The Wife has a weather station on her Greenhouse, it is tied to temp sensors in greenhouse, house, ground inside greenhouse and out, anyway she gets a monthly report on highs and lows, wind, rain. The Dec 2019 report was in her email today, it was weird enough that I thought I would share it here, it kind of explains some of the issues that I was having with my truck.

Our recorded high temperature was 45.5 F on 12-12-19 at 9 PM.  Legal sunset was about 4:30PM.

Our low for Dec was -5.3 F on Dec 27 at about 7:30AM about 2 hours before sunrise.  This is not a unusual over night temperature, we have been having colder overnight temps in Jan, with the average overnight temp being about 0F since.  Yes that is right around a 51 F temperature drop.  12-31-19 when I went to work it was 38F at 7:30AM and raining, by the time I got home at 4ish PM it was 15F and snowing with white out conditions.  (Yes, we blew off work about 10AM when the sideways rain was starting to turn into sideways snow.)   

We got 4.8" of rain in December, 2.6" on 12-9 alone.  As we are on the extreme northern end of the temperate rain forest, we average a fair bit of rain annually but rarely get more than 1" in 24 hours.

One thing our weather station does not do is measure snow, I believe that we received 10-12 inches of snow in Dec.  We have about 8-10" on the ground now, but got most of that on the storm afternoon of New Years Eve and New Years Day.

Another thing it does not do is record temps below -40F, which really annoys my mother-in-law as we gave her the same station that we have.  Whenever the station reports the temp as LOW, less than -40F, she calls to complain about the weather station.  And yes it was -45 or -48F on 12-27 at her house, the weather station did not show a reading for three days.  But she lives north east of Fairbanks approximately 500 miles north of us, so that quirk has not shown up here.

How was your Dec weather?   

 

Weird is the best way to describe it. We've had some cold spells that were early, we've had warm ups that aren't typical and somehow we've got more snow than normal in the midst of that all. Right now probably in the realm of 2 feet on the ground, had as much as 3+ at one point but with warm ups it's dropped a touch. Just plain a weird winter, yesterday had a fairly warm day up near freezing and overnight below zero again. Today despite what the weather channel says for the area it's around zero, I can always tell based on how hard it is to warm up the shop in the morning big difference between zero and 20 in how much the blower runs and how much wood I'm feeding. Today I started at 9am since I had to get Sarah and the kids out the door, here I am 2.5 hours later and it's up into the mid 60's in here, from around 35 this morning. I'm still wearing my vest, and it's unlikely it'll come off today since by the time I take it off I'll be running out to get another load of wood and repeat.

So I'd say overall December was warmer on average, with more snow but an abnormal cold snap in the middle that felt like January temps. January so far has been mild compared to normal(saw on facebook that I had -25F morning temps last year this time), but I'm hoping that it stays that way also. Less firewood I have to burn and warmer temps I'm ok with, other than it typically means more snow which is a problem since my dad just blew the clutch on his plow truck yesterday and my Blazer has had a broken frame for the last 5ish years. So we've got a broken frame Blazer to push snow for the remainder of the winter unless I take the time to replace a clutch, or swap the plow/mount/pump over to say my 78 pickup. None of which do I have time to really do, so crossing my fingers the Blazer just keeps going one more winter since my backup plan was previously his truck.

So fun winter time but better than last year when we were planning funerals and my dad was in the hospital for a month. So despite the PITA I'll call it an improvement.

Luke

*whistles innocently*

It's been a bunch of 50 degree bulls___ for the past couple of months.   Occasionally dipping into the 30's.  Mostly just s___ty rain and no decent snow.  Pisses me off,  I want it to be below freezing for weeks at a time with some snow to enjoy.   We've had this s___ the past five years and it is really annoying me.    Every time we get some decent precipitation,   a bunch of wind comes out of the south and we get temperatures of 45 degrees when it should be 20.     

Update:  Just heard from Mississippi556 and all is well with them at this point. 

I do remember a significant cold snap for a couple of years in the late 1970's.   Not comfortable.  The last few years we've been hearing the term "polar vortex" thrown around so I'm guessing that period we are referring to may have been something similar.      

Our weather is tracking pretty close to seasonal norms as well.  We were slightly warmer and dryer than the statistical mean but a big storm moved in last night and its been raining off and on for the last twenty four hours and the temperature has dropped 10-12 degrees so we may be right on it at this point. 

We've had so much rain this winter that one of the local lakes is 18', sorry, make that 20' above full pool.

That is not a typo.

https://www.ajc.com/news/local/army-corps-releasing-water-from-allatoona-curtail-flooding/hDUIe4oeE20cfoyns9BvTO/