Now that we've wrapped up the first two months of the winter season (in terms of climate statistics, anyway), how do the numbers look at RDU for the December-January period? It will not surprise you to hear that for that two-month span, the average temperature of 47.1 degrees was more than 5 degrees above the long-term average, making it the 3rd warmest out of 68 seasons on record for that site. In terms of precipitation, it was fairly dry with 4.01" of rain (2.6 inches below normal), continuing a trend of somewhat suppressed rainfall that began back around November. With warm temperatures and a fairly dry pattern, we received no snowfall at the airport for December-January, compared to a normal for the period of 3.5 inches.

It's always interesting, but difficult, to consider the question of why the weather in any given year might run unusually warm or dry or whatever the departure in question happens to be. This season there has been a tendency to frequently have cutoff upper...

Long ago, explorers who made new discoveries got the right to name what they found. Today, naming processes are much more formal.

One of the fun things about my job is getting to meet so many people.   Folks around here are so nice and they always want to talk about the weather.   One comment I'm hearing about our warm weather this winter relates to mosquitoes.  A lot of people are complaining to me about how they wish it would get colder so the mosquitoes won't be as bad this summer.  

I'm not an entomologist but I had heard that winter chill is not a good indicator of how bad a mosquito season will be.  Brian Shrader talked to an entomologist from NC State University yesterday who confirmed my suspicions.  During the winter mosquitoes and other insects are hibernating.   They have evolved to withstand very cold temperatures during the winter even for long periods of time.   So...a very cold winter will not reduce the number of mosquitoes in the summer.  

I can remember hiking in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming one summer.  ...

Yes it has been snowing most nights this winter in the NC mountains. I hear people talking about how sorry they feel for our ski resorts because there hasn't been much snow. Well, there may not be much on the ground but there is plenty on the slopes.