December Warmth Is Getting Insane

Flowers manage to bloom --Outdoors! -- in South Burlington,
Vermont on December 15, 2015. I've never seen anything
like this in northwestern Vermont. 

For the fourth morning in a week at my perch in northwestern Vermont, I awoke this morning to temperatures of near 50 degrees, instead of the teens I would expect this time of year.

Early morning weather is more like Memorial Day weekend and not the Christmas season.

Incredible warmth has bathed the eastern half of the nation for the better part of a week (or more) now, and there's no sign it's going to end soon.  

The temperatures were amazing in some areas Monday Want to enjoy a Buffalo lake effect blizzard? Not now. It was a record 71 degrees in Buffalo, New York Monday, the second highest reading seen in December in more than 120 years of data there.

Hot in Cleveland? You bet!  It was 70 degrees there on Saturday. Cleveland "cooled" down to a record high of 65 on Monday. Like many cities in the eastern half of the nation, Cleveland is so far running 10 degrees or so above normal for December.

The record warmth has hit various areas of the United States and Canada all month. It was in the 50s in Manitoba early in December which is pretty incredible for them.

Incredibly a few plants remain green and relatively
lush in my perennial flower garden in far northwestern Vermont.
This is December!! 

The warmth even created a new Internet sensation, when a TV reporter interviewed a hunky shirtless jogger in 60-degree December Chicago. The hunky jogger is now something of the symbol of this weird, warm December.

Here in Vermont, not a flake of snow has yet fallen in December, something I've never seen before. We've also haven't had one day yet this fall and winter when a high temperature failed to rise above freezing. That's also something I've never seen before.

Daily record highs and lows are always being broken, of course. But it's truly lopsided this month in favor of the warm side.

As of Tuesday morning, NOAA says 1,143 United States reporting stations have clocked record highs in the past seven days while only two reported record lows.

Love it or hate it, this state of affairs will continue for awhile. Yeah, the West will continue to cool off,  but medium and long range forecasts are really insisting the eastern half of the nation will stay warm for the next couple of weeks.

Lots of record highs will probably fall on and around Christmas from much of eastern Canada and the eastern half of the United States.

Places that usually get a white Christmas probably won't this year, but think about how much you're saving on your heating bill.  

The eight to fourteen day forecast through December 28
strongly suggest continued warm in the East. 

Why is this warmth happening?

I hate to use this word, since it's overused so much, but part of the blame or credit goes to the Polar Vortex.

To review, social media hysteria notwithstanding, the Polar Vortex is a totally normal pool of very cold air that usually hangs around somewhere near the North Pole, but can sneak further south and give mid latitudes one of those nasty winter cold waves.

Those sneaks to the south happen when the jet stream weakens and allows the Polar Vortex to slip south.

That's what happened on numerous occasions in the eastern United States in the winters of 2014 and 2015.

This December, a strong west to east jet stream is keeping the Polar Vortex bottled up way up by the North Pole, so it's hard for the cold air up there to head south toward us.

The current record strong El Nino is probably playing a role, too. The unusually warm patch of water in the eastern Pacific Ocean messes with weather patterns worldwide when it hits. Not always, but very often, strong El Ninos bring very warm early winters to eastern North America.

Global warming is NOT the main influence in this ridiculously hot December, but it probably plays a minor supporting role. It's probably bumping up temperatures a couple degrees more than they otherwise would be, enough maybe to break a few additional record highs.

Plus, there's some research to suggest that global warming might cause more frequent strong El Ninos, like the one we're having now.

For those of you who like winter, all is not lost yet. There's no reason to think the weather pattern can't change later in the winter. If it does January and February might just bring us the traditional cold and snow.