Unseasonably warm weather will continue
NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center just confirmed that the past winter was the fourth warmest on record in the mainland United States; it certainly felt like it in Cambridge! A variety of factors combined to set the stage for this warmth, including La Niña conditions in the Pacific, positive phases in the North Atlantic Oscillation, and potentially Earth’s upward trend in global average temperatures (although one must be careful not to confuse climate — which is defined as the long-run average of weather — with weather, which consists of short-scale variations).
Unseasonably warm weather will continue this week, with high temperatures reaching over 20 degrees above their 110-year average to feel more typical of late May than mid-March.