The weather has been a bit weird across the United States this winter. As historic amounts of snow fell in the Carolinas and bitter cold gripped practically everywhere else east of the Rockies, some of the western states have basked in high temperatures more typical of late spring than the dead of winter.
Perhaps no other contrast tells this story better than the fact that, since the start of the year, Florida has recorded more snow than Salt Lake City.
The snowfall totals in Florida were meager — ranging from flurries in Tampa to a tenth of an inch in the Gulf Coast community of Miramar Beach to 1.3 inches in the small northern Panhandle town of Marianna. But they’re notable in a state where everyone from citrus farmers to sun-seeking tourists depends on mild winters.
Two thousand miles away in Utah, Salt Lake City also recorded a tenth of an inch of snow in January — a paltry amount there, compared with the nearly 13 inches the popular winter recreation destination records on average during the month.
“It’s embarrassing for a state that claims the world’s best snow,” said Jonathon Meyer, the assistant state climatologist at the Utah Climate Center.
“It was ice pellets that came down,” Mr. Meyer said. “You could make a claim that even though we did have measurable snow, residents of Salt Lake wouldn’t call it snow.”
These two extremes are the result of a weather pattern that settled into place around the middle of January and hasn’t budged for weeks. It’s kept the western United States unusually dry, depriving ski resorts and water reservoirs of their much-needed snowpacks. And it’s plunged the eastern two-thirds of the country into bitterly cold temperatures that have lingered for weeks.
This same pattern that brought 80-degree temperatures to Los Angeles this week sent ice, freezing temperatures and power outages to Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana late last month. It has given Phoenix its warmest winter ever in records going back to 1885 and delivered a rare snowfall to Wilmington, N.C., last weekend.
And it has, once again, put tens of millions of people in the Northeast under extreme cold warnings this weekend, with wind chills in New York City potentially reaching 20 below zero.
The processes in the atmosphere driving this pattern are complex and trace all the way to the North Pole, as a strong area of high pressure has been fixed over the North Atlantic Ocean and Greenland for about three weeks. This high pressure has created what forecasters often call a “blocking pattern,” and it has caused a bottleneck in weather around the globe.
Jon Gottschalk, of the Climate Prediction Center, called the setup the most “extraordinary factor” contributing to the recent weather extremes across the United States.
Because of it, frigid arctic air has continuously funneled through Canada and into the eastern two-thirds of the United States, all the way to the Gulf Coast.
The results have been bone-chilling. Winds chills in North Dakota have reached minus 60 degrees. Cities in the Northeast have gotten more snow than they have in years. A gauge in Central Park in New York City recorded just shy of 14 inches of snow in January, when 8.8 is more normal for the month.
In Florida, the cold has shocked the local iguana population.
In below-freezing weather, these nonnative lizards lose muscle control, appear frozen and can even fall out of trees. With the help of residents, Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission reported that it had scooped up more than 5,000 iguanas across the southern part of the state.
Across the West, though, a second area of high pressure has sat stagnant, acting like a mountain preventing storms from reaching Western states such as California, Utah and Colorado.
With fewer storms across the West, the region’s mountains have recorded unusually low amounts of snow, from the Cascades to the Sierra Nevada to the Rockies. The snowpacks that typically build up in the mountains over the winter are crucial in spring and summer, when they melt and replenish rivers and reservoirs.
The situation is particularly dire in Oregon, Colorado and Utah, where, as of Feb. 1, the snow levels are at their lowest in records that date to the early 1980s, when automated measuring equipment was installed.
Mr. Meyer said that about 80 percent of Utah’s water goes to agriculture and that farmers there are “very concerned.”
There is good news: Winter is not over, and there’s still time for more storms to bring snow to the West.
Mr. Gottschalk said an end to this locked-in pattern was expected next week as the high pressure over Greenland is expected to finally break down. That would allow storms to finally reach the West and temperatures in the East to rise.
By next Tuesday, things might feel more “normal,” he said, with a high of 75 degrees expected in Tampa and snow in the forecast for the mountains around Salt Lake City.
“I think folks in Salt Lake City will be very happy about the pattern shift, because it has been very dry,” said Joe Worster, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service. “We definitely need some snow.”
Amy Graff is a Times reporter covering weather, wildfires and earthquakes.
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