Seattle
© Bettina Hansen / The Seattle TimesA’joure Johnson, 6, of Seattle takes a leap while visiting Me-Kwa-Mooks Park in West Seattle recently.
If you feel like it's been a mild winter so far, you're not imagining things. This has been the warmest first half of January ever recorded in Seattle, according to the National Weather Service in Seattle.

"The average high temperature at Sea-Tac (International Airport) for the first 16 days of January was 51.8°," the weather service tweeted Thursday.

Those temperature records go back to marks taken at the Federal Building in downtown Seattle since the 1890s, meteorologist Dana Felton said.

A high of 50 degrees is expected on Thursday, Felton said.

There were, however, a few cold mornings: Lows dipped to 33 degrees on Jan. 1, 32 degrees on Jan. 2 and 31 degrees on Jan. 15, he said.

The warmest day so far was last Friday, Jan. 11, when the high climbed to 61, Felton said.

"A 60-degree day is pretty rare in January," he said. "There have only been 16 in the 75 years of records at Sea-Tac."

While temperatures may remain warmer than average, at least one thing will return to normal: Rain is expected to blanket the region through at least Sunday night, and possibly through Monday and Tuesday.

Seattle finished 2018 with an average high temperature of 62.3 degrees, making it the fifth-hottest year on record in data going back to 1948 at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. The only warmer years were 2015 (63.4 degrees), 2014 (62.6 degrees), 2016 (62.5 degrees) and 1992 (62.5 degrees).