- 12/21/12

At first blush, it might sound strange to say that today should bring a big toothy grin to lovers of summer weather.  How could it be that the shortest day of the year, the day of the Winter Solstice (at 6:12 a.m., the earliest arrival of the season in 116 years), when the air is cold and the sun in short supply, would bring joy to the hearts of summer lovers?  The answer is that beginning Saturday, we start climbing our way back to the Summer Solstice.  Before today, we were working our way toward winter; each day getting shorter and shorter; the sun getting lower and lower in the sky.

Now, we're headed in the opposite direction: the days will be getting longer and the sun will be getting higher in the sky.  It will take a while for temperatures to respond.  Our climatological high and low temps won't be headed up for several more weeks; but we're now heading in that direction.

In the meantime, winter continues to be off to a slow start. Though Friday's winter storm brought some snow to parts of West Michigan, much of the area didn't even get an inch of accumulation.  For Kalamazoo, the number of days since the last accumulating snow reached 300.  And looking ahead to next week's weather, there doesn't seem to be reason to believe that streak will end anytime soon.  That means the outlook for a White Christmas is looking pretty dim. Cross your fingers and stay tuned!