Groundhog Day 2012: Is Winter Even Here Yet?

Minnesotans can be forgiven if they greet the prognostications of Punxsutawny Phil with skepticism this year.

Today, the world's most famous groundhog spotted his shadow, harbinging another six weeks of winter. Meanwhile, the Twin Cities seems to be stuck in a winter Twilight Zone, where each day offers the a dreary, misty weather we typically see in the third week of March. The past two months were the fourth-warmest December-January period in the Twin Cities since 1872. In January, typically the coldest month of the year, the average temperature was 23.3 degrees — almost 8 degrees higher than the norm — with just a few feeble blasts of snow.

So what exactly is going on? Why hasn't Old Man Winter truly arrived? Minnesota is stranded in the middle of two opposing jet streams, said Pete Boulay with the Minnesota State Climatology Office — a warmer stream coming up from Texas and the Gulf of Mexico and another sweeping down from Canada.

"Because of these two streams, all the (winter) storms have been steering around us. We're in this kind of no man's land of weather," Boulay said. "We've had some northwest winds, but they haven't brought much in the way of really cold air. That's all bottled up in Canada and Alaska, where they're having an unusually cold winter."

Unless the polar jet stream moves further south, the Twin Cities region is in for more of the same, Boulay said — mild, dry weather more akin to typical winter in Des Moines, Iowa than the North Star State. Boulay said that higher temperatures are expected to last until the middle of February, at the very least.

This early thaw is not without consequence. Though pleasant for some transplants like myself, the warm weather and scanty snow cover could make for an uncomfortably dry spring and summer. In fact, all of Minnesota is already experiencing varying degrees of drought, with abnormally dry conditions reported in Hennepin, a moderate drought in Dakota and a severe conditions in neighboring Scott County.

"That will probably continue unless something big happens — a big storm and that drops a lot of snow — but February is usually the driest month of the year so we don't expect much to change," Boulay said. "It really depends on what happens in March and April when warm moisture-laden systems return. We just have to wait and see what will happen."