AILIE SCHOENBORN AND Tiana Brooks, both of Iron Mountain, walk Zuli the “double-doodle” on the snowshoe trail at City Park. The trails have ample snow cover after the area received almost 30 inches in December. (Theresa Proudfit/Daily News photo)

IRON MOUNTAIN — The Iron Mountain-Kingsford area received record precipitation in December, although the snowfall total of 29 inches ranks as just the third-highest, National Weather Service data shows.

Water-equivalent precipitation measured 4.47 inches, the most for December since record-keeping began. The previous high was 4.05 inches in both 1927 and 2015.

Remarkably, the two wettest years since the early 1900s now have occurred within the past three years. December’s precipitation pushed the 2019 total to 39.3 inches, ranking just beneath the 39.31 inches observed in 2017.

Besides December, precipitation in 2019 was concentrated in the months of February, May, July, September and October, with those six months accounting for more than 28 inches of the total. Average annual precipitation for Iron Mountain-Kingsford is about 30 inches.

A long-range forecast from the Climate Prediction Center calls for a 41% chance of below-normal temperatures in the Upper Peninsula for January through March, and just a 25% chance of above-normal. Although the forecast for January alone is neutral on both temperature and precipitation, the three-month outlook favors above-average precipitation.

For most of January, the polar vortex is expected to hover near the Arctic Circle, allowing a west-to-east flow of warmer Pacific Air to dominate the U.S. weather pattern.

“We still expect some brief bouts of cold air to knock down temperatures for a couple of days at a time over the northern Plains and Upper Midwest,” AccuWeather meteorologist Paul Pastelok said.

December’s snow total of 29 inches was short of the record 36.5 inches that fell in 1968, as well as the 32.1 inches measured in 1996. The highest snow depth of 19 inches tied for the fourth-most ever in December, according to the Iron Mountain-Kingsford Wastewater Treatment Plant observation site. It was well below the all-time December mark of 27 inches set in 1996.

The 9 inches of snow that fell Dec. 1 and the 6 inches that fell Dec. 13 were both records for those dates, Typical snowfall for the entire month is 14 inches.

Temperatures last month were slightly above normal, at 21.1 degrees, compared with this century’s December average of 20.4 degrees. The highest reading was 45 degrees on Dec. 23, a record for that date, and the lowest was minus 8 on both Dec. 11 and 18.

For the year, temperatures averaged 40.7 degrees, making it the third-coldest this century but not too far below the average of 41.9 degrees since record-keeping began. The coldest year this century was in 2014, when temperatures averaged 38.5 degrees.