Chinook

my area got to 61 before sunrise, breaking a record of 59

wintertime deluge of rain

snapshot of some (not all) storm reports in a couple hour time frame. 10-12" at Colorado Springs (5-10" in Colorado Springs on CoCoRAHS as of this morning)

no watches/advisories for most areas

10"-20" in 14 days is a lot. It's above the annual rainfall of Colorado every state other than California and North Dakota has drought.

freezing rain/rain at Toronto

1976-1977 was of course as you mentioned extremely dry for the western USA, and also quite cold and snowy for the Northeast/Great Lakes. This may have been a time when great long-range weather forecaster Namias started noticing the link between El Nino, Pacific SST anomalies, and huge changes in the USA's weather systems. I think this paper says that no low pressure areas tracked through the ridge (at all) around the West Coast. https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/mwre/106/3/1520-0493_1978_106_0279_mcotna_2_0_co_2.xml

I've always thought TDWRs (range of 50 miles/45 nautical miles) aren't too helpful with light precipitation, but radar composite type maps are better.

I thought my place had been chilly for December, but Fairbanks Alaska had -22.8 as the average

The polar vortex and associated cold 500mb temperatures really sloshed around from December 1-15, really dumping the cold and snow on us. Then we had some varied weather patterns, including a ridge on Christmas Day that split the cold anomalies east, west, and north. High values of Greenland blocking (west negative NAO blocking) came along with the polar vortex motions in the first half of the month. https://great-lakes-salsite.web.app/Dec_2025_500mb_loop.html

so you're saying 25% of average is not good? Yeah, way too warm for you guys in December. I am going to have to use my magnetic powers to pull in some storms for you guys, get some snowpack in the mountains

As of much earlier this morning the temp dropped to 4 at Toledo (as per the 5:00PM climate report)

December had double high-latitude blocking, with the ridge over the Bering Strait even much more prominent than the high pressures over Greenland. The cold polar vortex air tends to develop quite strongly and head toward us with this scenario. Unfortunately, my friends in the Mountain West discussion group have been in a drought, with temperatures like +10F in Denver.

My best estimation is that I got 2.6" to 3.0" combining the last two days. (Now, it's snowing again)

This narrow band is right at the front