It’s been a cold and snowy December to be sure. I wrote recently how this is the coldest and most snow-covered start to the first month of meteorological winter in decades. Now, another threshold to behold. The temps on their way this weekend are the earliest we’ve seen, possibly in 30 to 36 years.
So long as the temperature drops to -11 or colder Saturday night, that will be the earliest we’ve seen that kind of reading or colder since 1996. If we can slip to -12 or colder, that bar is even farther back, 1989.
This kind of cold wasn’t as unusual just five decades ago.
On average, we hit our first subzero reading in the Twin Cities in mid-December. December 16 is the 1991 to 2020 average. We average about four subzero nights in the month of December based on the modern normal. Just five decades ago, we could count on seven on average. The subzero readings also used to come earlier, by nearly a week, on December 10…