Another Year is Done!

Wow! 2015 went out with a serious wet roar! December 2015 was the wettest month I have ever recorded at this location dating back to 2002. A whopping cascade of agua-licious H2O descended upon us for most of the month. This was not the garden variety Western Washington drizzle, my friends... Oh no... this was buckets and sheets of rain coming down like lions and wolves rather than cats and dogs!

More than 16 inches of precipitation fell and nearly all of it was in the form of rain. I had just a touch of snow on the 27th that did not stick. Speaking of snow, areas above 500 feet did get sticking snow and above a 1000 it is still on the ground to depths exceeding 6 inches in some locations. Further up the foothills the snow gets really deep at elevations above 2000 feet. Nearby Timberline, Oregon has piled up more than 22 FEET of snow thus far this season and the bulk of it came in December.

I have had my modest weather station running on an old XP Pentium Computer that was 15 years old. That old girl gave up the ghost in the last week of November and I decided to run an IP weather server instead of leaving a computer on 24/7. I did have to utilize some manual tracking for several days whilst I order, received and subsequently set up the IP server.

My system of recording and storing data will change to accommodate the new system.

OK so December 2015 went down like this... Warmest daytime high was 59 degrees on the 8th and it was accompanied by an gratuitous 2.15 inches of rain. The chilliest afternoon high came on the 29th when the mercury stopped at 36 degrees under partly sunny skies. Speaking of sun, I had but two days of it. The coldest overnight low occurred on the last day of 2015 when it bottomed out at 22 degrees. The warmest overnight low was 55 and it came on the 8th as well as the warmest high.

Just 7 days were below freezing and every day managed to get above freezing. The warmest 5 days were in the 50s but all were joined by monsoonal rain. Overall the month was above average for temperature but only by a little bit.

Rain was copious in volume and fell on 26 days including 25 days in a row. As the month wore on the temperatures continued to fall until the week of Christmas where the temperatures couldn't mange to get above 40 degrees and the rain was cold. Snow was a nominal .1 and it did not stick to the ground.

For the year I ended up with a fairly routine 47.94 inches of precipitation. The record December rain kept me from having yet another sub-par "dry" year for rain. 117 days were rainy and 165 were at least partly sunny :) 35 days saw lows below freezing. Every single day managed to bust up above the freezing mark. 18 days popped up over 90 degrees and there was that one day above 100 when the high hit a toasty 101.1 degrees. The coldest temp in 2015 was 16.1 degrees.

The calendar year of 2015 saw the lowest amount of snowfall I have ever recorded with a mere 1/10th of an inch and it did not stick. I have not had another calendar year with no sticking snow. I have had one winter season where there was no sticking snow, that was Nov,2002 through Mar, 2003 where .20 inches fell and none of it stuck.

You can check all the stats and figures for 2015 and previous years at www.rodsager.com/weather.

Happy New Year!

Wow a Chilly Month, Finally

November is done and for the first time in, I don't know how long, I have a calendar month that ended up chillier than average overall. The average daytime high was actually about 3 degrees above my 15 year "normal" but the overnight lows, largely fueled by the very chilly end of month was well below "normal" to the tune of -4 degrees. Overall my mean temp was about 1 degree below normal.

The very last day of month produced one of the chilliest November temperatures I have seen in nearly fifteen years at this location. The mercury bottomed out at 16.1 degrees to cap the end of a long streak of subfreezing mornings. That cold low on the 30th led to the chilliest afternoon high of the month at 37.1. The warmest day of the month was early on when we topped 65 on the 6th of the month. That may be the last 60 plus day we see till the end of February. On the 14th of the month we enjoyed a balmy 51.6 degree overnight low which was the warmest of the month and the only low mark above 50. Overall there were thirteen mornings below freezing and four that dropped below 20 degrees.

On the precipitation front we had one snow threat that delivered zero at my location but some flurries and light sleet were reported elsewhere around town. That of course was the 30th of the month. Rainfall was typical for November with a wet and soggy 9.17 inches which is a little more than an inch above my established normal. This was not the drippy variety as we had 12 days with more than a quarter inch and 2 days with more than an inch of H2O coming down. For the month we had 19 days with precipitation and just 8 under sunny or partly sunny skies. I hope this damp November is a precursor to the rest of the season because I have had two dry winters in a row. Let's not make it a third please.

The outlook for early December is mild and wet. Local weather prognosticators are calling for showery conditions beginning tonight and lasting into next week. Let's hope for soggy and maybe some fluffy white in time for Christmas. I know, a white Christmas in the 'Couv' is a rare deal. I have had but one since moving to this location almost 15 years ago.

Whatever the weather, get out and soak it up my friends, soak it up.