Hundreds of western U.S. counties just had their warmest winters on record, Alex Fitzpatrick writes from new federal data.

• It's been a brutally warm winter for much of the West and Southwest. Implications range from bad ski and snowboard seasons to concerns about water supplies and wildfires.

🌡️ By the numbers: More than 420 counties had their warmest December–February periods on record, based on average temperatures.

• That's according to NOAA weather data covering the last 131 years.

🅗 The unusually warm temperatures were driven by a ridge of high pressure dominating the western half of the country, "allowing for consistent warmer weather to prevail as well as causing the jet stream to steer storms further north, limiting snowfall for the mountains," per The Weather Channel.

• The eastern U.S. saw prolonged periods of extreme cold this winter thanks to a blast of Arctic air that refused to budge.

❄️ Nevertheless, it wasn't a record cold winter on that side of the country.

• Climate scientist Daniel Swain wrote on Weather West: "Record cold has become a truly rare condition, whereas record warmth is now occurring with remarkable and disconcerting frequency."

🥵 More records will likely be set this week as an unusual March heat dome blankets the western U.S., with highs of 20–30 degrees above normal.

• Climate research group Climate Central says: "Human-caused climate change is making this heat more likely and will also accelerate snowmelt, during a year already marked by widespread snow drought across the region."

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The USPS is set to run out of cash within a year and may have to cut deliveries, Postmaster General David Steiner is warning Congress this afternoon.

⚠️ Steiner says in his planned remarks to the House Oversight Committee: "I am not sure that the American public is aware that the Postal Service is at a critical juncture."

• "At our current run rate and if we continue to pay our required obligations in the same manner as we have done in recent years, then we will be out of cash in less than 12 months." (Read his statement.)

Steiner wants to borrow money beyond the $15 billion limit set in 1992, as well as reform the agency's retirement benefits, NPR reports.

• The USPS could otherwise be forced to cut delivery days, close post offices and/or raise prices, he warns: "It is unlikely that Congress or the American people would tolerate these severe consequences individually or collectively."

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🇮🇪 Vice President JD Vance hosted the Taoiseach of Ireland, Micheál Martin, at the Naval Observatory, the V.P.'s official residence, for St. Patrick's Day breakfast this morning.

• Martin wrote in the guestbook: "May the strong, economic, people to people and cultural ties that bind the United States and Ireland continue to endure for generations to come." Get the latest.

The March 17, 1776, freeing of Boston was a turning point that showed Gen. George Washington's Continental Army was capable of victory, Axios Boston's Mike Deehan writes.

• It's now celebrated annually in Beantown as "Evacuation Day."

🇬🇧 Boston was under British military control starting in 1774, before the first battles of the Revolutionary War at Lexington and Concord.

• In 1776, Washington made an audacious overnight maneuver. British Gen. William Howe awoke to find cannons aimed at him and his position untenable.
• Washington and Howe made an informal deal letting the British leave town peacefully.

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