Sea Ice in Long Island Sound During the Coldest Month on Record!

Now that it's March, we can officially declare the month of February 2015 as the coldest month on record in Bridgeport, Connecticut with an average temperature of 19.9 degrees (F)!  Records go back to 1948. 

Climatologically, January is the coldest month of the year. So it is impressive to have the coldest month on record now be in February! 

The NWS reports the highest temperature recorded at Bridgeport in the month of February 2015 was 37 degrees and the lowest was -2 degrees. The month saw 21.5 inches of snow fall with an average snow depth of 11 inches throughout the month (that's a far cry from what Boston saw!) 

I've shared some of the pictures of a frozen Long Island Sound in this post and this post but here are some more photos I haven't shared yet! 

Below is a picture of the American flag at Anchor Beach in Milford, CT. Notice all the sea ice and slush floating in front and around the rock that sticks out into the water. 

Since the cold was so prolonged, every tide cycle added more ice to the rocks along the shore. 

Frozen steps to the beach! The bottom few steps of this staircase that have weathered both Irene and Sandy have accumulated ice during high tides during the month. 

Another stair case to the beach frozen from high water at high tide. Pretty impressive that not even the sun could melt this ice! 

These rocks along the beach have been incased in sea ice, formed at different levels depending on the height of the tide. The combination of ice, tide and rocks made for some very cool patterns.