Looking ahead to December

November is in the books as the calendar has flipped over to the month of December with winter officially approaching.

The winter solstice will begin at 3:19 AM on Saturday, December 21. It marks the shortest day and longest night of the year. In the Northern Hemisphere, it occurs when the sun is directly over the Tropic of Capricorn, which is located at 23.5° south of the equator and runs through Australia, Chile, southern Brazil, and northern South Africa.

The average high and low temperatures will continue to drop through the month. The average high goes from 34° on December 1st, to 28° on December 15th, to 24° by the end of the month whereas the average low temperature will go from 19° at the beginning to 9° by the end.

December also averages around 1.28″ of precipitation and 12.4″ of snow making it the snowiest month of the season.

Daylight hours will continue to decrease until the winter solstice before increasing thereafter.