The Winter That Wasn't
Strange and unseasonal weather is giving the East Coast warm days and bringing tornadoes to several interior states.
CBS News Correspondent Jim Axelrod reports on whether this is just a mild winter or a sign of global warming.
In Philadelphia subfreezing midwinter temperatures are so "last century," that summer-weight skating outfits are all the rage now.
Philadelphians aren't alone. New Yorkers have parked their parkas as well for the time being. Monday was a record 63 degrees - 24 degrees warmer than the average high for Jan. 3.
Up and down the East Coast it's been top-down, jackets-off weather. There have been record highs from Portland, Maine's 59 degrees to Philadelphia's 63 degrees.
In Boston temperatures hit 64 and broke a record set 87 years ago. The last time Boston had any measurable snow was in March, resulting in the city's longest snowless stretch on record.
Climatologist Ants Leetmaa says his wife keeps asking, "Where has winter gone?"
But he has more than his wife's questions to worry about. This "winter-that-wasn't" has a lot of people asking: Is it just a mild winter or part of an alarming trend?
If there's another winter without cold this year, it's perhaps another piece of the puzzle of saying..."Yeah..., we're beginning to see the impact of global warming," he says.
Forecasters say this particular spell will soon be gone, and skiers in the Northeast will once again smile.
As for the golfers, they'll always have warm memories of the first few days of Y2K when the computers worked fine but the thermometers seemed completely out of whack.