A winter storm rolled through our area this weekend. We were lucky to not lose power at home or at work. So far this December we’ve had 13 days significantly below the daily average temperature and three days at five or more degrees above the average temperature. We’ve had a fair amount of snow, and then this ice. At least it was pretty.

So far the extended forecast is calling for very cold temperatures into the new year.

The Farmer’s Almanac is predicting that we’ll have .5 inches more snow in January than average and that the temperatures should be 3.5 degrees warmer than average.

We’ve passed the winter solstice. The days have started growing ‘longer’ although we are really just picking up minutes of daylight after 5pm…the sunrise is moving a bit later as well so we don’t really start growing the daylight until December 27 (sun uptime nine hours six minutes compared to now at nine hours five minutes).

December 29 we’ll have nine hours seven minutes of sun uptime. We don’t have a sunrise before 8:00am until January 26, but by then the sunset won’t happen until 5:47pm with a total sun uptime of nine hours 48 minutes.

Doesn’t seem possible that tomorrow is Christmas Eve. I remember being so excited to go up to Lansing when I was young. There was no place like Grandma’s at Christmas! Such warm, happy thoughts about Grandma and Grandpa, Aunt Betty and Uncle Nick, Aunt Suzie, Uncle Hank, Russell and Gail, and my Mom, Dad and Kirsten. The years we’d get home, and Santa Claus would call me on the phone. So many happy memories.