In a post yesterday we noted that the meteorological winter of 2011-12 -- that's the December through February period -- could crack into the top 3 for warmth in Philadelphia.
And it appears that if February goes out like a lamb, nature won't have to change into a new costume in March.
It will be moderately chilly during the weekend with March-like winds due Friday, but this is about to become the 12th winter in the period of record that a winter passed without a single three-day stretch of temperatures below 35 in Philadelphia.
The Washington-based Commodities Weather Group observed this morning that the 11-to 15-day outlook is generally warm for the East.
CWG also said it was turning up the burners in its forecast for all of March, based on persistence and the continuing cooler-than-normal waters in the tropical Pacific.
As for storm threats, we noticed that on the American Weather Forums chat board someone had started a thread about something brewing at the end of the month, but the credentialed weathermen are writing off that prospect as hallucinatory.
Should the March outlook work out, CWG is saying that for parts of the nation, this could become the warmest November to March period ever.
A hardware store owner complained that he sold more mulch than rock salt in January, and now it may be time to put all those rocks in storage.