Where’s the snow? Texas town has more this winter than Chicago
By SETH BORENSTEIN February 6, 2012 6:54PM
A pedestrian walks past a bus shelter on N. Milwaukee Ave. at W. Armitage Ave. Monday, Feb. 6, 2012, in Chicago. | John J. Kim~Sun-Times
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Updated: March 8, 2012 8:07AM
Snow has been missing in action for much of the United States the past couple of months. But it’s not just snow. It’s prtactically the entire winter season that’s gone AWOL. “What winter?” asked Mike Halpert, deputy director of the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center. For the Lower 48, January was the third-least snowy on record, according to the Global Snow Lab at Rutgers University. Records for the amount of ground covered by snow go back to 1967. Last year, more than half the nation was covered in snow as a Groundhog Day blizzard barreled across Chicago and much of the country. This year, less than a fifth of the country outside of Alaska has snow on the ground. Chicago, which was buried under about two feet of snow a year ago, is having its warmest winter in 80 years. “Thank God,” says Megan Miller, an executive assistant who was stuck in her car for hours in last year’s big storm. “I seriously thought about moving away after last winter.” Chicago’s winter so far has mimicked a typical St. Louis winter, with an average temperature of about 33 degrees since Dec. 1, according to the National Weather Service. Chicago’s average temp at this time is usually 26.4 degrees. Chicago’s warmest winter was in 1877-78, with an average of 37.2 degrees. The warmer temps also mean fewer tire-wrecking potholes, which are caused by repeated freezing and thawing of water. In January of last year, there were 5,900 reports of potholes, said Pete Scales, a spokesman for the city’s Transportation Department. Last month, pothole reports tumbled to 3,400. Snow fall has been far below Chicago’s average (21.4 inches), with 13.9 inches so far, but nowhere near the record low: 5.7 inches, recorded in 1930-31. The streets have also been spared heavy dousing of salt. Through January, the city used only 76,000 tons of salt on city streets. Last year’s two-day blizzard ate up 86,000 tons in salt and 144,000 tons in December and January, Smith said. “It’s been a very warm winter, and it’s in stark contrast to the previous two winters,” he says. For the Northeast it’s one of the warmest and least-snowy winters on record. There is plenty of snow and dangerous cold — it’s just elsewhere in the world. Valdez, Alaska, has had 328 inches of snow this season — 10 feet above average — and the state is frigid. Nearly 80 people have died from a vicious cold snap in Europe, and much of Asia has been blanketed with snow. January has been the ninth-snowiest since 1966 for Europe and Asia, though for the entire northern hemisphere, it’s been about average for snow this season. The weather is so cold that some areas of the Black Sea have frozen near the Romanian coastline, and rare snowfalls have occurred on islands in the Adriatic Sea in Croatia. Ukraine alone has reported 43 fatalities, many of the victims homeless people found dead on streets. More than 720 other Ukrainians have been hospitalized with hypothermia and frostbite. The reason is changes in Arctic winds that are redirecting snow and cold. Instead of dipping down low, the jet stream winds that normally bring cold and snow south got trapped up north. It’s called the Arctic oscillation. Think of it as a cousin to the famous El Nino. When the Arctic oscillation is in a positive phase, the winds spin fast in the Arctic keeping the cold north. But in the past few days, the Arctic oscillation turned negative, though not in its normal way, Halpert said. The cold jet stream dipped in Europe and Asia, but is still bottled up over North America. That’s because another weather phenomenon — called the North Atlantic oscillation — is playing oddball by staying positive and keeping the cold away from the rest of North America. About 90 percent of the time, the North Atlantic and Arctic oscillations are in synch, Halpert said. But not this time. As a result, much of the United States is escaping the winter’s worst. But we haven’t escaped winter entirely. The forecast for the rest of this week in Chicago calls for temperatures remaining in the 30s before falling into the 20s. Wednesday and Thursday will also see highs in the mid to upper 30s, while the highs on Friday and Saturday will only reach the upper 20s.
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