The calendar may read March, but the 27 inches of snow still blanketing Coeur d’Alene on Friday morning looked a lot more like January.

The snowiest February on record buried the city under more than 4.5 feet of snow with an unprecedented 19 days of measurable snow, said climatologist Cliff Harris.

“We broke all sorts of records,” he said.

After a quiet start to winter, with just 31.2 inches of snow recorded at Harris’ central Coeur d’Alene weather station through Feb. 3, the snow gates from above opened. The previous record snowfall for all of February — 39.5 inches — was blown away midway through the month.

The 56 inches of snow that fell in Coeur d’Alene last month is more than five times the normal of 11.9 inches for the 28-day period. Record snowfall was recorded on Feb. 8 (7.2 inches) and Feb. 12 (11.8 inches).

And although it wasn’t the coldest February on record (there were no subzero temperatures), the Coeur d’Alene area did experience the longest uninterrupted cold wave in the city’s history with no thaws following a high of 38 degrees on Feb. 3, Harris said.

With spring just 18 days away, Harris did offer some hope for the winter weary.

“It’s looking like the temperatures will warm up by 15 degrees by the end of next week,” he said.

There is precipitation in the forecast, but whether it falls as rain or snow will depend on the time of day, with lows in the upper teens to low 20s and highs in the upper 30s.

In the short term, the National Weather Service is calling for mostly sunny skies this weekend with frigid temperatures and breezy conditions. The high today should reach the mid-20s, but lows will dip to minus-9 with wind chills factored in.

Gusty winds on Sunday will cause drifting snow with a high near 25 and low with wind chill of minus-11 degrees.