Quiet and dry weather started the week, as temperatures were near average, with daytime highs in the 60s on Monday, January 15. Clouds and rain chances increased as the system that produced winter precipitation over portions of Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee started to approach the region early Tuesday morning. The storm moved along the Appalachians, providing light rain across parts of the state, and temperatures were slightly cooler than normal.
By Wednesday, dry and cold high pressure moved into the region behind the system, and temperatures were well below normal. Morning low temperatures were ten to twenty degrees below normal, with temperatures in the mid-teens in parts of the Upstate and northern Midlands. There were showers on Thursday night before another cold front moved through the area.
Cold, dry air started to filter into the region throughout Friday, accompanied by breezy conditions with wind gusts around 30 mph and some higher gusts recorded by stations in the Midlands. Temperatures were well below normal throughout the remainder of the period. Morning temperatures were up to twenty degrees colder than normal, and lows ranged from the single digits in the Upstate to the mid to upper teens in the Midlands to the upper 20s near the coast. Maximum temperatures only reached the mid-30s at some locations, such as the National Weather Service stations in Columbia, Greenville, and North Myrtle Beach. The winds combined with the colder-than-normal temperatures over the weekend to produce bitterly cold wind chills, especially on Saturday and Sunday mornings when they dropped into the single digits.
(Note: The highest and lowest official temperatures and highest precipitation totals provided below are based on observations from the National Weather Service (NWS) Cooperative Observer network and the National Weather Service's Forecast Offices.)| Weekly* | Since Jan 1 | Departure | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anderson Airport | 0.29 | 5.73 | 3.0 |
| Greer Airport | 0.13 | 6.57 | 3.2 |
| Charlotte, NC Airport | 0.16 | 4.68 | 2.3 |
| Columbia Metro Airport | 0.01 | 2.14 | -0.3 |
| Orangeburg 2 (COOP) | 0.02 | 2.94 | 0.3 |
| Augusta, GA Airport | 0.06 | 2.43 | -0.2 |
| Florence Airport | 0.08 | 2.57 | 0.5 |
| North Myrtle Beach Airport | 0.06 | 0.94 | 1.0 | Charleston Air Force Base | 0.01 | 1.88 | -0.4 |
| Savannah, GA Airport | Trace | 2.86 | 0.7 |
| *Weekly precipitation totals ending midnight Sunday. M - denotes total with missing values. s - denotes total with suspect data. |
4-inch depth soil temperature: Clinton: 35 degrees. Columbia: 46 degrees. Barnwell: 39 degrees. Mullins: 31 degrees.
After multiple beneficial yet heavy rain periods, this period was marked with light precipitation, with only isolated parts of Abbeville, Anderson, and Laurens counties recording more than half an inch of rain. Elsewhere across the state, rainfall totals were less than a tenth of an inch. Because of the recent rainfall, drought designations on the January 18 release of the US Drought Monitor (USDM) map showed vast improvements. Most abnormally dry conditions (D0) were removed from the Upstate, with only D0 moderate drought (D1) conditions confined to Abbeville, Anderson, and McCormick counties.
Despite the lack of rainfall, the 14-day average streamflow values across the Piedmont and Upstate, especially along streams and tributaries within the Broad, Catawba, and Saluda river basins, reported much above-normal flows. Some gauges continued to report the highest 14-day streamflow value on record for the date range. Gauges south of the Fall Line started to record above-normal streamflow values as the water moved through the river basins. River heights in the Upstate fell from minor and moderate flood stages to below action stage, while gauges across the Midlands and Pee Dee crested in minor and moderate stages and started to fall.
