By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM

It has been a cold and wintry December so far with a series of storms that have brought ice and snow to a large area of the west, central, Great Lakes and northeast. Read an account of the snow and ice amounts compiled by NOAA here. Read about the latest storm here. NEW: See impacts on Canada here.

The first half of the month shows the cold across the northern tier and the warmth in the deep south. As usual, the storms have rolled along the boundary between the cold and warm.

The snowcover in the United States even before the last two storms had increased so that together with some new snows in Asia, the snowcover across the northern hemisphere, which had been running below normal for much of the fall, had risen to above normal for the first time this year.

Read more on December, see full size images and read some thoughts about January here.