A warm December closes out wettest year on record

By Russell Russ

December 2011 tied with December 1982 for the fifth warmest December in the last 80 years. With an average mean temperature of 32.5 degrees, this past December was 7.2 degrees above normal. The month’s high temperature of 57 degrees was observed on December 6, and the low temperature of 10 degrees fell on December 19. Last year, the average monthly temperature in December was nearly 10 degrees colder.

December’s total precipitation amount was 5.33 inches, 0.82 inches above normal. The monthly snowfall total of 3.0 inches was 14.5 inches below normal. Strangely enough, Norfolk had a white Halloween, but we did not have a white Christmas. The snowfall total for this winter season to date, October through December, is 27.1 inches. Thanks primarily to October’s 23.8 inches of snow, this is 2.3 inches above normal for this time period.

It was not an early pond-ice year for the area. Many smaller ponds, including Pond Hill Pond and Wood Creek Pond initially iced over during mid-December, but then lost it and got it back a few times until about December 27 or 28 when they iced over for the season. The larger bodies of water, like Tobey Pond and Wangum Lake, did not form ice at all in December. Last year, the smaller ponds started forming ice in late November and both Tobey and Wangum were iced over by December 10.

The close of 2011 marked 80 consecutive years of weather recording for this weather station. In review of Norfolk’s weather for the 2011 calendar year, it certainly was one for the record books. With an annual average mean temperature of 47.1 degrees, this was 2.4 degrees above normal.  2011 tied with 1949 as the sixth warmest year on record.

2011 was also the wettest year in our 80 years of recording the weather. With a total precipitation amount of 77.28 inches, this was 24.73 inches above the norm of 52.55 inches. It surpassed the long-standing 1955 record of 76.04 inches by 1.24 inches. Snowfall for the year totaled 108.1 inches. This was 17.3 inches above the yearly average of 90.8 inches, but by no means near a record for yearly snowfall.

In the coming weeks, more weather data for 2011 will be posted on the Great Mountain Forest Web site. Visit www.greatmountainforest.org and click on weather. 

Weather observations are recorded at Norfolk’s National Weather Service Cooperative Weather Observer Station, Norfolk 2 SW, by the Great Mountain Forest Corporation.