It could be, Robinson said, that the changes in the Arctic are contributing to what appears to be a more flip-flopping weather pattern. The number of big-snowfall years seems to be about the same as ever, he said, but there are more years with little or no snowfall.
“Snow by its very nature, it’s boom or bust, particularly here in the middle latitudes,” Robinson said. “The climate system is exhibiting more extremes. We see this in annual rainfall. We see this in some annual snowfalls.”
There have been many mild winters before, noted Steve Zubrick, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. Zubrick has run the numbers on Washington winters going back to 1872. He looked at the first half of meteorological winter, from Dec. 1 to Jan. 15. This year’s average temperature, 43.5 degrees, was the seventh-mildest on record — warm, but not as warm as (starting with the warmest ever) 1889, 2006, 1931, 1949, 1982 or 1971.
As for the lack of snow, that’s not so strange, Zubrick said. There are 16 half-winters on record with no measurable snow in Washington.
There are tentative signs, Robinson said, that the North Atlantic Oscillation’s positive phase could be tipping back toward the negative, which means Greenland would go into jet-stream-
diverting mode again and the February weather in North America would be more traditionally wintry.
If there’s a blizzard yet to come this winter, the experts have a scale with which to assess the severity of it. It’s called the Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale. There are five categories: Extreme, Crippling, Major, Significant, and Notable.
So far this winter, Reagan National Airport has recorded 0.6 inches of snow.
There’s no word for that.
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