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T-shirt weather in December?
Mild temperatures typical, precipitation less than average

Ryan Williams/WGCN<br>
Six-year-old Evan Breihan swings from the monkey bars last week dressed for warm weather.

Ryan Williams/WGCN<br> Six-year-old Evan Breihan swings from the monkey bars last week dressed for warm weather.

WILLIAMS, Ariz. - For those waiting anxiously by the front door with sleds and skis - bad news: you could be waiting a just little longer.

The mild temperatures experienced in the last couple weeks have almost completely melted the remaining evidence of last month's storm, leaving many to beg the question: "is this normal?"

The answer, according to George Howard with the National Weather Service in Flagstaff, is that it's not uncommon this time of year.

"It's even happening up in Montana. They are setting record high temperatures in many locations because they are also under an area of high pressure that's not typical." he explained.

Howard said even though the atmosphere is made up of gasses, a good way to think about it is being like a fluid, following the same rules as liquid.

"Think of it as an ocean. We have currents that move across the country," he said. "They change paths and those patterns change. The pattern has changed in the atmosphere above us; it has changed so that we see more high pressure over the southwest instead of those storms that would come by, one after the next. That pressure pattern stayed entrenched for the past couple of weeks."

The general trend of a characteristic northern Arizona winter is that we would see occasional storms come through, with intermediate periods of warmer, drier weather.

"It's just that in this particular case, the area of high pressure stayed put for a little longer than normal so we were able to warm up to warmer temperatures than we might normally expect," he said.

Howard said typically, temperatures are near normal at this time of year and precipitation has been a little less than average.

"We are sticking with a forecast of La Nina conditions and that would typically steer storms more toward the Pacific northwest and leave the area from southern California to Louisiana drier than average," he said.

The weather pattern changed this past weekend, with winds picking up to about 30 mph and some cloudy skies prompting

T-shirts to be swapped for jackets. This week, Williams is experiencing more seasonable weather with high temperatures around the mid-40s.


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