Where has the cold air gone?

You may have noticed that something is missing. It's not obvious at first. It even took me until yesterday to figure it out. It was just after 8:30am and I was outside, with no coat on and felt very comfortable. 8:30 in the morning on November 13th should not be short sleeve weather.

Take a look around and you will see the wardrobe malfunctions too. They are very typical of seasonal transition times. The jerk who wears shorts on the first 70 degree day in April only to be freezing once the sun goes down and the temperature drops back into the 30's. Or what about those borderline warm days near the end of a (typical) fall? I see a lot of people, mainly bro's, who head out in jeans, short sleeves and no coat, only to find out that even though the temperature says 58, the strong winds actually make it feel like it is in the 40's.

But these days, its just the opposite. Yesterday morning, I saw many people wearing heavy coats and even gloves! Its like we are all kids in a classroom hoping the teacher forgets to assign homework. We know it should be cold. We expect it to be cold. But everyone is hoping that perhaps old man winter forgot to put New England on his to do list this year.

As I write this, Boston's temperature is 56 degrees at 9:00 pm on November 14th. Our normal HIGH temperature for this date is 45. And it has been this way for pretty much all of Autumn. Average temperatures have been running a good 4-6 degrees above average up and down the East Coast for weeks. This was the 8th warmest October on record! And not only that, we have been relatively dry and storm free. Outside of our Halloween snowstorm, our area has had several long stretches of dry weather, including a 10 day stretch that ended last Thursday. Dry and Warm? In a New England fall? You might get one or the other but both together for this long of a period is unusual.

So, just where is all of our typical Fall temperatures? MIA. Well, really they are just stuck in the Arctic. There is plenty of it up there, believe me. It just so happens that the forces at be are currently keeping the cold air stuck in the Arctic and more importantly, stuck high in the atmosphere.

Nothing is going to change through Thanksgiving. We have hit 60 degrees 8 times already in November and at least 2 more are in store in the next 7 days.

But we all know. The other shoe will drop eventually. Pattern changes appear to be coming by the end of the month and once the door is open for that cold air, it won't fully close until April.