Experts: Mild winter can't predict future

It was almost a season for the record books.

But experts warn there's no guarantee it's the start of a long-term pattern of mild, nearly snowless winters.

"It's certainly not a trend, at least in the annual arena," Tim Morrin, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Upton, said Monday as a winter that seemed more like an early spring on Long Island drew to a close. Spring officially begins Tuesday.

This winter -- which the weather service officially defines as December through February -- was the third warmest since records have been kept for Islip dating to 1981. The average temperature was 38.3 degrees, a good five degrees above the normal average of 33 degrees.

The warmest winter on record was the 2001-02 season, when the average was 38.7 degrees.

As if to underscore the mildness of the past season, the high temperature at Islip Monday soared to 68 degrees, one degree short of Long Island's record of 69 set in 2010, the weather service said.

Morrin said the winter was not only strikingly warm, but also remarkably dry. Snow and rain were a rarity.

On Long Island, there was no snowfall in December, compared with a normal average of 4.9 inches. January had 3.8 inches (7.9 is the norm), and February just 0.6 inches (6.7 is the norm), bringing the season's total to only 4.4 inches.

Compare that to last winter's snowfall of 55.3 inches. Or even the normal average of 19.2 inches.

Morrin attributed the warm, dry winter to a jet stream that stayed north for an unusually long time -- and might still bring us unusually warm weather at least right into July, the outer edge of forecasters' ability to predict right now.

But he said all that could easily change quickly, bringing a cool, rainy summer or a brutal winter.

Still, Artie and Geraldine McKenna of Malverne took a stroll Monday through Eisenhower Park in East Meadow, sans topcoats, and marveled at how the trees were already budding -- an event normally reserved for April. The McKennas said they recently visited Florida for three weeks to escape the New York winter, only to realize later that the trip hadn't been necessary.

"We want our money back from Florida now," said Artie McKenna, 71.