TAMPA, Fla. — If you think December felt warm to you here in the Tampa area, you are absolutely right!
December 2021 will go down as the third warmest on record with an average mean temperature of 71.5 degrees. The mean is when we average the high and low temperatures for each day. That turned out to be a whopping 6.6 degrees above normal for the month.
This warmth, combined with the rest of 2021, resulted in the fourth-warmest year on record for Tampa, which saw an average mean temperature of 76.1 degrees.
This past December, we set five maximum high-temperature records and three warm minimum temperatures. "Warm minimums" mean that the low temperature was the warmest that it had ever been on those dates.
We did not set any cold temperature records for the month of December and in fact, we did not even set any record low temps for the year in Tampa!
It was also a dry month as we measured 0.59 inches of rain at Tampa International Airport — only 23 percent of the normal rainfall for the month.
Now we are in a La Niña phase, which usually means a warmer and drier winter for us. Some of this is expected, but when you look back in time, you can clearly see a warming trend for Tampa and for the Earth as a whole.
