Midwest Overview - December 22-31, 2002

The weather highlight the last ten days of the month was a snowstorm on December 23-24 that gave parts of Missouri, much of Illinois and Indiana, and a large portion of Ohio a white Christmas.  The storm developed along the Gulf Coast on December 23rd and moved northeast into northern Mississippi early on the December 24th (Figure 1).  The storm laid a swath of heavy snow from southwestern Missouri through central Indiana (Figure 2). By the morning of December 26 4 to 8 inches of snow covered the ground in a region from southwestern Missouri through western Ohio (Figure 3).

December temperatures in the Midwest ranged from 9 degrees above normal in northern Minnesota to 3 degrees below normal in northeastern Ohio (Figure 4).  Dry weather that began this fall continued throughout much of the western Midwest during December.  Precipitation in southwestern Iowa and adjacent northwestern Missouri was less then 10 percent of normal for December (Figure 5). Only .03 inches of precipitation was measured at the Kansas City International Airport in December, which ties the December record set in 1996.  Since November 1st  this area has received less than .25 inches of precipitation, which is less than 10 percent of normal (Figure 6a and 6b). Dry conditions in Illinois and Indiana were helped by three storms during the month. The last of these produced two to three inches of rain ahead of a slow-moving cold front on December 30-31. The heavy rain caused flooding on a number of rivers in southern Illinois and Indiana. December precipitation from southern Missouri through southern Illinois and Indiana was at or above normal.

Warm air surged northeastward on December 30 ahead of the cold front, and temperatures reached the mid and upper 60s across central Missouri, the low to mid 60s across much of Illinois, and the upper 50s in Indiana. A number of record high temperatures were set in Missouri, eastern Iowa, and Illinois on this date.  The remaining snow cover from the December 24-25 storm disappeared in most areas as a result of the warm weather.