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From Freezing to Springlike: Carolinas See Dramatic December Weather Swings
Dec 19, 2025 | 2:42 PM
“Yeah, Kyle, sometimes it feels like Mother Nature wants to fit all four seasons into one week, and this is definitely one of those weeks. You mentioned how cold we were last weekend in the Raleigh area. The high on Sunday only made it up to 37 degrees. That is cold for any time of the year, but especially for the first half of December. And since then, we’ve seen that nice warm-up. We were in the 50s by Monday, and, you said it, some areas made it up into the 60s by Wednesday afternoon and on Thursday as well. So certainly that big shift from a winterlike chill to a nice springlike warmth just over a couple days. As far as what’s causing that, it’s really one high-pressure system to blame. This was one of those Arctic highs that dove southward out of Canada. When it was off to our north and northwest, we were getting those northerly winds around the high that were funneling in that really frigid air last weekend. As that high has shifted further southward and eventually off our coastline, we’ve now gotten into that southeasterly flow around that high-pressure system, so that has brought in the warm air. And again, it’s all played out just over the span of three or four days. That’s how quickly our weather has changed at this time of the year.”“Yeah, if we were to end the month right now, basically with two weeks left to go, most areas in the Carolinas would be tracking for one of their top 10 or top 20 coldest Decembers on record. Of course, we remember how the month started, even a little bit of snow in some areas back in the first week of the month, and a lot of those really cold afternoons as well. But, like we said, we have been in a warming trend this week, and we expect the second half of the month will be a lot warmer than the first. So we do not expect that December will necessarily finish cooler than normal. I think it’s probably more likely to finish somewhere near normal. But again, a tale of two halves in the month, with that cold weather early and then looking like a warmer end to the month of December.”“Yeah, really an unusual event back on Sunday night. Folks have heard about lake-effect snow that tends to happen up across the Great Lakes. This was a case of sound-effect snow. We had a very cold air mass in place, but as that cold air moved over the very warm water of the Albemarle Sound, that generated snow showers. No, it was not very widespread. It was not very long-lasting, but there was a narrow band, say, from around Plymouth out toward Ocracoke, that saw at least a little bit of snow. In some areas, I’ve heard, saw three to four inches back on Sunday night. So certainly an unexpected sort of snow event, and that sound-effect pattern is not something I remember seeing before in North Carolina. Otherwise, it has been very much a mixed bag of precipitation over the last week. We did have a broader area of eastern North Carolina that saw up to around half an inch of rain last Saturday. As we look further west, those rain totals were a lot lower. Then, getting out across the western Piedmont into parts of the foothills, basically no rain at all through the middle of this week. Now we have seen a little more rain moving in on Wednesday, especially during the day on Thursday and even into this morning. That will certainly help, but we’re expecting no more than maybe half an inch to an inch, so still a little bit below normal for this time of the year. And the big change we’ve seen on the drought map this week was an expansion of moderate drought into parts of western North Carolina. Looking at some of those same areas in the foothills and the southern mountains that saw next to no rain over the past week, they are now in moderate drought. And that really reflects that those areas are seeing similar rainfall deficits over the last few months as the rest of the state. Asheville is now almost five inches below normal over the past three months. That’s a very similar deficit to what we’ve got in Raleigh, what they’ve got down in Wilmington, and even further down the coast, what places like Charleston, South Carolina, are dealing with right now. So some pretty widespread rainfall deficits. Those half-inch events are nice, but they really don’t cut away at those deficits the way we would want.”“Yeah, I can’t recall a case where we’ve had that sort of pattern. I do remember some events of lake-effect snow really coming off of Kerr Lake or Falls Lake, some of the big reservoirs in the eastern Piedmont of North Carolina, but even that is probably 10 years ago. So it is an unusual pattern, and it does require a very cold air mass in place, with the winds basically going along the length of either those lakes or along the sound. So again, a very particular pattern is required. But when we do get that set up every few years, there are some lucky folks that can at least see a little bit of snow out of that event. One other thing to note is that we call it sound effect. We are not talking about an audio sound effect. When I tried to explain this to my mom, she said, ‘Wait, I thought you were talking about someone blowing a horn.’ I said, ‘No, we’re talking about the sound, like the body of water.’ So that is an important distinction to make. It is not somebody making a sound, but it is the body of water, the sound, that’s causing that sort of effect.”“Yeah, we can say that there’s no snow of any sort in the forecast over the next week. We do have a little bit of lingering rain this morning. There’s a cold front that’s moving in from the west, and that’ll really continue this rain event that we’ve seen over the last 24 hours or so. Again, when things are said and done, we should be looking at half an inch to an inch of total precipitation from this event. So that is really the only rain we’re expecting over the next week. We will start to warm up later in the weekend. It looks like Sunday afternoon we’ll probably be in the low 60s in most areas. We may have another slight cool-down on Monday into the upper 40s. But then again, keeping with that theme in the last week, we will see that slow warm-up up until Christmas Day. It looks like the high temperatures on Christmas Eve next Wednesday will probably be in the mid-60s, maybe some mid- to upper 60s on Christmas Day next Thursday. And some of the forecasts I’m seeing right now are even showing parts of South Carolina around 70 degrees on Christmas afternoon. So that is a far cry from a white Christmas. Definitely a warm Christmas this year, though.”“Yeah, that is one way to put it, because the next week is looking mostly sunny and, again, definitely warming up as we approach the Christmas holiday.”
