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Confirmation of Snowless, Warm U.S., Cold Europe

Feb 15, 2012; 2:06 PM ET

This far through the winter, it's pretty obvious that much of the United States (certainly the East) has had a lack of snow, while Europe has suffered a harsh cold wave. But in meteorology, it's always important to quantify these things and compare them to history, because people's memories are short and localized. These recent maps and graphs show that these events are, in fact, extreme.

The image above shows the extreme cold in Europe between Jan. 25 and Feb. 1, via a NASA article about the Europe cold wave. Some of these areas are nearly off the chart, with the coldest areas centered around the Black Sea.

News Story | Big Map (F) | Big Map (C)

It's worth noting that the cold continued for another week after that map, so we took it one step further to show the departures between Jan. 25 and Feb. 14. Our news story says: "The average reading of 0.7 degrees below zero F took Rivne to 20 degrees below normal... The three weeks in Russia averaged almost 25 degrees below normal in Yashkul, near the Caspian Sea. At least one all-time record low temperature may have been set when Astrakhan, Russia, hit 29 degrees below zero F early in February." That large of an area of temperatures below 10 to 20 degrees is rarely seen worldwide.

Flipping the globe, we take look at the U.S. -- extremely warm during the Jan. 25 - Feb. 1 period, except Alaska, which was even colder compared to normal than Europe! This came on the heels of an already warm and snowless winter, which the map below confirms was a nationwide problem - not just limited to the Northeastern states. I don't know which image is more pitiful -- the one in December where almost no one was getting above-normal snowfall, or the February map where a larger portion of the nation was in a snow drought.

The warmth in the U.S. and Canada has led to extremely low ice levels -- the second least amount of ice cover since 1981. This will lead to unusually late lake-effect snow, something New York state schools should have considered before "giving back" snow days.

The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of AccuWeather, Inc. or AccuWeather.com

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