Wow! A warm start to January 2012!

True, it’s only the seventh day of the month, but already we’re eight degrees above normal for the month! I was out basking out on my porch on Friday, January the 6^th in temperatures that reached 67F. And, while global warming may not be a good thing for the earth, it sure is welcome in January for a simple hominid like me. We’ll close out the first week with another nice day topping out at 63F.

So, while the days have been warm, the nights have dropped to more at seasonable levels. That’s due to the fact that the atmosphere has also been very dry with clear skies (see below) and winds that die down overnight. This condition supports diurnal atmospheric radiation which results in the mercury dropping into the twenties most nights, but then warming rapidly during the daytime. I remember, as a youth, seeing the same kind of weather in the Colorado mountains where a day would start below freezing and then get to eighty by noontime.

 [photos taken on consecutive days look like carbon copies]

Coming up for next week looks to be more of the same with some rain on about Tuesday the 10^th. The really cold arctic air that normally makes an incursion this time of year has been bottled up in Alaska and Canada. At this time there is no mechanism that will allow them to get much closer than the northern tier of states, at least for the foreseeable future. That may well result in January being much warmer than average, a thought that is also shared by the National Weather Service.