Groundhog Eve: Winter a shadow of itself?

Phil might or might not see his shadow on Thursday (usually he does), but as of now the humans who do this for a living aren't impressed by what they're seeing the rest of the winter.

The caveat, of course, is that sometimes the humans and the computer models upon which they rely don't see so well beyond tomorrow.

But the current long-range forecasts should warm the hearts of the winter averse.

The updated monthly outlook from the Climate Prediction Center paints almost the entire country with the prospects of above-normal temperatures for February.

AccuWeather Inc.'s long-range outlook has only three days, after this weekend,  in which the temperature  fails to reach at least 40 and has a grand total of about 3 inches of snow for the next six weeks.

So far, snowfall has been capricious, and it's not easy to make sense of the pattern.

Philadelphia's official seasonal total, 6 inches even, is about 60 percent of normal for the date. Boston, at 14.8 inches, is just under two-thirds where it should be, and Washington, just under 2 inches, less than 25 percent of average.

Burlington, Vt., has measured 28.6 inches; the normal is 44.4. But areas to the south have fared better. Concord, N.H., has had near normal snowfall, and Mount Snow evidently is doing fine, based on that photo.

Atlantic City and New York are near averages, and Binghamton is having a monster snow year, with 70.4 inches, compared with the 46.5-inch normal total.

What has been consistent is the warmth. For all that snow, Binghamton finished January 5.5 degrees above normal for the month, similar to Philadelphia and New York.

Boston was better than 6 above for the month, and Burlington, Vt., had a December 2015 flashback month, finishing January 11.1 degrees above normal.

The period of record has any number of examples of late-winter rallies, but if one is coming, no one has informed the computer models.