1998 Winter Is Warmest, Wettest on Record for U.S.

The first two months of 1998 were the warmest and wettest on record for the continental United States, according to a report Monday from government weather watchers, who predicted the El Nino weather pattern will bring more of the same through April.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that the national average temperature in January and February was 37.5 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to the normal 32.1 degrees. The previous record, set in 1990, was 37.0 degrees.

An average 6.01 inches of rain fell, beating the record of 5.7 inches set in 1979. Normally, 4.05 inches fall during the first two months of the year.

“These are the patterns one would typically expect during a strong El Nino event,” said Ants Leetmaa, director of the NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.

The wet pattern continued Monday in the South, where the death toll stood at seven after thunderstorms turned the streets of towns from Louisiana to Georgia into rivers.

In the Midwest, where a cold front dumped heavy snow and froze road surfaces, five people died in weather-related traffic accidents.

Tornadoes ripped through central Florida, but no deaths were reported. Florida Power & Light said 23,000 customers were left without power.

Southern rivers that broke their banks over the weekend began to recede Monday afternoon as the rain eased.

The Midwest snowstorm tied up highways and airports, including Chicago’s busy O’Hare International Airport, and knocked out electricity to more than 300,000 customers.

About a foot of snow had fallen by the afternoon in Wisconsin, with 6 to 7 inches in Illinois and Indiana. Eighteen inches that fell over the weekend in central Iowa was heaped into 12-foot snowdrifts in Des Moines by wind gusting to 40 mph.

Blizzard conditions at O’Hare, the world’s busiest passenger airport, reduced arrivals and departures to just 20% of normal, backing up flights elsewhere around the country.

About 275,000 homes and businesses were without power across scattered sections of northern Illinois, including parts of Chicago. An additional 30,000 customers had no lights or heat in southeastern Wisconsin. And thousands more were blacked out in northwestern Indiana.

Power in some rural areas of Illinois could be out for two or three days, said Commonwealth Edison spokesman Wilson Medina.

It was the coldest part of a vast storm system that also poured heavy rain across the lower Great Lakes, the Northeast and the mid-Atlantic states.