The 7th coolest July on record led into a prolonged cool stretch culminating the coldest first half of October ever. That put July-October as the 4th coolest on record.

Then November turned out to be well above average in temperatures. Even though October was 6 degrees below average, the month of November canceled that out with 6 degrees above average.

It was perhaps December that will be most remembered with most cities in Northeast Kansas recording their snowiest month on record: the early December storms in northern Kansas and the Christmas blizzard being the major storms of note.

However, when you put it all together, somehow the average annual temperature was right near the typical average. It was certainly a wet year, but no major swing in temperature across Northeast Kansas despite such huge swings in the monthly average data.