I've been reviewing the weather charts and it has been an interesting year for weather across eastern North Carolina.  We had two signficant snowstorms early in 2010 that was followed by one of the hottest summers on record.  After a mild fall we saw the return of very cold air for December and 7.5 inches of snow at the WITN Weather Station.  In fact, temperatures averaged almost 11 degrees below normal, which gave us the coldest December since 1989.  The cold air will be replaced by mild air for the first weekend of the new year.  Following our warm weekend, it appears we'll return to seasonably chilly weather conditions for much of next week.  We should not see the return of extreme cold at least for another 7 to 10 days although I wouldn't call it warm.  I fully expected December to be a colder than normal month but I thought most of the cold would be gone by the first of the year.  It looks like I may have to alter my forecast a bit.  Long-range models are suggesting that colder than normal air will settle into the Southeast during the second and third week of January.  If those models are correct we could see another chilly month across eastern North Carolina.  However, I do not expect to see temperatures average as much below normal as we've just seen in December.  I'll follow up on the forecast as we progress through the month of January.