Let’s push aside the 39 inches of the white stuff from last month and talk about the cold weather. Just in case you didn’t notice the temperature while shoveling, December was much colder than normal in Oshkosh.
The average temperature in December was 15.8 degrees, which makes it the 10th coldest December in the city since weather records were kept starting in the 1880s, said officials from the National Weather Service in Green Bay. For about the first three weeks of December it was cold enough for the month to flirt with the top five coldest Decembers recorded in Oshkosh.
By the way, calculating the average temperature is pretty simple. The NWS adds the high and the low for each day and then divides by two.
The 15.8 degree average was a whopping 6.3 degrees below normal for December. Oshkosh had nine days with below zero temperatures last month, according to the NWS and Northwestern weather observations.
Our December weather reminded me of some of the harsh winters on the farm while growing up in the 1950s and 1960s. I knew it was really cold outside when frost built up on the inside walls of our dairy barn. I didn’t need a thermometer to remind me of the cold.
One bitter cold winter day I recall like it was yesterday. It was Dec. 31, 1967 when the Packers played the Dallas Cowboys in Green Bay for the National Football League title in the “Ice Bowl” game. The temperature was something like minus 15 with a biting wind, so we did chores early. Frost was maybe an inch thick on some of the inside barn walls. Our dairy cows only stayed outside about 15 minutes that day. The cow’s breath seemed to cling to the outside air.
What was really a bummer during cold weather is when the manure spreader broke. That happened to us a few times during the winter and it was no fun standing out in the cold trying to fix it. My dad could take a lot of cold, but when it was below zero he didn’t appreciate a break down.
