It’s beginning to look a lot like…. Arbor Day?  Unseasonably mild temperatures are spreading over the eastern half of the country and about 75% of the U.S. population will see the temperature climb over 60°F by the end of the weekend.  Not exactly Christmas season.

This is true even in the winter-whipped city of Buffalo.  There, the first snow normally occurs by November 8 and well over a foot would have accumulated by now on average. Last year the city had received over 20 inches by December 10, and areas in southern Buffalo had already been buried under 80 inches of snow. But they have been snowless so far, and will be snowless for another week at least.

What’s going on?

El Niño.

El Niño is the primary driver for the warm temperatures this winter.  The warming ocean waters in the tropical Pacific alter weather patterns around the globe and directly affect the weather over the United States, especially during the winter.  Yesterday, NOAA announced that the ocean and atmospheric conditions in the Pacific indicate the current El Niño episode is a strong one that has matured and will likely be among the top three on record.

Is the heavy El Niño effect due to global warming?  Meteorologists are against making that leap.  El Niño is only in one part of the world (although it has wider ramifications).

In fact, remember the “polar vortex”?  Yeah, that’s still around.  In fact, it is a stronger than average polar vortex (which is actually a band of strong winds high in the atmosphere that normally circles the North Pole), and because it is stronger, the cold air gets bottled up in the polar region, allowing most of the United States and Canada to enjoy the unseasonably mild temperatures.

So we can’t blame this warm and delayed winter specifically on global climate change.

It is too early to tell if it will be a White Christmas, but the long term projection is a warm winter (having just come from the hottest autumn nationwide in recorded history).