Nice, Auntie!

Meanwhile, after a fairly mild autumn (including a recent record high), winter abruptly arrived in the past 24 hours, with a cold rain changing quickly to wet snow driven by winds up to 60 mph (97 km/hr). The Twin Cities area received only 1-5 inches (25-125mm) of snow, but areas north and northwest of here received much more than that. The winds and snow caused some semi-trailer accidents that closed Interstate 94 in north central Minnesota for some time yesterday.

Temperatures will be well below average over the long (US) Thanksgiving weekend, with more plowable snow coming this weekend, and temperatures dropping to around 0F (-17C) - and wind chills around -20F (-29C).

The first real snow and cold of the season are here!

@stargazer Temperatures will be well below average over the long (US) Thanksgiving weekend, with more plowable snow coming this weekend, and temperatures dropping to around 0F (-17C) - and wind chills around -20F (-29C).

The first real snow and cold of the season are here!

Nice to see world weather is humming along nicely.      Just as abruptly, this week's weather heated up to at least 35 C, with yesterday's temperature peaking at 36C. At midday yesterday a hailstorm put a spanner in the works, knocking out power, levelling trees & disrupting our metropolitan train service, making an evening commute a hellish experience, due to halted trains, unable to continue, & then overloaded buses, packed in like sardines, with hot, sweaty and worried commuters. My daughter barely reached home before 8.30 pm, in what seemed an epic experience, having left her work at 4.00 in the afternoon. She had to catch such a sardine express which took another hour to travel between Parramatta & Blacktown, where the driver took a bow & was clapped for at least finally getting there despite all the traffic lights being stuck on red. 

There is a very high risk of fire danger, now Summer has officially started. 

Posted by: @jo

But no doubt we will get back to snow soon enough!

And, as expected, the snow is here again. What a magical winter wonderland I awoke to this morning. About 8" fell, with more coming today and overnight tonight. Utterly beautiful! The heavy snow-laden skies are alive with anticipation.  

And the temp is well below freezing, so this should hopefully stay, for a bit, anyway. Our many coloured outdoor Christmas lights are festooning the porch railing, a couple of large bushes, and our 13' high 'Charlie Brown tree' ... we call it 'Charlie' because it began that way, but has since become tall and full and lush, and now blanketed with this beautiful snowfall.

The winds were very strong yesterday, so we battened down anything that could fly away. Winter is here, woohoo! 

The snow has been falling (off and on, but mostly on) since my post above on Friday. The rural landscape is gorgeously pristine white. Loving this, and it's only the end of November! There are chances of flurries all week long, with daytime temps just below freezing; nighttime temps around -5C (23F), sometimes a bit lower. We sure are hoping this winter is like year's: lots of snowfall that doesn't melt for months ... similar to the good 'ol-fashioned winters I grew up with.  

We also received snow most of the day yesterday, totaling perhaps 5 inches/125mm of light, fluffy snow (amounts varied quite a bit in the metro area). This is on top of the snow we received earlier in the week.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Niiice, stargazer!  

And since I last posted (the end of November), we have hardly had a day without at least some snowfall. Last night and today's was even more, plus it was a tad wet, so we awoke to a winter wonderland this morning. This is to continue overnight, with snow squalls tomorrow. The temperature does not drop near freezing anytime soon, so this white stuff is staying. Hurrah!   Chance of flurries on the weekend; more snow on Monday.  

@jo Winter is here, woohoo! 

Glad to hear it! Truly. Down Under, Summer is here! And yes, we've had some days of more than 40C, in what promises to be a very long & hot summer! We are supposed to get some rain, and I hope we do, though so far, these promises haven't  come about, even if clouds linger of a morning. No matter how much it inconveniences some, & can make life awkward, cooling rain is a blessing that I must resist the temptation to complain about. There is nothing worse than a drought, & plenty of lightning in dry storms add to bushfire peril. We've had a really nasty one only last weekend, or thereabouts on the Central Coast at a small place called Koolewong, where 16 houses burned down.  

Wow, 40C! Tomorrow our temperatures will struggle to reach -17C (0F), with overnight temperatures around -26C (-15F) - and that's with the urban heat island effect. Areas north of here will be a lot colder.

We've had measurable snow on something like 15 of the last 17 days - though usually not a lot at a time. Winter is certainly making up for the past few mild winters we've had.

Happy solstice! The sun reached the southernmost point in its annual journey at 1502 UTC yesterday (9:02 am in my time zone). It's the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and the longest in the Southern.

Our weather has been up and down recently. After the cold I mentioned in the previous post, today's high could reach 40F/4C, with similar temperatures expected into Christmas. Our snow is melting and there is some debate about whether we will have a white Christmas (defined in the US as 1 inch/25mm of snow on the ground Christmas morning).

Merry Christmas to all!

It looks like it will be a green Christmas here in western Michigan. The temperature on Thursday is forecasted to be around 40 degrees F, which means that much of the snow will melt. That makes it easier for driving and going places.  I do like having a little snow for Christmas since it seems appropriate for the holiday. But green is also a Christmas color, although the temperatures may be a little too warm this year to seem natural.  🙂

Posted by: @narnian78

It looks like it will be a green Christmas here in western Michigan. The temperature on Thursday is forecasted to be around 40 degrees F, which means that much of the snow will melt.

And in Vancouver (Canada) we look like we'll be having a grey and wet Christmas. Growing up in Perth (Australia) we usually had a dry, brown-grass, hot 40 degrees Celsius, Christmas - believe me, we really were dreaming of a white Christmas! 😀 

It's certainly dry and brown here in north western Victoria, and it will be for Christmas day.  We had a big wet day on Sunday just past, after a few days of high 30s-40 degree Celsius temperatures.  Christmas day is going to be a lovely 21 degrees C here.  As I mentioned - it's dry and brown here - country around here went brown pretty quickly due the rain deficit we're still experiencing, although we have had more rain this year than last year.

Forecast for my part of Cheshire tomorrow is 6°C maximum / 2°C minimum, and sunny. Not exactly a white Christmas, but a cold one. (There are ominous rumours of a massive snowstorm to sweep over most of the UK at the start of the New Year... bring it on, I say. I love snow. ) 

@narnian78  I do like having a little snow for Christmas since it seems appropriate for the holiday.

Today (Boxing Day, 2025) is a bit cooler than it has been. But we read in this morning's paper that down in Tasmania, it actually snowed on Christmas Day, especially on top of Mt Wellington near Hobart, & in the Cradle Mountains.  Summer snow does happen very occasionally in both Tasmania and in the Alpine regions in North-Eastern Victoria, but it has never happened before that such a summer snow event happened precisely on Christmas Day.  🥶🐧😶‍🌫️ 

Now, who would have thought it?  

I see you've mentioned about the White Christmas in Tasmania, @waggawerewolf27.  Without knowing you did that - I mentioned it in this post.

Today and yesterday here in north-western Victoria have been in the low 20s.  Maybe one day I'll get a random white Christmas here!  I know we experienced some pretty cold ones when I used to live south-east of Melbourne - I never saw snowy ones there, but as was pointed out in the previous post - the Victorian alpine region does get the occasional snowy Christmas like in Tasmania.  Occasional as of course it is summer, but Melbourne (the capital city of Victoria) is known for having "four seasons in one day".