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L.A. vs. Boston: An Extreme Winter Weather Comparison

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By Tom Acitelli
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Spring is finally here, which is an obvious fact in Los Angeles and a confusing and sad one in Boston. California had the warmest winter on record and LA was its hottest city, plus there's a drought raging; Boston had its snowiest winter ever and is still sniffling its way through, with more cold possibly to come. Curbed LA and Curbed Boston have joined forces for a terrifying comparison.


The Records
Los Angeles: California had the warmest winter in 120 years of record keeping, with an average temperature of 47.8 degrees (5.1 degrees warmer than the Twentieth Century average). Los Angeles was the warmest city in the state this winter, just beating out San Diego. In March, Los Angeles temperatures hit 90 degrees on four consecutive days, which it has never done before in that month.
Boston: This was Boston's snowiest winter with 108.6 inches of snow. The city also broke the 30-day snowfall record by about three feet over late January through late February.

The Freaky Stats
Los Angeles: In January, Downtown LA was four degrees above the average set just between the very recent years of 1980 and 2010. February was even warmer. March temps were seven degrees above average mid-month. Meanwhile, January was California's driest since records began 120 years ago and over the entire season, rainfall was about half of what it normally is.
Boston: February saw 10 times the usual amount of snow for the month. As for the record 30-day stretch of snow through February, a meteorologist crunched the numbers and found that the odds of that happening were one in about 26,315 years. In early March, the city had gone 39 days—the longest stretch ever—with more than 20 inches of snow on the ground.



The Crucial Date
Los Angeles: On December 31, 2014, Los Angeles temperatures dropped below 60 degrees for the first time in 375 days. It was the second-longest stretch of super-60 temps.
Boston: On March 15, 2015, this winter officially became Boston's all-time snowiest with 108.6 inches of snow. When it broke the 100-inch mark in late February, it was the fastest the city had ever racked up that much snow in a season.



The Future
Los Angeles: Today and tomorrow are expected to break temperature records in Los Angeles.
Boston: There's snow forecast for this weekend and, meanwhile, "short- and long-term forecasts make it unlikely that the city will be free of all the piles and banks before mid-April, although no one knows for sure how long it will take to emerge from the historic snow blanketing the region."

Fenway Park just a week before spring training began

The need to continue getting around in the snowpocalypse birthed ingenuity in locals: one bicyclist dug a 40-foot-long pedestrian/bike tunnel that lasted for days. By Ari Goldberger via BDCWire
· The Weather [Curbed LA]
· Our Snow Patrol archive [Curbed Boston]

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