Well folks, December is here, and finally, so is winter for the Northeast quadrant of the country (after a sad November for snow lovers), ushered in by a strong storm system with heavy rain and flooding. Here in Pennsylvania this morning, the temperature is plunging, and differs from an amazing 28 degrees in the west to 64 degrees in the east!

The rapid temperature drop is helping create a rare "triple trouble" situation which causing roads to be bad in the mountains on the back side of the storm, including around here. Rain changing to snow is rare here, and the heavy rain washed the treatment off the roads. Add temperatures rapidly dropping below freezing, plus a good dose of sleet to the rain/snow mixture, and it's getting dangerous in some places.

It's rare for us to have such a large temperature gradient, and the temperature at my weather station here in State College, PA has been plummeting this morning, dropping from 56 at 6 A.M to 36 at 9:15!

A wide area of 3-5 inches of rain fell, including here in Centre County, causing localized flooding - I took the video below (high-res on YouTube) and some photos on the way to work this morning.

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1

I blogged two weeks ago that it wasn't unusual to run up until December 1st with no snowfall here in Central PA, but I got a little worried for snow lovers' sakes yesterday when there were no major storms on the computer forecast models for the next two weeks. That's looking a little better today.

But to update those stats, here are some interesting facts about the slow start to the cold and snow season:

- According to AccuWeather.com records, New York City only dipped to 34 degrees in November, even though their normal low is around 36 now and records are in the single digits! Due to cool weather at the beginning of the month, they ended up around normal for November. Here's what's even more interesting - it's hard to find another station in the country that hasn't been below 34 degrees until you get down south to, say, Gainesville, Florida!

- From Tom Skilling's Blog: "The season's first flurries... arrival, by historical standards, was late. Only one other year---1999---has hosted its first snowflakes later... on Dec. 5. The appearance of flurries at Midway Airport Tuesday came 37 days---over 5 weeks---beyond snowflakes' first appearance a year ago."

Here's a map of total November snowfall in the Northeast...

...compared to normal, shown below, that's quite a difference. Although the points above are only for official stations, and may not include mountain tops, high elevations are about the only places that have seen snow this year. Here's a list of normal snowfalls for the months of October-November, with actuals for 2010 in parentheses:

Buffalo, NY: 11.7" (1.6)Elkins, WV: 6.9" (Trace)Erie, PA: 10.8" (1.4)Cleveland: 5.9" (Trace)Wilkes Barre, PA: 3.9" (0.3)Portland, ME: 3.5" (0.1)Chicago: 2.4" (0)

After today's storm passes through, many of these areas will see a couple inches of snow and truly wintry air - with the exception of lake-effect areas, which may see a couple feet.