December 2015 Summary

The warmest December on record

It is hard to properly emphasize just how warm it was this December.  To start, at 6 degrees above average it beat the previous warmest one back in 1923 by a full 2 degrees, which in meteorological terms is incredible.  There were no individual days that were colder than average (although some days had high temperature less than average, when you consider both the high and low temperatures, each day was warmer than average). 

As well, there were 9 days of the month where the low temperature was higher than the average high for that day.  Finally, the lowest temperature we saw in December was only -7.0°C, this is a record (previous record was in 1974 when it only got down to -10.6°C).

It was really dry for the first half of the month, but second half made up for it getting the total up to 66.2 mm, which is just short of the average of 71.2 mm.  But the warm temperatures resulted in only 8.5 cm of snow during the month, which is much below the average of 37 cm.

Summary for December 2015:

Maximum Temperature 14.8°C

Minimum Temperature -7.0°C

Average Daily High Temperature 6.2°C (Long term average 0.2°C)

Average Daily Low Temperature -0.6°C (Long term average -6.8°C)

Total Precipitation 66.2 mm (Long term average 71.2 mm)

(Long term averages based on 1981-2010 data for the Waterloo Wellington Airport)