John McGinley, Peak to Peak. December 2019: December is not one of our wettest months, so it doesn’t take much to reach normal precipitation. This year we had three minor events in the first half of the month that gave us a foot of snow and a shade below an inch of water. The latter half of the month had many days of dry downslope conditions that kept temperatures up, in fact driving the mean temperature 3.5 degrees above normal. In general, upper level ridges dominated the month. 

Precipitation: Snow totaled 15.7 inches accounting for 1.02 inches of liquid. Normals are 17.5 and 1.0 respectively. The big event was 7.6 inches between the December 12 and 14. Late in the month we saw 3 inches on December 27-28. 

Temperature:  Three days with highs in the mid 50s and three days where the temperature never went below freezing, is how we managed to be 3.4 degrees above normal. The warmest day was 56F on the 23rd, coldest day was 6 F on the December 27. Coldest high was 15F on the 29th. Usually in December we see four days below zero…..not this year.

Winds:  After the extreme winds in November, we settled down a bit with 14 windy days (40+mph) and no days above 60mph. 

Other Features: Upper level disturbances were on the weak side all month. Mid month the flow turned westerly and was generally weak accounting for the dry conditions in the last two weeks.

Outlook for January: Welcome to a new decade. Normal January conditions show daily highs of 36F and lows of 15F. We see 18 inches of snow melting out to 1.07 inches of liquid. We have 10 windy days with three days over 60mph. The long range model runs indicate several weak disturbances during the first 10 days. Look for gusty winds and snow flurries.  From January 12 to 14 there is a potential for a strong system and significant snow. Beyond that we should see cooler than normal and moist conditions. 

Summary for the year 2019:  Close to the mean in many components is how you would characterize the weather data. The yearly mean temperature was one degree above normal. The highlight was a very warm September followed by a very cold October. Precipitation totaled 22 inches of liquid which was 0.7 inches above normal. Snow totaled 178 inches well above the long term average of 154 inches. Was it windy? Yes….96 days with winds over 40mph and 19 of those days over 60mph. This compared to the long term average of 79 days and 19 days respectively. Is there a climate change signal in this data? It does show both warmer and wetter trends, (both are expected in a warming climate), but probably not statistically significant.

(Originally published in the January 9, 2020, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)