December 15th
The 349th Day of the Year
Arrives the snow, and driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides the hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farm – house at the garden’s end.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sunrise/set: 7:49/5:11
Day’s Length: 9 hours 22 minutes
Average High/Low: 39/24
Average Temperature: 32
Record High: 63 – 1984 / 63 – 2021
Record Low: – 10 – 1901
The Daily Weather
Highs in the 60s come five percent of the afternoons; 50s occur on ten percent, 40s on 35 percent, 30s on 40 percent, 20s on five percent, teens on five percent. Skies are cloudy half the time, and there is a ten-percent chance of a morning below zero. Snow falls one day in four, rain one in five. The deepest December cold spell in half a century began today in 1983. It lasted until the 31st. The following year, there were highs in the 60s on the 15th and 16th.
The Weather in the Week Ahead
Surely everyone is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a wintry fireside; candles at four o’clock, warm hearthrugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies to the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without.
Thomas de Quincey
The third week of December almost always brings in a strong cold wave between the 15th and the 17th, and if this front arrives on its earliest date, the 15th, expect another weather system on the 19th or 20th. The coldest December days, those with better than a 35 percent chance of temperatures in the 20s or below, all come at this time of year: the 17th, 18th, 19th, 25th, and 26th. The most bitter day this week in my weather history is the 19th, with a 30 percent chance of highs only in the teens. And more below-zero temperatures occur between the 18th and the 26th than on any other December mornings. Precipitation is common throughout the period, with every day this week bringing a 50 percent chance of rain or snow except December 16th, which is typically the driest and the sunniest day between now and Christmas. Double-digit below-zero temperatures are possible between December 15th and March 22nd in Yellow Springs.
The Natural Calendar
Across the Lower Midwest, the Season of Average Highs in the 30s begins on December 15th and persists through February 20th, bracketing almost exactly the three seasons of winter. Pruning Season gets underway as average highs drop into the 30s; it continues until the average highs climb once again past 40.
The Season of Gull Migration is usually over by December 16th, ending major Ohio bird migration activity. In the northern woods, White Ear-Tuft Season marks the ears of red squirrels, and Wood Turtle Hibernation Season occurs along the rivers.
Daybook
1984: Record high temperatures in the 60s. Walking north along the railroad tracks, I saw a flicker and a small flock of robins, a few forsythia flowers.
1986: Jacoby: Paths still green, second-spring foliage strong. Ice along the brooks. Geese flew over in the late afternoon. Chubs took my bait, none caught.
1987: Storm, limbs down, sparrows singing in the howling wind.
1992: Jacoby Swamp, 55 degrees: Skunk cabbage a hand high but not open. Some of the hillsides green with garlic mustard. Long, flushed moss on fallen branches, brilliant red berries on the barberry. And blue in the streams from the sky, the flashing of sunlight on the water. Crows calling on the other side of the ridge, and chickadees and wrens chattering ahead of me in the swamp. A startled deer in the cattail tangle goes crashing toward the river. One winter robin whinny.
The pure springs that wander through the bottoms are adorned with cress, dock, ragwort, buttercup and the brightest grass: oases of color and sound, never overcome by winter, never browned or dulled, almost never silenced. Water striders in the holding ponds above the river, half a dozen ruling a minute inland sea full of fallen leaves, and algae, surrounded by moss and foliage of sweet rockets, asters, and miterwort. Below the pool, where the water escapes, there is a wide and deep line of cress, like an artery of spring. Clump of orange fungi on the side of a dead tree. A little further down the path, a nut-brown button type toadstool with a short stem, growing from a rotten log. Thimble plant seeds have disappeared here. Staghorns still hold, blood red, and some pinecones. One tan moth flies across the brook down into the valley.
1993: Witch hazel still blooming along Dayton Street, no change from a month ago. The red crab apples are still as strong as when their leaves came down. Flowering kale doing fine even after temperatures down to 15 degrees.
1997: Finally clear skies. The moon setting at dawn. The sun rising orange in the southeast, the horizon clean, cloudless. Out on the freeway, the frozen grass, dull under the gray skies of last week, is tinted gold, all the browns of the fields made richer and deeper by the winter sunlight, the red buds on the maples glowing, the yellow willows shining. Hazy gray-blue horizon over the city. Geese flew over at 2:10 p.m. as I was writing this daybook entry.
2005: In the middle of an all-day snow, a fly emerged from somewhere in the house, landed on my computer screen at 2:22 p.m.
2006: Bella and I walked through the alley to the sound of starlings in the trees down the block.
2007: No starlings in the alley this morning, but a flock of crows flew over at about a quarter to eight. A major storm system is moving across the Midwest today – we already have three inches of snow on the ground at noon, and precipitation is expected to continue through tomorrow. Oklahoma and Missouri were shut down last week by ice storms, and they are getting hit again. Tat says Madison, Wisconsin, has almost two feet of snow on the ground. By evening, we have a break in the storm, and the snow has turned to slush. More snow is due after midnight, lasting until mid morning. One striped-breasted song sparrow seen beneath the feeder today.
2008: Most of the pear leaves downtown have fallen.
2010: The witch hazel leaves and the oakleaf hydrangea leaves contract and droop in the cold, and the Japanese honeysuckle foliage has darkened and curled. Across the South, cities are recording record low temperatures, and the fruit and vegetable crops may be ruined from deep frost.
2011: Rain for two days, steady south winds, highs near 60 today, buzzards seen sailing above the highway south to Xenia.
2014: Robins twittering and peeping around 8:00 this morning, a small flock of overwintering starlings in the trees by the Catholic church, crows back and forth.
2016: Deep cold throughout the day, low 7 degrees, high just in the teens. Ed Oxley reports from Miami County, about 30 miles northwest of Yellow Springs: “ A flock of sandhill cranes, probably about 50 or so, flew over my place between 3:30 and 4:30 in the afternoon, heading southeast – and maybe toward Yellow Springs. I just want to let you now that the cranes are in the area.”
2019: Today was chilly, but Ellis Pond was free of ice, and the snow was still a ways west of Ohio. The cranes, as is their custom, however, fly before the storm, and area residents were keeping I the afternoon, I walked out the door of my house on High Street, and John drove by then backed up and told me he had been chasing cranes just south of town. It had been a big flock, he said with a smile.
“Heard ’em first, quite clear, I thought they were low and close. When they finally appeared they were East of me, maybe 1500′ up: 3 over-lapping “V”s with maybe 70 birds. I’d guess they were right in between us and Clifton,” John told me.
I had just missed them.
At 3:30, Casey left a message that he had just seen “two groups of those beautiful birds going over, probably fifty or sixty, headed due south, sort of following the bike path.”
A little later, Jim Leonard and Ann Randolf reported they had witnessed the same event from Steward Street at the same time. Jim had recorded them, two smaller flocks seeming to go west, and then a large flock heading south. Ann had confirmed his suspicion: “They were sandhills!”
Audrey sent a note on Monday: “My husband and I heard and saw sandhill cranes yesterday! Two big vees fluidly twisting together into a single large vee, at least 30 birds in all. We were walking in front of Nipper’s Corner, they were headed southwest–toward the river, we supposed. It was about 3:30 in the afternoon. They were flying low, call-rattling to each other. The glimpse was thrilling, moving, slightly unreal….”
And Cliff wrote, too, and included a video, taken that afternoon by a friend on Larkin Road, of a great, undulating formation of cranes that stretched from one side of the sky to the other, their sharp cries clearly audible above road noise.
Three inches of snow came in with the darkness, and the next day, more snow and wind and cold expected in the single digits.
2020: Cold 21 degrees with wind. Crows before sunrise, then a cardinal.
2021: A new storm moves east after dumping feet of snow in the Rockies. The
Midwest is under a December high-winds alert for the first time in December weather history. High temperature of 63 tied the record today here in Yellow Springs. Little by little, more signs of climate change reach Ohio.
2022: Mild near 50 today, deep cold and snow forecast for Christmas week.
Leaving water, I turn uphill.
A squawk, I lift my gaze upon
four slim cranes, wings wide,
silent choir singing me deep, deeper.
All is not buried; I’m alive.
From “Depth” by Ed Davis