Did it strike anybody else that December's weather was more... weathery than usual? A succession of storms drove three 50 degree temperature swings last month and one more 50 degree drop that started on Sunday and bottomed out yesterday. Curious, we calculated the standard deviation of day-to-day high temperature changes for all Decembers since 1971. Sure enough, last month, with a standard deviation of 11.2 degrees, turned out to be the most variable in 25 years, and third most variable since 1971. For the record the most variable December in our data was 1982, with a standard deviation of 12.4 degrees. The least variable was the very boring 1974, in which 21 days were within five degrees of normal.


