Green December lawn at RCTC horticulture college campus on a rainy December 14th 2011

A fairly strong, and very warm weather system moved into the region over the week, but it did not bring hefty snow amounts like some may have expected and even have been hoping for, instead it brought warmer temps, fog and steady rains with heavier downpours. I had mentioned in my forecast there was a threat of thunder, there was no thunder here in the area, but lightning was reported as far north as just to our south in North Iowa, so places near Austin may have heard some. It is not out of the ordinary to get rain instead of snow here in Southeastern Minnesota, but snow is certainly seen way more often then rain this time of year. Our snowpack was gone in the warm up 2 days prior to this event and the ground even thawed out, so it was like we were going backwards in our season! The reason why there was rain instead of snow is because the low pressure happened to move in right when a very warm airmass was already in place across the area, so instead we had a very fall like rain system. Amounts varied, but were fairly high in all areas accept southeastern parts. High end reports ranged  from 0.60 at Washaba and Lake City to 0.19 at Preston. Here in Rochester we got 0.50″ which really helped to moisten up the dry soil.

Highs Wednesday

Temps were also a pretty big story in this system, it was very mild in the 40s during the day and in the upper 30s at night, which ended up in the complete demise of all the snowcover in southeastern Minnesota very early in this warmup before the rain arrived, the warmup melted all the snow within 2 days. The highest area temperature was 45.F from Preston and the lowest was Winona at 36.F.We will have to see if the next couple of weeks can bring the area a new snowcover!