LANSING — Lansing closed the books on 2023 with its second-warmest December on record.

The average temperature of 38.8 degrees was just shy of the record 39 degrees in 2015, said Mark Sekelsky, a forecaster for the National Weather Service in Grand Rapids.

The area also saw very little snow in December, with Lansing’s 2.5 inches ranking 12th-lowest since record-keeping began in the 1860s, he said: That’s 8.8 inches below normal. As of Monday, the region had received only 4.8 inches of snow this season, good enough for seventh-lowest on record.

Grand Rapids is off to its least snowy start on record, he said, and its December total of 1.3 inches was more than 19 inches below normal, good for the second-lowest on record.

The unusually warm December capped off a highly variable weather year, Sekelsky noted.

“We’ll run a summary after the first of the year, but it does seem to me that it was extreme, ” he said. “It was anything but normal. It was either very dry or very wet. The values were highly variable.”

The warmest December on record across west and south-central Michigan was 2015, although December 2023 came close. Both Muskegon and Kalamazoo averaged more than nine degrees above normal last month.

Lansing’s relatively mild winter pattern is unlikely to change soon, and no significant snowfall is expected this week, the weather service said. High temperatures should be in the mid- to high 30s on Tuesday and Wednesday before dipping to around 29 degrees on Thursday.

Temperatures should climb back into the mid-30s by next weekend, forecasters said.

Contact Ken Palmer at kpalmer@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @KBPalm_lsj.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Unusually warm December caps off year of weather extremes in Lansing