The bouncing temperature ball last month in Berks County resulted in significant swings.
However, in the end the swings canceled out and the final numbers for December at Reading Regional Airport look unremarkable, belying the temperature ups and downs.
A cold start last month caused a week of subnormal temperatures, with 9 degrees the steepest deviation from normal, then came a brief warm-up that included days of 12 and 13 degrees above normal.
It didn’t last long and soon came days 10 above normal and a few days later 10 below normal.
Very cold conditions prevailed a few days before Christmas with a pair of ice days on the 22nd and 23rd, including departures of 15 degrees below normal. The term ice days refers to days that the mercury doesn’t rise above freezing.
The low of 8 degrees on the 23rd was the first single-digit low since Jan. 30, 2022.
Finally, the temperatures surged to end the month with days of plus 21 and 16 degrees on the 29th and 30th, respectively.
The 65-degree high on the 29th was counted by the National Weather Service as a record high for the date, topping 64 from 1982.
But, the problem that has surfaced repeatedly from the Met-Ed and UGI eras of temperature measurement has surfaced again. That period was primarily from the 1970s until the automated equipment was installed at the airport in early 1999.
In those days, the “measurement day” 24-hour period ended at 8 a.m., and the high and low for the prior 24 hours was attached to that date.
When the airport equipment came online, and in the pre-Met-Ed and UGI periods, the calendar day was the standard. The earlier period included the U.S. Weather Bureau era, during which meteorologists in center city recorded the highs and lows for the calendar day.
The current conflict is that the 64-degree reading from 1982 actually occurred on Dec. 28 that year.
The real record for Dec. 29 is 77 degrees from 1984, but the weather service credits that as the Dec. 30 record, since it, too, was a victim of the deviation from the norm for a measurement day. That 77 isn’t just a date record, but the warmest temperature on record for any December in the 128-year Berks database.
The 8 a.m. measurement day has caused numerous problems over the past quarter century with the date records. Each one of these instances are put in the rear-view mirror as records are set since 1999.
For example, the 64-degree high on Dec. 28, 1982, was a date record until 66 degrees was recorded on Dec. 28, 2008.
As far as precipitation, there were 13 days with measurable precipitation last month adding to a total of 3.50 inches, a tick away from normal.
No date records were set.
The state Department of Environmental Protection-issued drought warning was still in effect for Berks, with conservation of 10% to 15% of water use urged.
In the forecast, AccuWeather is expecting 2 to 4 inches of snow on Monday, starting soon after midnight and running into the afternoon.
Back to December, the first inch measurable snow of the season — 1.2 inches — came only few hours ahead of the winter solstice.
“Approximately an inch held true for much of southern Berks but ranged up to 4 inches in I-78 corridor and northward and also eastern Berks,” said Jeffrey R. Stoudt, founder of the Berks Area Rainfall Networks. “Officially, this snowfall brought 1.2 of the 1.6 inches total for the month. Another coating of 0.2 inch came early on the 24th but melted that same day. For Christmas Day, nearly all vestiges of early snow had vanished from southern Berks while about an inch remained farther north. Christmas temperatures were seasonable, officially low/high of 30/39.”
A look at 2024
On the temperature side, at a 56.9-degree average 2024 was the warmest year recoded in a temperature database that starts with 1898, topping by a significant margin the 56.5 degrees from 2023.
It was the fourth year just this decade to make the 10-warmest list. The year knocked off that list was 1900 at 55.2 degrees.
“Ten of the 12 months averaged significantly warmer than normal. August was slightly warmer, and only December was below but only slightly so,” Stoudt, a retired meteorologist, said. “The daily highs average of 66.7 beat last year’s 66.5, previously 66.0 from 2012. The lows average of 47.1 came slightly short of 47.3 from 1998.”
For the year, the airport recorded 41.58 inches of precipitation, a mere 3.63 inches below the normal of 45.21. That 45.21 is the highest normal on record.
Normal is the average of the most recently completed three full decades, in this case 1991 to 2020, with the weather service using the zero year as the wrap-up to a decade.
The picture is even better for Berks as a whole, with the county average for the year at 44.1 inches, according to the Middle Atlantic River Forecast Center, a division of the weather service.
The center’s average takes into account many more sites than the airport and the process is under the supervision of a government hydrologist.
In the list of Berks Area Rainfall Network sites, many more are higher than the airport total than below it.
However, amid the big picture for the year there was also a driest October, which was also driest of any month on record; driest three-month period; and driest floating 90 days, all records that were written during the late summer through fall period of the year.
The 41.58-inch total is only slightly below the average of the full database, which for precipitation is 155 years.
Berks County December weather
Temperature: 35.3 degrees
Normal: 35.7 degrees
Precipitation: 3.50 inches
Normal: 3.51 inches
Warmest years (degrees)
• 56.9: 2024
• 56.5: 2023
• 56.4: 1998
• 56.3: 1949
• 56.3: 2012
• 56.2: 1953
• 56.0: 2020
• 55.9: 2021
• 55.7: 1931
• 55.5: 1959
• 55.3: 1921
Source: The National Weather Service database
Precipitation totals from the Berks Area Rainfall Networks (month/month snowfall/2024 precipitation total):
• Elverson NE: 4.97/1.2/46.92
• Shartlesville: 4.83/4.0/46.47
• Shillington: 4.57/NA/47.82
• Hamburg: 4.61/4.0/45.60
• Boyers Junction: 4.59/2.3/51.80
• New Morgan: 4.59/1.4/47.96
• Dryville: 4.51/NA/49.79
• Mohnton: 4.49/NA/47.35
• Auburn: 4.48/5.8/47.64
• West Reading: 4.48/NA/45.07
• Mohrsville SW: 4.44/1.2/42.05
• Lincoln Park: 4.43/1.6/46.68
• Reading E: 4.42/0.3/44.77
• Henningsville: 4.39/NA/51.23
• Strausstown: 4.34/4.1/NA
• Oley: 4.33/1.7/NA
• Oley Furnace: 4.29/NA/46.22
• Quaker Hill: 4.27/NA/NA
• Bernville: 4.26/2.7/43.47
• Cornwall Terrace: 4.24/1.5/46.48
• Reiffton: 4.24/NA/42.78
• Wyomissing: 4.19/1.4/45.31
• Lobachsville: 4.18/2.5/46.98
• Knauers: 4.13/0.8/45.99
• Mohrsville: 4.04/NA/41.17
• Vinemont: 3.92/1.0/41.53
• Greenfields: 3.80/NA/42.07
• Cacoosing: 3.60/NA/NA
• Amityville: 3.51/NA/NA
• Bechtelsville: 3.46/NA/NA
• Cumru Township building: 3.45/NA/42.43.
Source: Berkshire mont
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