LITTLE ROCK, Ark.- Another month is finished with only one month left of 2021 to go. Let’s take a look back at how our weather shaped up for the month of November and then check out what we can look forward to with December.

Let’s start with temperatures:

In the month of November, we had more cooler than normal days than above-average days. That being said we need to look at the data a little more in-depth.

When you just look at the average high temperature for the entire month, we ended up just slightly above average. As for the average low, it was the opposite. November 2021 average low was 38.1° which is 2.1° below normal.

Since the average low was much cooler than normal and the average high was slightly above, the overall average (both high and low combined) trended 0.8° below normal.

Rain, or the lack of it, was not very generous during a time of the year a general weather pattern should help produce more rainfall.

Only 10 days in the month of November actually recorded rainfall for Little Rock totaling 2.02″ which is well below the normal rainfall of 4.72″ that we should have observed.

Now that we have finished up November, that also wraps up the meteorological fall season. Just as November was dry, so was fall overall. Since September 1st, we only recorded 7.01″ when we should see 12.20″ over a three-month period.

Overall, this puts us going into December with a rain deficit of close to six inches. This time last year, we were 15 inches above normal. That is not the case this year.

All of this dry weather has caused drought conditions to develop mainly across the southern half of the state at this time.

While we did have several systems move through the area, we didn’t see a lot of rainfall with them. Cloud cover data shows that nearly half the month recorded sunny to mostly sunny conditions while the other half was partly cloudy. We only had six days where we recorded mostly cloudy to cloudy sky conditions.

DECEMBER 2021

Now that we have looked back at November, let’s take a look at what December should look like and the current temperature/precipitation outlook.

For the final month of December, this is when we begin to see our normal high and low temperatures getting to their lowest values as we head into the winter months. Normal high temperatures should range from the middle to lower 50s with lows in the middle to lower 30s.

Average rainfall should be near five inches.

Now that we know the baseline for temperatures and precip, let’s look at the current forecast for December 2021 from the climate prediction center.

Since we are forecast to be in a La Niña pattern for the winter months, warmer and drier conditions are the most likely to trend.

While La Niña is forecast, it doesn’t guarantee that the entire winter season will be like this. It just means that odds are favored for warmer than normal temperatures and drier than normal conditions.

Winter 2020-2021 is a perfect example of the sentence above. For that winter season, the majority of the three-month period was warmer and drier than normal up to the point of the incredible and historically cold and winter weather event that took place from February 14-18, 2021. If that week was taken out of the record books, we would have had the warm and dry winter that was forecast verify.

Could what happened back in February 2021 happen again? It’s possible but only time will tell.