Despite a cold snap or two, January should be mild

Every new year makes me ponder the past and how things have changed. When I first became Jack McKenna's computer graphic artist back in 1987, TV weather in our region was only one year removed from magnets on sheet metal maps. Several of my old colleagues still use Jack's weather symbol magnets on their refrigerators and a big chunk of his old sheet metal map of the U.S. became inner fenders for my rusty and untrusty '68 Barracuda years ago.

That 1980s weather computer was pretty primitive with its floppy-disc-fed operating system, but by the Brien Allen and Carol Hall eras of local weather, we had moved up to a light table with an electronic drawing pen. Losing the pen meant termination for the one who misplaced it. Luckily, nobody ever did.

By the George Kessler dynasty, we had a newfangled system called Difax which faxed us weather data pertinent to our region, and we no longer had to wade through hours of Teletype printouts of news, sports and national weather to find the information that fit the Northland.

And now the computer age has made it even easier to get info.

On that note, here's the final info for temperature trends at Duluth International for 2018 as compiled by the great folks at National Weather Service Forecast Office Duluth: The numbers indicate that departure from normal mean temperature ran from a low of minus 6.8 in April to a high of 6.8 in December. So, it seems 2018 was a wash; departure from normal mean temperature for the whole year was 0.53 degree. 2017 was 0.70 degree warmer than normal.

So, what does the available data tell us about January 2019? Long-range indicators are that the warm spell of December will continue into January. It should average out two degrees warmer than normal despite that initial cold snap, and snowfall should be 5 inches below normal.

2019 should start with snow showers and the cold snap starting on Jan. 1 gone by Jan. 6; Jan. 7-12 should be sunny and mild; Jan. 13-22 should be mild with just a few scattered snow showers; and Jan. 23-31 should be that way, too.

The ultra-long range forecast hints that February will average even warmer than January, but then the bottom falls out of the thermometer in March. As always, take these forecasts with a grain of salt.

One of my mentors, retired lead forecaster Craig Sanders of National Weather Service Duluth, feels the signs point to the return of the polar vortex sometime in January, and that theory would render the warming theory completely moot, at least for a little while.

Good luck, best wishes and happy New Year from all of us at historic CBS 3 TV! (Our 65th birthday comes up in March.)