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December delight: It's warmest recorded in Valley
YOUNGSTOWN
To those who hate cold weather, this was a December to remember.
It was the warmest December in the Mahoning Valley’s recorded weather history, which dates to 1897.
As of Wednesday, the average temperature for this month was a record high of 42.8 degrees. It easily passed 1982, with an average temperature of 40.3 degrees, for the No. 1 spot.
“It’s been an unseasonably warm December,” said Sarah Jamison, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Cleveland. “Temperatures were above normal with some days well above normal.”
It reached at least 60 degrees seven times this month. The Valley had record highs on four days including Dec. 12, when it reached 67 degrees.
The average temperature for December for the area is 30.3 degrees, according to the NWS.
Also, only 0.7 of an inch of snow was recorded by the NWS at the Youngstown/Warren Regional Airport in Vienna, where the agency collects weather statistics for the area. Nearly all of the snow fell Dec. 3.
This is the third-least-snowiest December for the Valley.
The least amount was 0.5 of an inch in 1939. Last December, with 0.7 of an inch, is No. 2 on the list of least amount of snowfall for the month.
“It’s not a trend, but we’ve had two years of less than an inch of snow in December,” Jamison said.
The mild weather this month is likely a sign of things to come through the spring, she said.
The NWS is projecting above-normal temperatures and less-than-normal snowfall this winter, Jamison said.
“That’s the expectation for the rest of the winter,” she said. “It probably won’t be as warm as December, but we can expect to see abnormally warm months with above-normal temperatures [in January and February]. We’ll also see less days with snow.”