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.
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.