Lake-effect snows are still hanging around, with cold air across the region for a few more days.December's Precipitation Wrap-up.
The month of December, here on Maple Hill, was quite wet climatologically. By measuring any rain and also melting snowfall, I received 3.725" of liquid. Historically, the average amount measured in December is around 1.38". This means my measurement is 270% of normal... almost three times as wet. We could use the snowpack to help us recover from the drought this past summer.
Snowfall in December totaled 31.4", this too was almost triple the expected amount. Of course snow settles, packs, and sublimates, reducing amounts as time wears on, so on December 31st I measured 17.2" of snow still on the ground. The highest amount on the ground was 18.5" after the December 22/23 snowstorm.
Lake-effect snow still going.Advisories and Warnings are in place yet across the south shore until 6:00 Wednesday morning (tomorrow). Overnight winds were favorable for snow from the lake, resulting in amounts from 1 to 3 inches. Another trough will move south from Canada today allowing the winds to once again become favorable. Amounts could be as high as 12 inches across the higher terrain, with 3 to 7 inches elsewhere.
The map (to the right) from the NWS in Duluth highlights today's weather story. Windchills will be cold tomorrow morning, though below Advisory criteria, across the region. And snow amounts could be locally heavy across the snowbelt of Ashland and Iron counties. The western shoreline of the U.P. of Michigan will also see the heavy snows from Lake Superior. Lake-effect Snow Warnings are in place there too, with up to 12 inches possible inland.
Marquette NWS for the UP of Michigan.
A warm-up still seems to be heading our way this weekend, enough so that rain is possible. This is typical La Nina weather for the Northwoods, a warmer and wetter winter overall. I talked a bit about this in a previous blog from Oct 26th, here.
Alabama's Drought looks like the worst since records began over 100 years ago.Since Mike Wilhelm found my blog weeks ago, I've been following along with his (Alamaba Weather Blog) and watching the weather news down by him. From my vantage-point, the continuing drought seems to have been the biggest story in 2007. Even while I was living in Africa, news of the drought still reached me. Now that the calendar year has ended, I wanted to post some numbers (to the left) that highlight their drought.
Some links:
Huntsville, AL National Weather Service
Birmingham, AL National Weather Service
U.S. Drought Monitor
NW WI Weather polls.
And finally, Derek has posted two polls on his blog (NW WI Weather). One concerns the outlook for Ground Hog Day, while the other asks about the high temperature on Monday, January 7th, in Clayton, WI.
The bad part, Nathan, is that there is no evidence of any change to the trend here in Alabama.
ReplyDeleteMetorologists are saying that the La Nina is still in place and there is no relief in sight. Eleven out of the 12 months of 2007had below normal rainfall. Only August was wetter than usual, but that isn't saying much because that is usually one of our driest months.
All time annual records were broken in Huntsville, Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, and Anniston. This probably included many more locations without official records. Basically the northen one-half of Alabama had it's driest year in at least 113 years.