December 2021 Review

It's time for our look back at the weather in Edmonton for December, 2021. This will be a little bit shorter than usual, because the upcoming 2021 Year-in-Review will cover a lot of the stuff that we normally talk about in these montly reviews.

High Temperatures

It seems like forever ago, but December 2021 started fairly warm, before temperatures nose-dived around the 15th. 

The month ends up with 11 Highs above average, and 20 below. But 6 of those cold days had Highs which were the coldest-in-30-years.

On average in December we have around 10 Highs above freezing, but in 2021 we only had 4.

On the other hand we had 7 Highs hit -20°C including 2 at hit -25°C. Since 1990 the only Decembers with -25°C Highs were 1996, 2009 and now 2021.

 

Low Temperatures

December 2021's Lows looked a lot like the Highs, with a warm start, and extremely cold end. 

10 Lows were above average, with 21 below. While we didn't get close to any all-time records there were 5 days with coldest-in-30 year Lows.

On average December only has around 6 Lows of -20°C. In 2021 we had 14. 8 Lows hit -25°C, including 3 at -30°C. Since 1990 the only Decembers to hit -35°C were 1992, 2009 and now 2021.

 

Warm & Cold Months

The average High for this December 2021 was 11.5°C, which ranks as the 14th coldest on record. The average Low of -18.2°C was the 33rd coldest.

 

If we just look at the back half of December, from the 15th through 31st the average High of -18°C was 6th coldest. The average Low for the back half of December was -24.5°C, and was the 12th coldest.

 

Looking at the monthly mean temperatures (the average of the Highs & Lows) December & February were the only months in 2021 which were colder than the 20th century average. And they were both around -4°C colder than the average.

 

Snow

In December we average about 16cm of snow, and 2021 was double that with 33cm at the Airport.

In December we average 9 days with snowfall, and 2021 was just a bit above that with 11. The biggest 1-day snowfall this month was 11.4cm on December 14th.

 

Snowdepth

Blatchford isn't recording snowdepth anymore, but the snowy and cold December pushed the snowdepth at the nearby stations up above 30cm, while the average for the end of December is only about 13cm.

 

January Temperatures

In January on-average we get 12 days with Highs above freezing. January is also our biggest month for deepfreezes though, with an average of 8 Lows of -20°C. Our average snowfall for January is 22cm.