December was one of the most miserable winter weather months
I can remember. In Minneapolis the average temperature for December is 19⁰
Fahrenheit. According to http://www.climatestations.com
Minneapolis only had 4 below average days and anyone living here knows that it
was miserably above average. We
regularly suffered through temperatures in the high 30’s and I recall several
40+ degree days. In the Updraft blog MPR
meteorologist Paul Huttner provides some perspective on what a normal December
should be like. http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/updraft/
Our early winter heat wave resulted in little to no snow. Cross country skiers had to dust off their running
shoes and rollerskiis. Snow based
industries like resorts and snowmobileries lost vacation bookings and sales. And I can only imagine the angst that many
snowplow operators must have felt as a brown Christmas came and went and their
incomes continued to shrink.
What little snow we had in December was quickly consumed by
the ravenous heat of warm fronts and the radiation absorbing albedoless brown
grass landscape. (Well brown grass
doesn’t really have an albedo of 0. That distinction is reserved for a
theoretical perfect blackbody that absorbs every bit of energy that hits it.
However a dark and dormant grassy landscape does absorb more radiation than a fair
snow covered landscape resulting in higher surface temperatures. Freshly fallen
snow on the other hand is very reflective and therefore has a very high albedo
and keeps temperatures low).
There are some who would welcome a mild winter but for those
of us who relish the days between the auburn autumn and the sloppy spring the
December heat wave was a climatologically positive feedback loop with negative implications.
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