© APA lack of snow in Iowa has cities rejoicing, because they are saving big bucks when it comes to time, equipment and supplies like salt. But winter is not yet over.
It's not in your imagination. The unusually mild temperatures across several regions of the country in the past few months are disrupting the natural cycles that define the winter landscape.
What began as elevated temperatures at the start of fall in parts of the United States have become "dramatically" warmer around the Great Lakes and New England, according to Deke Arndt, chief of the Climate Monitoring Branch at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center. And in the Washington area, the region is on track for its fourth-warmest year on record, along with its seventh-warmest December.
That, in turn, has created conditions where plants are blooming earlier and some birds are lingering before moving south.
"It's a weird kind of fall blending right into spring," said Scott Aker, head of horticulture at National Arboretum.
The pattern is most pronounced in eastern Montana, northeastern Minnesota and parts of North Dakota, Arndt said, where December temperatures so far have averaged 10 degrees above normal. But the mild weather extends to other Great Lakes states along with New England and the mid-Atlantic, with temperatures this month averaging between six and eight degrees above normal.
Just 19.6 percent of the continental United States is now covered in snow, according to the latest snow analysis by NOAA, compared with 50.3 percent this time last year.
Both scientists and those who question dire global warming predictions emphasize that one warm season should not be interpreted as a broader sign of climate change.
"It's about long-term trends, and one year does not make a trend," said Doug Inkley, a senior scientist at the National Wildlife Federation.
Temperature anomalies happen for many reasons, and Arndt said some of the mild weather stems from a persistent ridge of high pressure that has settled over the eastern third of the country, pumping up south winds in many areas. But he added that the shifts in seasonality now on display are in line with the warming the United States has experienced in recent years.
"We've seen consistently in the last couple of decades more consistent warm episodes for the season than cold episodes," Arndt said, adding the "climate wrapper" that affects local weather is akin to the connection between parenting and how children behave. "There's always local factors to a kid's behavior. Maybe he was stressed out, or didn't get enough sleep, or was hanging out with other kids who don't behave. But when you see a pattern to that, you think, 'Maybe it is parenting.' "
The decreasing frequency of cold snaps should not lead anyone to conclude that there is dramatic warming across the globe, said Patrick J. Michaels, a senior fellow in environmental studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. Climate change is happening, he said, but not at the "magnitude" that some suggest.
I live in GreenBay Wisconsin and the weather has been really mild this winter. But are springs the last couple of years have been cold and wet. It's like there is no spring just winter and summer up here !