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[Marie McHarry <mmcharry AT gmail.com>]

On Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 12:10 PM,  <Clansgian AT wmconnect.com> wrote:
>
>
> And I checked.  It WAS the coldest in 60 years.

We had two or three periods of cold, but it only got below zero (F) a
couple of times even during the coldest periods. I listened to an On
Point radio program yesterday
(http://www.onpointradio.org/2010/02/weird-weather-and-climate-change
or http://tinyurl.com/yj5mjxj) yesterday and Heidi Cullen, a
climatologist was explaining that this year we'd had an arctic
oscillation. That's what the winter seemed like to me, in retrospect.
We had more cold than we've had in the last 10 years, but it was
interspersed with warmer periods. We also had very little wind except
for a day or so when new cold or warmth came in.

We had colder winters in the early 1980s, with weeks of zero or below
zero (F) temps. As late as 1988 we had a freak front come through in
late November and sort of flash freeze everything. Daily temps didn't
get above zero, and the wind blew hard the whole time. We had to keep
the fireplace insert going full tilt the whole time and the house
still kept losing heat. On Christmas Day, it suddenly warmed up into
the 30s, and we thought spring had arrived early.

Now Gloria can correct my weather impressions. If I'd been smart I'd
have checked NOAA to see if my memory is close to the mark.

Marie