The weather outside wasn’t frightful for most this past December as far as extreme winter weather. There have been flooding rains in the Northeast, but those are more spring-type frightful weather events.

Irving Berlin never wrote songs about muddy Christmases and for a near-record number of Americans, snow on Christmas was indeed a dream. The culprit, naturally/unnaturally, is climate change, but that was not the only enemy of a white Christmas this year. A strong El Nino was part of it, as a mild December, especially for the central and eastern United States, is a characteristic of the weather effects of an El Nino.

However, climate change causes this normal El Nino December mildness to become something more. December will be a top-five warmest for many locations in the central and eastern United States, especially across more northern reporting stations. This is one extremely warm December, and that is not typical for an El Nino.

Nary a below-average chilly spot to be found in December in the United States, outside of a few spots. As for 2023, it will also be the warmest year for the globe overall by a significant amount, and in many locations across the United States, it will be the local warmest year. In my general region, State College, Pa., 2023 will be the warmest year on record.

There was a lot of worried discussion in the meteorology community last year about what this El Nino would be like, and it has lived up to the concerns. El Niño is a climate phenomenon characterized by the periodic warming of sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, leading to atmospheric and oceanic changes with widespread impacts on weather patterns globally. It pumps a lot of warmth into the atmosphere.

The concerns were we’d see some remarkable and kind of frightening weather this year with the El Nino forming and the extremely warm climate base state, and that’s what we saw. People on the East Coast writing off the apocolyptic fire season of 2020 in the Western U.S. as something they didn’t need to worry about inhaled their words along with a lot of smoke as a record warm summer in the Yukon and Arctic helped fuel Canada’s record wildfire season, draping much of the East Coast in choking smoke from time to time. Record warm water temperatures in the Caribbean raised multiple environmental worries. Europe saw its share of wildfires, and then of course there was the tragic wildfire that destroyed Lahania, Hawaii, and cost at least 100 people their lives. Phoenix had its hottest month on record as people were getting second-degree burns from falling and making contact with the sidewalk. New England and China saw serious floods.

That’s just a sampling of the extreme weather we saw in 2023. El Nino is expected to fade as we head into spring, and if it follows the usual El Nino script, there actually is a higher-than-normal shot at a big blockbuster East Coast snowstorm from the second half of January into February. While it may seem weird or strange to say, climate change makes these monster snowstorms that paralyze New York City happen more often.

Does it seem like it's easier to get a 20-30-inch snowstorm in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast than it used to be? That may be tied to climate change, in a counterintuitive trend… https://t.co/MMT8SNvl8n

— Andrew Freedman (@afreedma) February 5, 2021

We are certainly in a new normal that requires adjustments all around. There is a decent possibility that 2023 will not even be a top 10 warmest year in 30 years or so. 2023 was a warning shot across humanity’s bow.

Will we take it more seriously than we seem to be now? I hope doing more about climate change is a new year’s resolution for our world’s leaders. Not holding my breath.

The last word goes to REM.