Craig Edwards, meteorologist in charge of the Chanhassen office of the National Weather Service, talks about mild winter weather and record breaking temperatures. It reached 68 degrees at the Twin Cities airport this afternoon, breaking the old high of 57 set in 1962.
December 1, 1998 also set a new record high for the whole month of December. The warmest temperature previously recorded in December in the Twin Cities was 63 in 1939 and 1982.
SPEAKER 1: Well, a lot of things have to come together to break a record, especially in December, and we got lucky with all the ingredients combining for ideal conditions. We had the winds turning around to the Southwest. Of course, yesterday was a very chilly day with temperatures only near 40 at midday yesterday. And then winds turned around to the Southwest and maximum sunshine. We started out with the low temperature of 30 degrees and soared 37 degrees up into 67 degrees today. So a beautiful day and everything came together just ideally for a record temperature.
SPEAKER 2: So that's your theory. We just got lucky.
SPEAKER 1: Well, I tell you what, we've had a-- we've had a string of weather here from starting before Thanksgiving where we've had temperatures that have been unseasonably mild in the low and mid 50s and then some 60s thrown in. So we've had a run of mild weather, and it helps when you don't have snow cover on the ground for large portions of the country.
SPEAKER 2: Scientifically, is there anything that might explain this? Is this El Nino again?
SPEAKER 1: Well, I'll tell you, we're all trying to grab something today to explain this, and I think it's just a matter of the autumn conditions going to catch up to us. Officially, winter doesn't start astronomically until December 20th in the evening. So we still are in the fall season.
Although in Minnesota, we know that winter can start as early as Halloween. We knew that in '91. So I think maybe the question in '91 was, what's going on with this weather that it's snowing so early? I remember I came up here in December of '91 and the first day on the job, it was 11 below 0 on December 3. So December 3 this year, we've got a chance of setting a warm temperature record. So weather does some interesting things in a matter of a short period of time.
SPEAKER 2: We were promised a snowy winter. Do you think that's still coming?
SPEAKER 1: Well, I don't know what the promise was. I did know that a lot of the meteorologists were predicting more snow than normal. Now normal is 49. We had a little bit less than that last year. And so conditions still look favorable coming out of El Niño year to have a more typical Minnesota winter, which would be bouts of snow, especially the deeper we get into December.
So they tell me that March is the snowiest month and we've had 8-10 inch snowfalls as late as April. So we're talking still four more months of winter and that's a long time to start accumulating snow. So even though we've only had officially a tenth of an inch of snow so far this season, which is running on a record pace with the winter of 1973, where there was only a tenth of an inch of snow. People know that there's a lot of winter to come in Minnesota. So a couple of nice days in late November and early December is not going to break our winter pattern.
SPEAKER 2: No reason for the snowmobilers or the skiers to fret just yet.
SPEAKER 1: Well, I hate to get him excited about it. But certainly with the weather pattern we're looking at for the next week or so, it doesn't look like anything major coming in the way of snows. Although we are looking for the cool down to move in probably on Sunday and into Monday. But until then, it looks like a chance for another record temperature by Thursday already.
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