New Outlook for December: Cold in the East

Over the weekend, the Climate Prediction Center released its revised December temperature outlook, which looks quite a bit different than the one they released back on November 20th. The old version had warmer than normal conditions predicted for an area centered on Oklahoma and Kansas, while the new one, as you can see below, says it’s going to be warm in the west and cold in the east:

The other possible bit of good news for rain-starved Georgia is that the precipitation outlook has changed as well, with what was a 33% chance of drier than normal weather in the state changing to equal chances of above or below normal rainfall.

The updated temperature outlook brings the Weather Service more in line with what other winter forecasts are saying, and with what the CPC’s 6-10 and 8-14 day outlooks call for, which is for a significant chance of below normal temperatures for most of the US and above normal precipitation for all but the desert southwest from the 7th through the 15th of December.

November certainly provided a good lead in to the cold weather, at least here in Georgia. At Atlanta’s Hartsfield Airport, the average temperature for the month was 50.5 degrees, 2.8 degrees below normal. It was a little cooler out here in the ‘burbs, with my thermometer recording an average temperature of 47.9 degrees. Despite around an inch and a half of rain throughout most of the Atlanta metro area from Friday through Sunday, we ended up with 2.64 inches of rain at Hartsfield, or 64% of normal. Here, I got even less, with 2.7 inches of rain, 1.5 of which we got over the weekend.

November 30th also marked the end of the 2008 hurricane season. It was an above average year, with 16 named storms, eight hurricanes, and five intense hurricanes. Hurricane Ike became the third most expensive hurricane to hit the US, after Katrina and Andrew. Tropical Storm Fay set a record, striking Florida four separate times back in August.

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