We'll always remember December 2010 as the month that brought so much cold weather. Looking over my data, however, it shows the month to be fairly typical for this time of year, up until Christmas day. The month began with a couple of hard rains, then shifted into the typical December pattern -- mostly sunny with blustery winds from the northeast bringing spray precipitation and rainbows, highs in the low-to-mid seventies and lows in the upper fifties. There was a three-day lull, with light breezes from the west (very unusual for December). On the night of December 17 the sky was clear and calm and the thermometer dropped to 51, our record low for the year.
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| Rainbow in the west. As morning progresses it gets lower and lower in the sky, then disappears, and reappears in the east in the afternoon. Rainbows are almost a daily phenomenon in December. |
The cold began on Christmas night as we were sitting around our computer watching the snow fall back home on the Clemson University campus. We could hear the winds begin to pick up outside and then a hard spray started to hit the windows. This is exactly what it had done the previous night (Christmas eve), but this time it continued all night and on into the next day, and the next, and the next. The low for Dec. 26 was 59, the high, 60 (the lowest daily high temperature for the year).
Several times during the month I checked the wind speed with my new anemometer. Twenty-eight miles per hour is the highest speed so far.
Total rainfall for the month came to 9.3 inches, half an inch less than November. This is almost four times the normal for December.
Happy gardening!
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