Old Man Winter Practicing Social Distancing (from Minnesota)

Weather Wisdom From Rudolph The Red

One night a Viking named Rudolph The Red was looking out his window when he said "Darling, it's going to rain." His wife asked "How do you know?" He hesitated, then hissed" Because Rudolph The Red knows rain, dear."

Who said there's nothing good on the Internet.

NOAA's GFS model is predicting a pre-Christmas thaw, which shouldn't really surprise anyone. Dr. Mark Seeley has been tracking weather and climate trends and admits it's not your grandfather's December anymore. He says 70 percent of all Decembers since 2000 have been warmer than average, and the warmest Decembers since 1895 have been observed since 2001.

What's going on so far this winter season? In spite of a cool La Nina phase in the Pacific, polar vortex jet stream winds are blowing faster than usual, confining the closer to the North Pole. That has meant more of a Pacific wind flow than a numbing breeze from the Arctic.

Late week snow may slush up Chicago, but I don't see any bitter, hair-curling fronts (or snow) anytime soon.

Then again January is coming. No promises.

Above Average Temperatures This Week, Then Closer to Average This Weekend. No complaints the next few days (unless you crave snow and wind chill, in which case you'll have to hang on a bit longer). The pattern doesn't favor significant precipitation of any flavor into next week. Graphic credit above: Praedictix and AerisWeather.

Milder Than Average Bias Persists. We'll see a few cold slaps, but both ECMWF and GFS keep temperatures generally above average, and GFS hints at a pre-Christmas thaw.

Brief Slaps of Canadian Air. No home invasions of bitter cold, just a few drive-bys of chilly air leading up to Christmas as a stronger than average polar vortex flow keeps the coldest air confined to Canada and the Arctic.

8-14 Day Temperature Outlook. Not much ambiguity here - NOAA's CPC ensemble predicts a high probability of milder than average weather between December 15-12.

Strong Warm Temperature Trend in December. Dr. Mark Seeley connects the dots in the most recent edition of Minnesota WeatherTalk: " We should not be surprised that December is bringing us warmer than normal temperatures. Since the new millennium (2000) 70 percent of Decembers have been warmer than normal, including the last six consecutive years based on statewide average temperature. This is a remarkable strong trend. In fact eleven of the warmest Decembers in state history (back to 1895) have occurred since the year 2001, including the warmest December in history in 2015 which averaged nearly 12°F warmer than normal. If the NOAA climate outlook for this December holds up we will record a month that is 4 to 6 degrees F warmer than normal and be the seventh consecutive warm December..."

The Long-Lasting Mental Health Effects of Wildfires. Smoke and poor air quality is only the beginning, reports Outside Online: "...But trauma is not always quantifiable; it manifests in myriad ways that are uncountable and untracked by official tallies, and unlike the immediate damage, it unfolds over time. A fire's effect on a community is like the ripples of a stone dropped in water, says Erika Felix, an associate professor of psychology at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) and a licensed psychologist who specializes in working with survivors of traumatic events. The most severe disturbances happen at the impact site, but that causes smaller ripples far from the point of impact. "There's a subset of people who experience the most trauma and loss, then people with moderate and low levels," she says. But there are exceptions; emotional weight affects everyone differently..."

China Vows to Beef Up Weather Modification Capabilities. Thomson Reuters Foundation reports: "China wants to boost its ability to modify the weather and will extend an artificial rain and snow program to cover at least 5.5 million square kilometers of land by 2025, the country's cabinet said late on Wednesday. The State Council said in policy guidelines that it would ensure that its weather modification capabilities would reach an "advanced" level by 2035, and would focus on revitalizing rural regions, restoring ecosystems and minimizing losses from natural disasters. China has frequently made use of cloud seeding technologies to relieve droughts or clear the air ahead of major international events. It has also been building a weather modification system in the Qinghai-Tibet plateau, Asia's biggest freshwater reserve, with the aim of pumping large quantities of silver iodide into the clouds in a bid to increase rainfall..."

California's Trillion Dollar Mega-Disaster No One is Talking About. From drought and historic wildfires to biblical floods? The extremes are becoming more extreme, and a post at ABC News details one weather scenario few are talking about: "Disasters typically associated with the West Coast include devastating earthquakes and out-of-control wildfires, but there's an epic disaster that could be far worse than both — and it could happen at any point. Officials and experts call it the "ARkStorm," and it is the other "big one" few are talking about. With California's 2020 rainy season now underway, imagine almost a month of drenching storms along the entire West Coast. The state would be swallowed in 10 to 20 feet of rain. At up to 200 inches in some places, floods would hit nearly every major population center in the state..."

Spicy. Sorry, sometimes these headlines just write themselves. I didn't have this on my 2020 Apocalypse Bingo Card - CNN.com explains: "We are trying really hard not to make a "finger licking good" joke. KFC and Lifetime announced Monday a partnership for a holiday mini-movie. "A Recipe for Seduction" will be a 15-minute short film starring Mario Lopez as Colonel Harland Sanders, the founder of the restaurant chain whose name and likeness are still used as symbols of the chain. The mini-movie "is full of mystery, suspense, deception, 'fowl' play and at the heart of it all ... love and fried chicken," according to a press release..."

39 F. high in the Twin Cities on Tuesday.

41 F. high on December 8, 2019.

December 9, 2003: Significant snow with amounts between 6 to 10 inches falls from southwest Minnesota across the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and into west central Wisconsin. Winds across the area were 25 to 30 mph, with blowing and drifting snow in open areas. Although some parts of far south central Minnesota only picked up 4 to 6 inches, winds in this area were a little stronger, creating near-blizzard conditions. The greatest snowfall totals occurred in the Twin Cities metro, where Chaska, Chanhassen and New Hope all picked up 11 inches. Ten inches were recorded at Lamberton, Springfield and Gaylord. There was a sharp cutoff on the northern edge of the snow; Lamberton in southernmost Redwood County tallied 10 inches, while 25 miles to the north at Belview in far northern Redwood County, only 2 inches was recorded. Rockford, straddling the Hennepin/Wright County line, received 6 inches, whereas Buffalo, 10 miles to the northwest in central Wright County, only received 1 inch.

December 9, 1995: The passage of a strong low pressure system on the 8th leads to wind chill readings of 50 to 75 below as strong northwest winds of 25 to 40 mph ushered significantly colder air across the region. The dangerously cold wind chill readings persisted through the morning of the 9th.

December 9, 1961: A snowstorm hits central Minnesota. Mora gets about a foot.

WEDNESDAY: Partly sunny, mild. Winds: NW 7-12. High: 45

FRIDAY: Some sun, turning cooler. Winds: NE 10-15. Wake-up: 28. High: 33

SATURDAY: Mostly cloudy, probably dry. Winds: NE 10-20. Wake-up: 26. High: 32

SUNDAY: Sunshine returns, near normal temps. Winds: SW 7-12. Wake-up: 23. High: 32

MONDAY: Mostly cloudy. Insert yawn here. Winds: S 7-12. Wake-up: 24. High: 35

TUESDAY: More clouds than sun, chilly. Winds: NW 10-20. Wake-up: 19. High: 29

Earth Notches Warmest November on Record as 2020 Closes in on Record for Warmest Year. Capital Weather Gang has details: "The planet just had its hottest November on record, and 2020 may end up beating 2016 for the ignominious title of the warmest calendar year. Scientists have linked most, if not all, of the global warming in recent decades to human emissions of greenhouse gases. The numbers come from the Copernicus Climate Change Service, a program of the European Commission, which is the first of several temperature tracking agencies to report temperature data for November and the first 11 months of the year..."

Shift to Not-So-Frozen North is Well Underway, Scientists Warn. The New York Times (paywall) reports: "The Arctic continued its unwavering shift toward a new climate in 2020, as the effects of near-record warming surged across the region, shrinking ice and snow cover and fueling extreme wildfires, scientists said Tuesday in an annual assessment of the region. Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the University of Alaska and one of the editors of the assessment, said it "describes an Arctic region that continues along a path that is warmer, less frozen and biologically changed in ways that were scarcely imaginable even a generation ago." "Nearly everything in the Arctic, from ice and snow to human activity, is changing so quickly that there is no reason to think that in 30 years much of anything will be as it is today," he said..."

Sea Ice Loss and Extreme Wildfires Mark Another Year of Arctic Change. NOAA has more perspective in their annual Arctic Report Card; here are a few highlights: "...The average annual land-surface air temperature in the Arctic measured between October 2019 and September 2020 was the second-warmest since record-keeping began in 1900, and was responsible for driving a cascade of impacts across Arctic ecosystems during the year. Nine of the past 10 years saw air temperatures at least 1 degree C above (2.2 degrees F) the 1981-2010 mean. Arctic temperatures for the past six years have all exceeded previous records. Extremely high temperatures across Siberia during spring 2020 resulted in the lowest June snow extent across the Eurasian Arctic observed in the past 54 years..."