December wrap-up; look ahead to January

The month of December was one for the record books in Rochester.

It’ll go down as the warmest December on record with an average temperature of 31.8° which is 11.0° above average. The month finished ahead of December of 1931 which produced an average temperature of 30.7° and most recently December of 2015 which produced an average temperature of 29.8°. The warmest day was on December 7 when the high temperature reached 54° while the coldest temperature for the month was 8° on the morning of December 18.

The month finished just a hair below average (-0.14″) for precipitation with 1.14″ falling at the Rochester International Airport (RST) observation site. The wettest day was on Christmas Day when 0.65″ fell.

The month finished nearly a foot below average for snowfall and marked the third LEAST snowiest December on record with 0.5″ recorded at RST. December is typically the snowiest month of the year with an average of 12.4″. December of 1943 and 1913 both recorded just a trace.

Looking ahead to January. The average high temperature begins to swing upward after the middle of the month while the average low temperature levels off after the middle of the month.

The average precipitation is around one inch with snowfall typically just over one foot.