Keep cool, wagga! Those are temperatures I have trouble even imagining.

Here in the north central US this Thanksgiving is about average for late November, with highs around 37F/3C. Saturday is expected to be even warmer, before a cool down early next week. We've had some snow but it has all melted. Pretty pleasant when I think back on some Thanksgiving Days some years back that were far colder.

With advance warning of a LaNina weather pattern here, which will be warmer and dryer than usual, so far all I've seen is grey days, or windy days.  The start of summer yesterday was unimpressive although there was sunshine. 

It's impossible to know what to wear, whether to water the garden, or to feel summery. November was cooler and my garden hasn't grown so well as usual. 

Come ON, summer!

Meanwhile our unseasonably warm weather continues. The high tomorrow could reach 48F/9C, way above the average. The weekend forecast has changed, pushing the chance of snow southward. It's still several weeks until Christmas, so we can't rule out a white Christmas just yet.

We are having just above freezing temperatures now, which is gradually melting the snow, but it is still around in patches. Two snowstorms have descended upon us over the past two weeks. So beautiful! Hoping for a white Christmas, but we shall see. It could go either way.

We had another stunning sunset this evening; the sky was filled with altocumulus clouds. Those these are mid-altitude clouds, 'Altus' in Latin means 'high'; 'cumulus', 'heaped'.

https://ibb.co/TBvrbMS
https://ibb.co/Q96bb3G

Beautiful!

Meanwhile, there's no snow here and our high was 48F/9C, 20F above average. Amazing. Discussion is already starting about whether we will have a white Christmas or not.

But 10 years ago tonight it was a very different story. Snow began falling, leading into a big storm on Dec. 11, 2010. It became the 5th largest storm on record in Minneapolis, and it caused the inflatable roof of the Metrodome stadium to collapse.

There's a Narnia connection to that storm as well. I'd traveled to the Chicago area with Ryadian and her brother for the VDT Lion Party hosted by Gymfan. The storm closed roads in Wisconsin and Minnesota, delaying our return until the following Monday. Fortunately we were able to stay with some of Rya's relatives until the roads became passable - but getting home was still an adventure, with some roadside snowdrifts over 4 meters tall.

@Coracle: It's impossible to know what to wear, whether to water the garden, or to feel summery. November was cooler and my garden hasn't grown so well as usual. 

I know how you feel. At the end of November we were to have the hottest world temperature for November, ever. Yes, we did have hot days, in a sort of cycle, though, thankfully, the hottest peaks didn't get much above 38-40 degrees Celsius, which I agree is bad enough for November. 

But now, La Nina has finally arrived, with, according to UK's Daily Mail, a horrendous weather event that is about to drown us all, from Northern NSW northwards to mid Queensland, & only if we are lucky. Apart from attempting to demolish for the umpteenth time, a most horribly sinful city, known as Sydney, founded by convicts in 1788, which in World Opinion might just be "asking for it". The storm clouds have gathered, black & heavy.....But then they disappear. After all, we really don't want a repeat of last year's drastic drought conditions. 

But so far, or so I have gathered in backblocks Sydney, La Nina is a tad constipated. Never mind, here at, of all places in Sydney, we have the best medical facilities NSW can offer. So we rush around, getting done those things we need to do before heaps of rain make them impossible. Even as I type, I can hear the rumblings of an atmospheric grumbling....We wait. 

Between now & Christmas, have a  lovely time folks. Have a lovely Christmas & a most happy New Year, especially after the miseries of 2020.  

Posted by: @waggawerewolf27

Apart from attempting to demolish for the umpteenth time, a most horribly sinful city, known as Sydney, founded by convicts in 1788, which in World Opinion might just be "asking for it".

Yep. (Signed: A Melburnian )

... Only kidding, of course. Seriously, I hope you do get a good amount of rain — enough to dampen the possibilities of another horrific bushfire season, but not so much that it turns into a flooding emergency instead. And the UK Daily Fail — er, Mail — is not to be trusted anyway, as you're probably aware... it's the sort of paper about which my dad would say, the only accurate thing in it is the date and the price. I'm afraid the tabloids here in the UK make even the crummiest Australian papers look like models of decent journalism by comparison.  

@Courtenay I'm afraid the tabloids here in the UK make even the crummiest Australian papers look like models of decent journalism by comparison.

You could be right. I get these pop-up Daily Mail news bulletins on my Internet, courtesy of Google, regardless of where I am, these days, or even if I am not the slightest interested in that newspaper. The ones right now claim: "Storm causes carnage in Australia.. Surf club washed out to sea & beaches destroyed". Now that might be true to a point & on this morning's news it has indeed been wild weather up near Byron Bay. But it might be overstating things somewhat, especially if the "surf club" is a ramshackle old shed, that hasn't been used in yonks.

The other one is that the Duchess of Cambridge's sister, Pippa, is having her second child which would be great for her if it is not just one of those women's magazine fillers. It is weird to have an obviously UK url  so knowledgeable about what goes on here.

How's the weather treating you up in UK? It is raining here, today, just the nice rainy sort of rain that the plants love. The temperature is noticeably cooler for this time of year. 

PS, those two DM articles I've mentioned turned up in today's Daily Telegraph. Yes Pippa Matthews nee Middleton is indeed expecting her second child, & the wild weather was at Currumbin where the Surf Club was "threatened", not washed away. The wind, rain & waves whipped up a lot of sea foam which covered the beach there & in which the childen enjoyed playing, immensely.  

Firstly, wishing each one of you weather folk a very special Christmas season, especially, as wagga also said, after this challenging year of 2020!  

We will have a white Christmas, from what the forecasts are indicating. Rain is to begin early tomorrow morning, transitioning to snow later in the day. But in that interim time, there could be a period of freezing rain. When the snow comes, it is supposed to fall all Christmas Eve night and into Christmas Day. This should be beautiful! But it also means potentially treacherous driving for those driving. However, because we are going into full lockdown at 12:01 on Boxing Day, there may not be quite as much traveling going on as there would be in a normal year (but really, what is 'normal'?! ).

The track of this storm is still not certain, so snowfall amounts could differ, depending on the variables. But, yes, cheers to a white Christmas here in Oxford County!  

Merry Christmas to all!

Our white Christmas is guaranteed now, after a dramatic change in the weather. It was 45F/6C yesterday; by tomorrow morning it may be -4F/-20C with wind chills to match. A blizzard is already raging west of here, with many areas reporting whiteout conditions and zero visibility (the state DOT site has plow cameras that show a live feed of what the drivers are - or aren't - seeing, in addition to the usual stationary cameras usually used to monitor traffic).

The snow has arrived here, with conservative estimates bringing 8 inches (205mm) and possibly much more. The cold will flash freeze whatever melted at first, so travel isn't advised. Winter has arrived!

We ended up getting some snow last weekend! I believe we got approximately 4.5" at my house, so it was a very nice amount. I also know that we got a lot of snow because the past several days it's been in the upper 40Fs, lower 50Fs and we still have snow on the ground.  

Next cold front (and very small chance of snow) is tonight into tomorrow and then it will cool off again after that. 

Nice about your snow, fantasia!  

Posted by: @stargazer

Winter has arrived!

It sure has!

We had a very white Christmas. Quite stormy, at times, in fact. The snow melted a bit a few days before New Year's, at which point we had another lovely, thick snowfall, which is still here, and should remain for awhile now, with upcoming temps being just below freezing during the day, and nicely below at night. We have a quiet weather spell this week, but January is often a good snow month for us, so we anticipate more in the not too distant future.

Our Christmas was also white due to that last-minute storm, but January is surprisingly warm so far, and is expected to remain so for the next week or so. Temperatures just above freezing by day and nowhere near 0F/-17C at night, which would be more typical for this time of year. Everywhere here is waiting for the other shoe to drop and really cold weather to arrive. It's how we're wired. 😉

So glad that last month, at any rate, some of you, up there in the Attic, got a genuine White Christmas. Enough to stop Bing Crosby dreaming about it for a year or so.   I used to lampoon that particularly inappropriate Christmas song, when the only sort of Christmas I could dream of was a very hot Christmas, with delinquent borrowers & long overdue notices to check, plus the annual stocktake before we could shut up shop for the Christmas holiday break. Library stocktakes are not for the faint hearted.    

But those were the days, & mercifully, it has been a rather mild Christmas & New Year to date Down Under. A bit of a fizzer on New Years' eve due to a resurgence in  COVID-19 cases in New South Wales & elsewhere. Stormy weather has kept us entertained a little. But now that the height of La Nina seems to have arrived, along with monsoon cyclones, up north, in Queensland, things are about to settle down to what can be normal here, I suppose.  

I hope it doesn't revert too soon to the monstrously over the top summer that we had at the beginning of 2020. Penrith on Saturday 4th January 2020 was 48.7 degrees Celsius, (120 degrees Fahrenheit) about the highest maximum temperature anywhere in the world on the day. All that bushfire smoke blocking out the Sun didn't help either. 

Penrith on Monday 4th January 2021, two days ago, had a maximum temperature of 24 degrees Celsius (74 degrees Fahrenheit). Quite a difference, isn't it?  A nice drop in average maximums wouldn't hurt at all, right here. But how is New Zealand faring with summer so far, Coracle? And I worry a bit about UK, for the news from up there hasn't been good health wise. 

24C sounds quite pleasant for a summer day.

January has been unusually warm for this part of the world, getting close to 40F (about 4C) several days. We actually had a small thunderstorm yesterday morning in advance of a snowstorm that gave us some wet, heavy snow. Temperatures will drop slightly over the next few days but are still nothing like January can be.