Just popped in for a day to fill in for a colleague, and find myself wondering when winter's going to begin. We're averaging 42.5 degrees at BWI for December through Wednesday. That's 5 degrees above the 30-year average, and the fourth-mildest December here in the past 35 years, with four days to go. Here are the top contenders:

December 1984:  44.1 degrees

December 1971:  43.7 degrees

December 1994:  42.6 degrees

December 2006:  42.5 degrees

And here's AccuWeather's explanation. The coldest December on record for Baltimore was in 1989, when the temperature averaged 25.4 degrees. The mildest was in 1931, when the average was 45.7 degrees.

Here's what the folks out at Sterling had to say this morning about this mild late-autumn and early winter:

"NO SIGN OF SIGNIFICANT WINTER COLD THRU AT LEAST THE FIRST WEEK OF
JANUARY. IT CERTAINLY HAS BEEN A WARM START TO THE LATE FALL EARLY
WINTER SEASON. LOOKING AT THE PAST MONTH THRU HISTORY AT DC AND
BALTIMORE...NOV 26 THRU DEC 26...THIS IS IN THE TOP 10 WARMEST FOR
THAT PERIOD ON RECORD FOR BOTH CITIES WHICH HAVE TEMP RECORDS BACK
TO 1872. 2001 WAS THE WARMEST FOR THAT PERIOD FOR BOTH SITES."

And now, back to my vacation, already in progress...