It been a rather unusual winter with above normal snowfall and below normal temperatures. This is not what was anticipated based on the fact that there was an on going EL Nino for much of winter. Abnormally warm waters in the Pacific typically leads to an active southern branch of the jet stream. This is exactly what unfolded but a persistant northwest flow in the northern branch of the jet stream across the eastern two thirds of the country brought in cold air from Canada. When these two jet streams merged they produced some prolific snow storms especially in the Mid-Atlantic states.
What's interesting is that while we saw temperatures average below normal we never saw any frigid weather. The lowest temperature all winter was only -1° back in early January.
Meteorological winter is considered December through February. Now that we are heading into meteorological spring we do see some significant pattern changes. A more west to east flow will lead to a nice warm up late in the week with highs getting well into the 40s as we get towards next weekend. We possible could make a run at 50° by Saturday or Sunday. The last time we made it to 50° was back on December 1st nearly 90 days ago.
Phil
