A friend sends me a picture from his backyard in Jacksonville Florida.
Obviously, not what is generally expected this time of year.
In response, I have to go to a page of the Earth System Research Laboratory of NOAA, which generates graphic plots of the latest averaged temperature anomaly data for the Northern Hemisphere – in other words, a picture of what parts of the northern hem are warmer than usual, and what parts are colder than usual. (see the color scale)
I’ll have to wait a bit for more in the way of explanation of just what is happening here, but as you can see, the most anomalously warm parts of the map are in the polar reaches, with Greenland and Northeastern Canada unusually warm, and it would appear there’s a lot of polar air that’s floating around the eastern US.
Not sure yet if it’s like what happened last year. 2009 turned out to be the second warmest year in the NASA record, and 2010 could well be the warmest.
Arctic Oscillation experts, weigh in.
Did you catch the wunderground post on this?
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1710
Day-um. That didn’t take long.