Weather doesn’t know that it’s still autumn

The winter solstice does not occur this year until 9:47 p.m. PST on Dec. 21. It is hard to believe that winter is still officially over a week away when much of the country – even as far south as Texas and Louisiana – have already been exposed to bitter cold and a dose of snow.

Even harder to believe, is that while overnight lows dropped below zero in many locations across the Inland Northwest in the past week, readings at the official observing sites in the area (with the exception of Omak) were not cold enough to break any records. Lack of snow on the ground prior to the arctic blast allowed us to take full advantage of the sun’s warming energy during the day, rather than having it reflected back due to the high reflectivity of fresh snow.

This helped to keep temperatures just a bit warmer than they would have been otherwise. This arctic air mass should finally be getting scoured out this upcoming week, making way for some milder (though still wintry) temperatures as well as some snow.

Climatologically speaking, the coldest average temperatures are still to come during the first week of January. Though El Niño is expected to mean overall a milder and less snowy winter than the two previous ones, it doesn’t mean we still couldn’t see future episodes of arctic air, creeping south of the Canadian border.

When arctic air masses are coupled with a round of strong winds, there is the additional factor of wind chill to consider. Last week, when temperatures were in the single digits and northeast winds blew in at 10 to 20 mph, wind chills came in at minus 15 degrees.

The danger of frostbite becomes most significant when wind chills below minus 19 degrees occur, as exposed skin can suffer damage in less than 30 minutes. The wind chill is not an actual temperature that would register on a thermometer, but is an indication of how much cooler you would feel because heat is being whisked away from your body. Objects such as car engines and water pipes would not be affected by wind chill other than perhaps to cool more rapidly, as the wind cannot cool an object below the actual air temperature. A wind chill is only defined for temperatures at or below 50 degrees and for wind speeds above 3 mph.