There was a piece today in the New York Times entitled twilight of an ice age. Early versions mentioned that records were being set. I have been monitoring the ice on the Connecticut River and noted more icing. I then looked at the average daily temperature for the entire month of February since 1943 for Northampton, MA on the weather underground.. This is what I found:
The average temperature for February is 27, with a standard deviation of 4.9. The temperature of 13 is 2.9 times the standard deviation of the mean. Three standard deviations of the norm account for 99.7 % of the variability.
Meanwhile, USA today reported that this December and January are the sixth warmest winters on record for the USA.
Next February will be most interesting. The theory of stasis suggests that next year there will be a regression to the norm, and next Feb will be warmer. The theory of chaos suggest that sometimes little things abruptly cause big changes. The current model of climate change suggests that some places would get colder.
Vernon Radiation Safety 