Oh Look It's Spring Now

Tomorrow may look something like this, an eerie sight in February.

The nation's premier Weather Hogs conferred on Saturday and agreed that winter would run short this year, spring descending in a mere six weeks. Not to pile on or anything but the groundhogs were obviously, predictably wrong: Spring isn't en route, it's already here.

Have you been outside? Have you experienced the still and balmy air that feels warmer than it actually is, bringing high-40-degree temps into the low 50s? For much of the week, we will live inside the exact opposite of the weather world we have lately inhabited. Whereas the Arctic Blast engineered a wind chill that made temperatures in the low teens and single digits feel like roughly 13 below, this sun patch in which New York City luxuriates makes things feel springier than they actually are or have any right to be. It's fucking February.

Today, for example, the current 46 degrees feels like 52, and when we reach the day's projected high—54 degrees—it will feel like 60 degrees. Lows will reach a mere 39 degrees tonight, which is child's play, before returning to unseasonable warmth tomorrow: High of 58 (practically speaking, 62) and a low of 41, with some morning fog and partial cloud cover. Wednesday could cool into the high 30s, mid-40s, while Thursday and Friday may bring rain. Even so, they likely won't bring cold, with the current forecast for Thursday hovering in the low 40s to low 50s, and Friday's forecast topping out at 57 degrees.

It seems overly ambitious to attempt an accurate forecast this far out from the weekend, but AccuWeather expects we will be launched back into more familiar climes: Highs in the 30s, lows in the 40s, and really that feels right to me. My body has failed to fully recover from life in the Blast Zone, and walking outside into relative warmth these past few days has been truly and deeply jarring. Nice, I suppose, but also eerie, because however horrifying I found it to exist inside a meat locker, February should feel closer to living in the eye of a polar vortex than it should to April.

I want to say something along the lines of (*cues up old-timey voice*), "It hasn't been this warm on February 5th in 60 years," but unfortunately, that's not true. In NYC in 1991, February 5th reportedly climbed all the way to 70, while just last year, February 21st reached 76.

I do not want to leave you with the impression that anything about this tropical hiccup is normal, though. In fact, what we have here is a lot of warm Pacific air rushing in to fill the void where the Arctic Blast—itself a direct result of atmospheric warming over Arctic Circle, i.e., climate change—used to be. Nothing is fine and everything is broken, but enjoy this intemperate stretch while it lasts, friends. You can still go ice skating...