We're at 16 straight months with an above-normal temp

Every single month of 2016 was warmer than average from the Twin Cities.

The National Weather Service said the metro area's average temperature for December was 20.9 degrees – that's 1.2 degrees above normal.

It's the 16th straight month of above-normal temps for the Twin Cities.

The St. Cloud area was also above average for the month, with an average temp of 17.5 degrees (15.9 degrees is normal), the service said.

High and low temps

We also saw temps swing more than 100 degrees throughout the year.

The highest the Twin Cities reached on the thermometer last year was 97 degrees (July 22). The lowest it got was 20 below (on Dec. 18).

For St. Cloud, the hottest temp was 93 degrees (also on July 22), while the coldest was negative 28 (again, Dec. 18).

The DNR says the mean temperature for the state from December through February ranges from 16-18 degrees in the southern edge of the state, to about 10-14 degrees through the middle third. The northland is anywhere from 10 degrees to just 2 degrees during that stretch.

It was also very wet – but not very snowy

And one more fun trend from the weather service.

We knew with days to go in 2016 that it would end up being the wettest on record in the Twin Cities. It finished with 40.32 inches of precipitation, which is 9.71 inches more than the average.

St. Cloud was at 33.85 inches, good for the 15th-wettest year on record.

But for snow, we were way, way below normal.

The Twin Cities had just 40.2 inches of snow last year, while a normal year is about 54.5 inches.

St. Cloud got 35.2 inches, while it normally sees about 45.7 inches.