SNOW TREES
If you haven't heard, this is the winter that won't end in the northern and eastern halves of the country. As we go into mid-April, much of the nation is still contending with record cold temperatures and snow. Even "The Onion" is thinking what we all are:



Here are a few maps that illustrate this. Over 1,100 daily record low temperatures have been broken this week alone -- over 1,800 in the last 30 days, along with over 1,100 snow records. The last week of records broken, tied, or approached is shown in this animation from CoolWx.com.

Specifically, there have been 1,291 record low temperature readings in the last week, along with 412 snow records, compared to only 110 record highs. In the last month, there have been 2,225 cold records set and 1,159 snow records set.

CHART
Snow fell Saturday in Crossville, Tennessee, with one report of "unknown precip," typically sleet, at Huntsville, Alabama. Temperatures Saturday morning plunged below zero in the Northern Plains (map). Sunday morning brought temperatures below zero in the Great Lakes, and frigid readings in the 30s to settle into every state in the continental U.S. except Florida, and there were sleet and snow reports in Georgia and North Carolina. I found six webcams in the NC mountains that showed snow.

As of last night, over 40% of the land in the U.S. was under 32 degrees, while nearly 50 percent of the population was below freezing!

CHART
Temperatures in the Northern Plains so far this month are literally off the charts below normal, close to 30 degrees in some places.

MAP US