That warm feeling you've had recently may not have had anything to do with holiday spirit. Mother Nature is doing her part, at least in much of the United States.
While cold air is currently locked in polar regions, lower latitudes are basking in spring-like temperatures, frustrating skiers and snowmobilers and leaving the rest of us wondering whether winter will ever get going.
Satellite images released recently by NASA show a dearth of snow in the northeastern United States early this year, compared with the same time last year. Reduced snowfalls have been the rule in much of the Northern Hemisphere for more than a decade. But the satellite images are difficult to decipher because the snow cover looks very much like clouds.
"There is less snow around the Northeast this year than there was last," said Rutgers professor David Robinson, an expert in the variability of snow cover. "There was more snow in early January last year, and then it really warmed up after that."
Robinson said the image from 1999 shows snow in parts of Connecticut, Pennsylvania and extreme northwest New Jersey. Maine, New Hampshire, and other inland, northern regions, including most of New York State, were covered with anywhere from 1 to 6 inches. Even Maryland had a trace in the higher elevations to the west.
The image from this year, however, shows traces of snow in Canada and possibly extreme northern Maine, but nearly all of the white areas in the rest of the United States are the result of cloud cover, Robinson said.
Part of a trend?
With the exceptions of two winters in the mid-1990s, snow has been a somewhat rare thing in much of the Northern Hemisphere for a number of years.
"From about 1987 to the present, snow cover has been less extensive than in the 70s and early 80s, especially in late winter, spring and early summer," Robinson said.
Robinson says it's difficult to draw any concrete long-term conclusions from what could be short-term variations. After all, the snowiest winter on record in New York City was in 1995-96, when 75.6 inches fell. A paltry 2.8 inches (the least on record) fell in 1972-73, which was otherwise at the heart of many years of heavy snowfall.
Robinson says we can catch up in a hurry: "We've still go a lot of winter to go."
Meanwhile, the lack of snow is grave for those who make their living from the whiteness, including ski resort owners and employees. Many ski resorts across the country have opened late or not at all this year. On many mountains, it hasn't even been cold enough to manufacture snow, a staple of the industry in recent years.
It'll have to get colder
Lately, the East Coast is unusually warm. The average daily temperature in Central Park for December was 40 degrees, which is 3.4 degrees above normal. Readings in the 50s, and even 60s, have popped up all over the Northeast in the past few days.
Robinson says there is no significant change expected in the next week or so. But there is a reservoir of incredibly frigid air lurking across Alaska, Canada and Siberia -- about "30-degrees-below-normal-cold-temperatures" cold.
"If it should happen to break loose and get down in the lower 48, we're going to have some wicked cold in (the) latter part of January," he said, adding that the resulting atmospheric turmoil would almost surely dump some snow somewhere.
This scenario, however, is no sure bet.
advertisement
