The dreadful winter is almost done....it was an awful winter (Madison: condos, live)

[liveurdream]

Record breaking cold. Record snow in some places. Below average temps in March. April will be warmer. This winter flat out sucked.

[TrueTimbers]

It is possible it is the new normal.

I was reading that the semi permanent high pressure ridge over the Pacific ocean is responsible for causing the jet stream for going so far north before dipping back down over the central US, bringing all that cold Arctic air with it. (That same blocking high pressure ridge is responsible for the drought in California.)

Apparently, one model predicted this because of the loss of Arctic sea ice is making the stubborn high pressure ridge last into winter instead of just in summer. Reason the west coast has a dry Mediterranean climate in summer, but normally has winter rains. But supposedly the record breaking warm winter, is responsible for our record breaking cold winter and California's drought.

Last winter was not much better up North, 15 degrees on May 15th and ice off the lakes the 3rd week of May... Will be interesting to see if we still have ice on the lakes in June this year. Average temp. north of Rhinelander as been about 4 degrees for the last 3 months! Southern Wisconsin is a tropical oasis.. Snow is still nearly waist deep up here.

[jzeig104]

Yes it did suck. Reminded me of some winters when I was in my early 20's. Im in my sixties now.

[emilyjake]

Yeah this year it was really really bad

[Ragnar]

Agree. Not much to like about this past WI winter. The one positive thing is that at least we didn't also have 100+ inches of snow. The largest snowfall I remember dealing with in the Madison area this past winter was 5~6 inches. I guess that could still change. We're not out of March yet.

[MaseMan]

Definitely a brutally cold winter, even by Wisconsin standards. Not much more you can say about it than that.

[TRlaura]

I hate to spoil all the negativity, but for those of us that love winter sports, it was great.
It seemed like the extremely cold days always fell during the week, and the weekends warmed up and we had lots of sunshine. Perfect conditions for skiing, and in the case where I live, walks on Point Beach.

[sholomar]

The cold air that is usually confined to eastern South Dakota and Minnesota was further east into eastern WI I noticed.... so your winter was more typical of what I have to endure almost every year.. and here, it was modestly colder than normal but nothing record breaking. The locals here never stop complaining about the cold.. you'd think they'd be used to it by now.

[Drover]

Hell with that. Best winter ever. Ice Trials season lasted a full 3 months this year and probably could have lasted another couple weeks if organizers had known ahead of time that many lakes would still be frozen enough in mid-March to host events. Almost makes up for the lousy winter 2 years ago that was so mild the entire season got cancelled.

Definitely ready for a "real" spring though rather than this "highs in the mid-30s" crap.

[bad93ex]

This winter was enough to push my mother to start looking at condos in Florida for the winter. She was a die hard fan of Wisconsin and everything it brought along with it until this winter.