[Listen] December Weather Tom Hoverstad SROC

Tuesday I called Tom Hoverstad who is a Scientist at the Southern research and Outreach Center at Waseca to talk about the December 2020 weather. It was the fourth month in a row that was dryer than normal. There was a dusting of snow on December 19 that provided .03 hundredths of an inch of precipitation. That broke a 36 day period with no precipitation. It has been over 50 years since we have seen a prolonged dry spell like that.

December 2020 was much warmer than normal as the average was 5 degrees above normal. On December 15 there was still no frost in the ground. Tom said Tuesday their was about 6 inches of frost but the soil temperature was just around 30 degrees. There was just one cold weather event during the month when temperatures dropped to -10 degrees.

I will always remember December 2020 as the fall you could still do field work in the middle of the month! On December 15 I saw livestock producers still injecting manure and a number of farmers were also cleaning drainage ditches and tiling. Click on the link above and listen to Tom talk about the December 2020 weather.