A typical December for HHS students includes constantly dealing with frosted windshields, taking freezing cold walks to the bus stop, hoping for snow days, and regretting leaving your coat in your lockers during fire drills. This month has not been a typical December.

With average temperatures in the fifties, heavy winter coats, hats, and gloves are nowhere in sight. According to AccuWeather, highs are expected to be in the sixties and seventies, which are 20 to 30 degrees above average.

These higher temperatures are not just occurring randomly. CNN reports that this “late-arriving winter” is a product of one of the warmest falls for the continental United Stated on record—September through November temperatures averaged 3.3 degrees above typical temperatures.

Although places across the nation are being affected by the higher than normal temperatures, this winter seems especially abnormal in the East Coast. Buffalo, New York, a city which would have typically received well over a foot of snow by now, still hasn’t experienced its first snowfall of this winter, CNN reports.

There has been plenty of speculation as to what is causing the increase in temperature this winter. Most people jump to blame global warming, the theory that the ozone layer is being depleted, which is causing the ice caps to melt and average temperatures to rise each year. However, CNN reports that it is “El Niño,” the warming ocean waters in the tropical Pacific which alter weather patterns and affect the weather over the United States, especially in the winter.

Others, such as Mike Halpert, deputy director of the Climate Prediction Center at the National Weather Service, argue that the real cause of the warm winter is the strengthened polar vortex which is affecting how far south cold air can travel from the Arctic. Overall, it seems that research on the cause is inconclusive thus far.

No matter what the cause, it is certainly nice to not have to deal with ice covered roads, or shoveling snow. Though, personally, I have mixed feelings about this warm weather. In some ways, I feel like I am missing out on the typical central Jersey winter experience—I would be living in California right now if I didn’t want to experience the change of the season. However, if this weather could be an indication that the Earth is becoming warmer and less inhabitable each year, then I am certainly concerned for the future of this planet.

Though the cause is unknown, hopefully, this springlike winter is just Mother Nature trying to switch things up for us.