The winter of 2022-23 was among the 5 warmest in Philly, snow kidding

The meteorological winter ended officially on Tuesday, and if you have the feeling you missed something, that’s perfectly understandable.

With a remarkable run of 35 consecutive days of above-normal temperatures that began on Dec. 28, the December-through-February period, which constitutes winter in the world weather community’s bookkeeping system, was the fifth warmest in Philly’s 150 years of scorekeeping.

“It’s been quite a unique one,” said Matthew Brudy, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service Office in Mount Holly.

This has been the winter for bare ground in Philly and much of the East, with budding trees and the likes of crocuses and forsythia blooms mocking the calendar. It has been the season for snow-starved slopes, a sabbatical for the plows and snowblowers and a generally terrible time to be selling them.

» READ MORE: Forecaster said it was going to be a mild winter. Looks like they got one right.

It has been a season without a single winter-storm warning for Philly, not even a “watch,” not even an “advisory,” and just 0.3 inches of snow, total. Computer models kept seeing snow eight and 10 days out, but such long-range forecasts are in a league with predicting the 2027 World Series winner.

Strangely, Philadelphia set only one temperature record, and that was a cold one: On Christmas Day, the high was 18 degrees, the lowest maximum temperature for a Dec. 25.

Otherwise, we missed winter by about 1,500 miles.

It is not unusual at any given time for the weather in the Eastern United States to be a mirror opposite of the West’s — but this winter has been exceptional for the persistence of the contrasts.

Every New England state had its warmest January in 129 years of records, the Northeast Regional Climate Center reported. In February, in addition to Philly, temperatures averaged several degrees above normal in New York and Boston.

» READ MORE: Winters generally have been getting warmer since 1970

In the 30-day period that ended Monday, almost the entire West experienced below-normal temperatures, according to the Western Regional Climate Center, in Reno, Nev., which has been closed since Friday because of blizzard conditions, reports research assistant Nick Kimutis.

Hundreds of inches of snow have fallen in the mountains out that way, and extreme precipitation events have knocked the hay out of the California drought. Three months ago, 41% of California was in a state of “severe drought,” according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Last week that number was down to 0.

But it’s been so warm in the East that this is likely to be the fifth-warmest meteorological winter nationwide, said Matt Rogers, forecaster with the Commodities Weather Group, which serves energy and agricultural clients.

It’s never one thing with the atmosphere, and meteorologists cite a number of factors that have conspired to divide the nation, including an overall upper-air pressure pattern that has shunted cold air to the north of the Eastern United States and made the East Coast almost storm-proof for much of the winter.

The polar vortex, an area of low pressure that swirls around the Arctic, has been quite strong for much of the winter, damming cold air up that way. The Arctic has experienced near-record cold temperatures.

Jon Gottschalck, chief of the Climate Predicition Center’s Operational Prediction Branch, says the major driver of the winter of 2022-23 has been the La Niña cooling of waters over a vast expanse of the equatorial Pacific. Interacting with the overlying air, La Niña has had profound and persistent effects on the west-to-east winds that deliver weather to North America.

The winter of 1931-32 retains its crown as the warmest on record in Philly, followed by 1889-90. Notable, however is the fact that five of the top 10 warmest have occurred in the 21st century.

While the planet’s temperature continues to rise in the era of climate change, winter warming hasn’t been uniform across the country, said Scott Handel, lead meteorologist at the climate center. It has been more vigorous in some parts of the nation, he said, while other areas, including the Pacific Northwest, have cooled a bit. He cautioned against drawing conclusions from one season.

“Wintertime temperature variability is very large and can, at times, overwhelm longer-term warming or cooling signals,” he said.

March is about to come in looking like January and February, with temperatures heading into the 50s Wednesday. They are due to make a run at 60 Thursday before another round of chilly rain, possibly mixed with some wet snow, closes out the week.

But the government’s Climate Prediction Center has the odds favoring below-normal temperatures from March 5 until the end of the month.

» READ MORE: As the world warms, winters appear to be getting stranger

A major upper-air disturbance that the climate center says got underway in mid-February — a “sudden stratospheric warming” event — is forecast to disrupt the polar vortex and allow Arctic air to spill southward toward the midlatitudes. However, it is not all clear whether the Northeast, or Philadelphia in particular, will wind up in the ice box.

“As far as the real cold it’s not coming anytime soon,” said Tom Kines, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather Inc. As for snow, he said, it’s getting mighty late.