Although many residents of eastern North America may feel like they’ve just suffered through a winter of record cold, the fact is that the winter of 2013-2014 was only the 34th coldest in 119 years of record keeping in the U.S. As this map from the U.S. National Climatic Data Center shows, temperatures in the eastern and southern U.S. from Dec. 1, 2013, to Feb. 28th, 2014, were as much as 8 degrees C (14 F) colder than the 2000 to 2013 average for those months.
But the western U.S. and Alaska saw unusually warm weather, with California experiencing its hottest winter on record. Overall, temperatures this past winter in the U.S. were about 1 degree F above average. Meanwhile, temperatures in Russia, Asia, and much of Europe were well above average this past winter, and land temperatures globally for December, January, and February were the 10th warmest on record.
