There’s a new normal in the Northeastern states for winter weather, and it’s not good, frankly. The new pattern seems to be this: we get a nice and warm December, which brings us a Christmas without snow and much warmer ocean water than usual. Then, at some point, the polar vortex up in Canada breaks through into the United States, and it gets as cold as fuck down here.
That’s when we get these massive storms over New England and other states in the Northeast that we’ve never really gotten before.
Last winter, Boston set records for snow fall in one short six week period, a period that didn’t even begin until the end of January, and still broke records by dumping 110 inches (280 centimeters), or more than 9 feet of snow into this shortened winter season.
It almost broke our backs and our spirits.
And this year, we have the same thing looming again. Now a snowstorm named Jonas – and normally name hurricanes, not snow storms – is dumping a record 2 feet of snow over Washington D.C. and Philadelphia. It looks like – miracle of miracles – it’s mostly going to spare Boston by heading out to sea. But we still have a little over two months of “official” winter, and that will be plenty of time to have another snow Armageddon around here.
If we don’t, it will mostly be because there is an El Niño in the Pacific, bringing us an unusually mild winter. (Last year the west coast had an unusually mild winter.)
In any case, for you climate change deniers, have fun shoveling out your driveway year after year!