Winter '11 / '12 - Eurasia Snow Cover - December

The latest monthly data from the Rutgers Snow Lab shows the observed areal snow cover over Eurasia was -- yawn -- average during December after being at or quite close to one standard deviation above the mean the past two years.

The month's ~26,642,000 km² coverage ranked 26th in the 46-year period of record (1966 - 2011) which is slightly less than the median December coverage of ~26,786,000 km².

Solid ORANGE line:  period of record's AVERAGE areal snow cover.
Dashed YELLOW lines:  + / - one standard deviation about the mean
RED line:  nine-point binomial filter

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Snowfall data courtesy Rutgers Snow Lab.
Earlier post about Novembers' Eurasia snow cover here.

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BONUS chart...
Monthly Eurasian snow cover for 2011 (RED line; BLUE markers) and the 'period of record' median.