First Day of Winter Climatology for North Platte and Valentine

Winter Solstice is
Wednesday, December 21, 2016

First day of Winter this year is Wednesday, December 21. The official time of the Winter Solstice (the moment when the Sun is positioned at its furthest southern position from the Earth's equator) is 4:44 am CST or 3:44 am MST (1044 UTC 12/21) Wednesday morning. During the day of the Winter Solstice, locations on the north side of the equator see their shortest amount of sunlight for the year. Points on the Earth's surface south of the equator see their most minutes of sunlight for the year.

The Winter Solstice will vary from year to year, occurring either on December 21 or December 22. Western and North Central Nebraska can experience a wide range of weather for the first day of winter. Below are the records for North Platte and Valentine for the potential first day of winter.

Confusion on the date? Not this year. Sometimes there can be confusion on when the first day of winter (or any season) occurs. This happens when the UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) and the U.S. time zones (eastern/central/mountain...etc) are different. The most confusion happens when there is a difference between the eastern time zones and the western time zones.

North Platte Records
Record	December 21	December 22
High	67/1933	69/1933
Low	-29/1989, 1983	-34/1989, 1983
Lowest Max	-9/1983	-7/1989, 1983
Highest Min	37/1885	40/1885
Precip	1.99"/1877	0.61"/1877
Snow	7.8"/1968	3.9"/1966

Valentine Records
Record	December 21	December 22
High	65/1933	70/1933
Low	-35/1989	-39/1989
Lowest Max	-13/1989	-6/1983
Highest Min	38/1900	42/1933
Precip	0.53"/1920	0.17"/1952
Snow	7.5"/1920	2.3"/1944

Page composition by
Matthew Masek