Weather Features
Winter of 2009-2010 Could Be Worst in 25 Years
Posted 2010-01-04

By Jon Auciello
AccuWeather.comNearly the entire eastern half of the United States is enduring bitterly cold temperatures not experienced since 1985. Even Florida, which has been hovering around freezing levels overnight recently, is also feeling the almost-nationwide chill.

"It'll be like the great winters of the '60s and '70s," said AccuWeather.com Chief Meteorologist and Expert Long Range Forecaster Joe Bastardi.

The last time a large swath of severely low temperatures struck the nation was in January 1985. That historic arctic outbreak had below-zero temperatures Fahrenheit stretching from Chicago eastward to New York City, and all the way south to Macon, Ga.

While Bastardi says the upcoming days will bring cold not seen since 1985 or 1982, he believes this winter is shaping up much that of like 1977-78. That winter, nearly all of the United States east of the Rockies had a cold October followed by a warm November, with the cold returning in December.

What is most interesting in this case is what followed, where the months from January through March can all be classified as very cold, relative to normal.

"If it stays this cold for this long, will the groundhog even want to come out on Feb. 2?" wonders Senior Vice President and Chief Meteorologist Elliot Abrams.

This winter has already been rough for many areas of the country, with several blizzards dumping high accumulations of snow upon the Plains, mid-Atlantic and New England.

The cold air currently streaming across the Upper Midwest into the East and South will only compound the winter problems of the nation, especially since these depths have not been experienced across such a wide area simultaneously in decades.

Orr, Minn., had the coldest temperature in the United States on Monday, hitting 40 degrees below zero. Other places recorded new record low maximums, such as Bluefield, W.Va., where the temperature never exceeded 17 degrees.

Over the past 20-plus years, when below-normal cold periods have arrived in the winter they tend to have been limited to one region, according to Bastardi.

Temperatures have not been this low since the winter of 2002-03, which is known as the benchmark for frigid conditions in the last decade. However, that year the cold was not as widespread as what is happening now.

With the entire eastern half of the country in the throes of this arctic snap, this is shaping up to be the coldest winter in many people's memories.

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Yeah, no, this winter doesn't compare to previous winters in my lifetime. 26 years old. Near San Antonio, Texas.

I think they are all hyping it up to scare people. I like the newspaper article that say's Supanova that could destroy earth. And down the bottom of the article in writing it say's IN 10 MILLION YEARS.

We know something is happening, and something good. Don't buy this scaremongering bullshit.

I was going to post about this! I guess I don't need to someone else already did. It is very cold where I live and it isn't normally this cold! It has snowed about 5 times already, and where I live, we just don't get snow! So I really do believe it is the coldest winter in a long time.

lol i hear you , i was just saying in another thread how winters have stinked around here. We barely got any snow in the last few years and boom in 2 days it's been non-stop snowing got like 3-4 feet in the past 2-3 days it's unreal, i had hard time getting the screen door open lol

Oh yea, I can only imagine what it is like where you are. I have never experienced snow like that. I will say that this totally makes me skeptical about global warming. I was a skeptic even before this winter approached though.

Global warming referes to an annual mean temperature increase across the globe. It is common to experience anomolies worldwide that don't fit into 'warming'. We are still going to see strange weather anomolies like this in the future. In other words the line on the graph stating the world is warming up is the mean line. temperatures actually go below and above that line all the time, but when working out the mean, it shows on average an increase in temperature worldwide.

Also, the opposite effect might occur with global warming.A shift in the N.Atlantic Drift could send us into the next ice age!

Off course its the "Worst" winter ever!

When the peoples average attentionspan is maximum a week, it is not surprising!

Just wait until next winter and you will hear the exact same words, "this is the worst winter ever!"

so far its not worste winter i have seen but it is worste i've seen in many years. but it has only just begun so who's to say how bad it will get before winter ends

This is like the winters i remember as a kid, white christmases, snowmen, sledging and shit theats what winter should be, i'm fucking loving this snow For the past 10 years or so our winters have been nothing more than an extended autumn with a couple of days of snow in february. Surely if anything this winter proves that the planet is cooling now, unless someone has some hair brained explanation as to why its fucking freezing when the world is supposedly warming due to human produced CO2?



Horseshit , quit watching The Day After Tomorrow and understand CLIMATE CHANGE IS A NATURAL CYCLE AND HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HUMAN CO2 EMISSIONS.

Sorry for my tone there I get pretty wound up about this subject, but seriously if one more person tries to link this winter to global warming i will crack up i swear it