Although it may seem a distant memory the rest of this bone-chilling week, 2012 was the warmest year ever recorded in Boston, according to the ­National Weather Service

Most people will remember the balmy winter which, at 37.2 degrees Fahrenheit, turned out to be the second warmest on ­record and the fourth least snowy.

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Yet the average annual temperature was 54.2 degrees Fahrenheit, about 2.8 degrees higher than normal. Reliable record keeping in Boston began in 1872.

“The winter of 2011-2012 was pretty warm,’’ said ­Matthew Belk, a meteorologist with the Weather Service in Taunton. For example, March was 8.4 degrees above normal, he said.

It was not that it was warm all year long. June, for ­example, was slightly below normal, but with so many days and weeks above normal, it proved an overall balmy year.

Across New England, other cities also reported record or near-record warming last year such as Hartford, Providence, and Burlington, Vt.