By ARCHIE MOUNTAIN
Winter temperatures can certainly vary in December and January, That afternoon high of 50 degrees showed up on Monday, Dec. 23 and that caught everyone’s attention.
Looking back, there were both cold and hot days in 1994 and 1995, according to a Page 1 story in the weekly News Leader of Jan 19, 1995, published in Newport. A few paragraphs of that story are worth repeating, if only to show December and January temps can go both up and down.
On Jan. 12, 1994, Old Man Winter sucker-punched Sullivan County with a one-two jab of sub-zero temperatures on Sunday, 20 below in the morning and 2 below for a high in the afternoon, along with 18 inches of snow on Monday.
This year (1995), El Nino, our friend out West was apparently responsible for sending warm southern winds our way whispering Yankee Doodle Dandy.
And it couldn’t have been any dandier.
That is if you enjoy warm winter weather.
For skiers and snowmobilers it was quite a different story as temperatures climbed into the low 60’s and the snow cover disappeared.
Snow conditions were so bad, Mount Sunapee State Park closed at 4:30 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 12, 1995 and a decision wasn’t be made until Friday on reopening for the weekend.
It will depend if temperatures cool down enough to make snow, a spokesperson stated.
Record temperatures did a number on the snowbase at Mount Sunapee and also in front yards where it disappeared completely. The woods were snowless. Back roads muddied up and what frost there was worked its way out of the ground
And we’re talking about the third week of January.
The National Weather Service in Concord reported a record high 63 on Monday, Jan. 12, 1995 and the 56 it recorded between midnight and 1 a.m. the next day broke the old record of 55 set in 1889.
There was no snow on the summit of Mount Washington on Tuesday, Jan 13, 1995 and winds were blowing at only 10 mph.
Mount Sunapee also reported a drop in revenue through Jan. 15, 1995 that was $600,554, compared to $799,637 in the same period of 1994. That was a drop of $199,083 or 24.9 percent.
In 1995, weekend and holiday lift tickets at Mount Sunapee were normally $37. On Sunday, Jan. 11 they were reduced to $26 and there were hardly any takers. In the early afternoon hours about 50 cars were in the main parking lot.
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