Winter Weather: Extreme Colds Mark December

Jan. 2010 --Thankfully our offices were closed on December 29, so our employees didn't get stuck on their homebound commute when an unexpected snowstorm hit the Portland metro area.

How is your winter shaping up? Email your winter weather stories to info@columbiaweather.com.

We had unusual weather throughout the month of December with extra cold temperatures earlier in the month. Fellow Oregon AMS* member Steve Pierce has compiled the following data as recorded at the Portland International Airport (PDX) ---

  • December 2009's monthly mean temperature was 35.6 degrees, nearly 5 degrees below normal.
  • December 2009 also saw the coldest stretch of overnight low temperatures in Portland Airport history, this early in the winter season, averaging 13.25 degrees from 12/8 to 12/11. This barely edges out the exact same timeframe in 1972 (12/8/72 to 12/11/72) when PDX averaged 13.75 degrees.
  • PDX recorded the single highest number of sub-freezing (32 or colder) December overnight low temperatures in nearly 25 years. There were 19 days with overnight lows at or below 32 degrees at PDX in December of 2009. The last time PDX saw more sub-freezing overnight lows in the month of December was in December 1985 when PDX recorded 25 days at or below 32 degrees.

(Note - The period of record used for this analysis is 1940-2009.)

Steve Pierce is an Executive Councilor on the board of the Oregon Chapter of the American Meteorological Society (*AMS).

The graphs below show December 2009 as recorded at our Hillsboro, Oregon office. Data was acquired from our Capricorn 2000 Weather Station and graphed using WeatherMaster Software.


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