First, we should note that this winter — Dec. 1 to Feb. 28 — was the third-warmest on record in the District and the warmest winter of the 21st century so far. The season’s average temperature, 43.9 degrees, was 5.7 degrees warmer than normal (

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With that, four out of the top 10 warmest winters have occurred since 2000.

Last month was the warmest February on record, and as we noted Thursday, it was also warmer than a typical March. It was only the second time since 2000 that Washington had zero measurable snow in the month of February, and the rainfall total was just 0.68 inches — nearly two inches below normal.

With just 6.04 inches of precipitation, this meteorological winter — December through February — was the third driest and the least snowy since 2000. It only snowed twice with a combined accumulation of 1.4 inches in January, which is certainly more than the record-low of 0.1 inches from 1997-1998 — but far from our average of 14 inches. We still have chance to pick up a little more snow in March or even early April, but the lack of sustainable cold weather this season is really challenging that prospect.

Despite the capital’s precipitation shortfall, the United States as a whole clocked in a relatively wet winter thanks to the huge surplus of precipitation that fell on California and the Southwest, where it was desperately needed. And while a majority of the Lower 48 was warm this winter, the Northwest, western Canada and a large part of Europe was actually colder than normal.

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But on to the point. The big question. What does this all mean for our summer weather? Will it continue to be way warmer than normal, or are things going to regulate?

If we look at the top 10 warmest winters in Washington, we’re not seeing an obvious connection. Of course that makes sense because there are perhaps an infinite number of ways we can get a very warm winter and they aren’t all going to translate to a hot summer (or even a cool summer).

In fact, the top 10 warmest winters were followed by a hotter-than-normal summer exactly half the time. But we know you don’t like a coin toss, so we’re going to try to give you more.

Warmest winter rank Year Summer temps Summer rainfall 1 1932 Cool Dry 2 1890 Cool Wet 3 2017 ??? ??? 4 2012 Hot Dry 5 2002 Hot Dry 6 1950 Cool Wet 7 1998 Cool Dry 8 1949 Hot Wet 9 1991 Hot Dry 10 2016 Hot Dry

The interesting thing we can glean from this data is that after the three most recent warm winters — 2002, 2012 and 2016 — Washington experienced a hotter-than-average summer. This isn’t a statistically rigorous prediction, but those years give us some confidence in saying this summer is more likely to be hot than cool.

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Of course, what we don’t have a lot of data on is basically everything else, and like we said, there are a lot of factors that come together to influence the weather in any given location.

It looks like El Niño is coming back in 2017 after a brief hiatus, though that phenomenon doesn’t have much of an impact on summer weather as it does winter weather. Still, last year we were in a weak El Niño / neutral scenario, and it ended up being much warmer than normal. Again, that isn’t nearly enough to draw a conclusion, but it’s another data point we can keep in the back of our minds.

The final thing we will note is what our seasonal forecaster Matt Ross pointed out last year: Cooler-than-average summers just don’t happen anymore.

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“Ten out of the past 11 summers have been above normal,” Matt wrote in his summer outlook last May. “It is hard to bet against a warmer-than-average summer, especially with Washington’s urban heat-island effect consistently elevating overnight lows, even in air masses that are yielding average afternoon highs.”

Given all of this, we’d have to go with a warmer than average summer. Whether it will be miserably hot is still in question.