Twas the Gloom Before Christmas

The weeks leading up to Christmas have been pretty gloomy here in State College, Pennsylvania. It was cloudy or precipitating for 94% of the time between Dec. 8 and 26! The graph below from WeatherSpark.com shows cloudy hours for the period in gray.

Out of 721 obs between 12Z Dec. 8 and 00Z Dec. 26, 24 were partly cloudy, 19 were clear and the rest (94% of 16 and a half days) were mostly cloudy, overcast or precip. Of the clear and partly cloudy obs, only one was during daylight hours. The real irony however was that we only got an inch and a half of snow during that period, compared to 5 inches in November!

Above and below are 1-shot-per-day (~1:30 p.m.) animations of the AccuCam and the MODIS satellite for the Dec. 8 to Dec. 26 time period.

And it wasn't just central Pennsylvania. Chicago is also on tap to break a new cloudy record for December. Out of 492 obs between 00Z Dec. 12 and 09Z Dec. 28, zero were clear, five were mostly clear, 12 were partly cloudy and the rest (96.5% of 16 and a half days) were mostly cloudy, overcast or precip. Of the non-cloudy obs, none were during the day.

So what was the cause? The Great Lakes may have had some effect but Forecaster Dale here at AccuWeather said it was just a stagnant pattern and temperature inversion in-between fronts, that we couldn't get out of. Of course, it's normally more cloudy here in Pennsylvania than where I used to live in North Carolina, because of that lake influence and the proximity to the jet stream. But while official records of cloudy streaks aren't maintained locally, Dale believed this was a new record.