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Robert J.
Mueller |
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WET, WARM JANUARY It is hard to imagine the hundreds of thousands of snow geese now using the Kaskaskia River flyway. Their ragged V’s and dog-like yapping literally fill our sky every morning and evening, feeling the tug to return north while staying here for easy feeding. Snow goose population is so high that federal and state agencies have encouraged hunters to use extraordinary measures to harvest more of them. It doesn’t look like any measures worked. Hunting season on snow geese was originally due to end January 31 but now remains open through March 31 throughout Illinois. Will winter really set in and drive geese back into southern Illinois? Without pretending to predict the future, weather watcher can only draw on the past which produced pretty gnarly Februaries when we were otherwise ready for winter to end. So we’re suggesting that you cut more fire wood if the pile is dwindling! Icicles formed on raised exposures last Wednesday during a light rain event. It failed to make black ice which was still on everyone’s minds from just a few days before. Overnight, it rained harder and got warmer, reducing any other icing concerns and it drizzled all day Thursday. More rain came early Friday, briefly turned to snow for a bit of “dusting” Saturday morning then warmed up again. That 1.12 inches sent January rainfall above normal by .40 inch. The month provided a shy 3 inches of snow. The average mean temperature was 32.4 degrees which is about six degrees warmer than normal.
A drastic difference from January, 2011 when days averaged 31.2
degrees for an average mean of 23 (three degrees colder than
normal). Rainfall was 50 percent of normal but we had over 11 inches
of snow. That minimal rainfall quickly gave way to a wet spring and
more than ten inches above average for annual rainfall. It will be
interesting to watch 2012 rainfall; if it has a bearing on this wet,
warm start. |
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