| well, that was timed well for Christmas. While Buffalo got hammered twice by snow so far, it almost totally missed Rochester and portions in central NY. Rochester still got a white Christmas which stuck around for a few days and definitely was a little prettier than the dreary snowless typical days in the region so far. The amount of shoveling required to date in Rochester: 0 hours. (Nothing accumulated above 2 inches.) Texas and FL did get affected to record setting weather from that arctic blast. Hopefully most of the citrus trees survived. Again, these short and extreme swings are often caused by a wavy jet stream that bring shifting North-South wind components to the weather while a the large scale vorticity passes by eastwards. Wavy jet stream in turn is caused by a dying slowing jet stream. And this is also connected to global warming dynamics. While they do bring brief periods of more extreme cold, they do not help the average temperature stay low over the winter. So look at the *averages*, not the brief extremes, and the pattern seems pretty clear. In summary: just one cold brief arctic blast so, but no exceptional temperatures for most areas (afaik) in the NE. As for Buffalo's luck, they may have be getting tons of Lake-effect snow from lake Erie. |