This story has been updated.
Cities in Vermont, Maine, and New York all had their warmest winters on record this season, including Burlington, Caribou, Syracuse, and Albany.
That’s as February ended with kayakers paddling down the Winooski River past snowless banks, and temperatures in Vermont hit the 50s and 60s this week, breaking daily records.
Temperatures collected from the start of December through the end of February comprise what researchers consider “meteorological winter.”
“Even though the month is not over, it's near certainty [in Burlington],” said Rodney Chai, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Burlington, where weather records go back to the 1880s. “A hundred percent it's going to be the warmest winter.”
In December, temperatures across much of northern New England ranged from 6 to over 8 degrees above normal, according to the Northeast Regional Climate Center. In January, temperatures were broadly 4 to 6 degrees above normal.
More recently, temperatures have been close to 10 degrees above normal for the first half of February — exceeding 12 degrees in some places.
“You're just not just talking about one day, or one week, but you're talking about the whole month,” said Chai. “Here up in Burlington, Vermont, if we add 10 degrees to the climate normal, the climate actually might be closer to southern New England, and southern New England climate would be closer to mid-Atlantic climate.”
Snowfall has been inconsistent this year, varying widely by elevation. While the snow depth on top of Vermont’s highest peak, Mount Mansfield, has been close to normal, the valleys have often been bare.
“We couldn't even get an extended period of near-normal temperature for the snow to stick around,” Chai said. "It’s almost like, feast or famine. The mountains, the higher elevations, are doing quite well, but really, below 2,000 feet, it's been terrible if people love snow."
“It’s almost like, feast or famine. The mountains, the higher elevations, are doing quite well. But really, below 2,000 feet, it's been terrible if people love snow.”Rodney Chai, National Weather Service
This winters’ record warmth comes during an El Niño year, a climate pattern when above-normal ocean temperatures in the Pacific change jet stream patterns worldwide. During an El Niño winter, the polar jet stream typically stays farther north, resulting in warmer weather across the Northeast. This year’s El Niño’s influence was particularly strong, based on ocean temperatures.
“Would we have been warm without climate change? Absolutely,” said Jessica Spaccio, a climatologist at the Northeast Regional Climate Center. But she said climate change also played a major role.
“Would we have been record-breaking warm? Maybe not. That definitely made us warmer than we would have been, if we weren’t living in a warming world.”
Winter temperatures in particular are warming nearly twice as fast as summer temperatures in many northern states, according to the National Climate Assessment.
As we get further into mud season, the Northeast Regional Climate Center predicts above-normal temperatures will continue.
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