Remember how cold the winter was? Meteorologists beg to differ.

The three-month meteorological winter period that just ended will be remembered for its wild extremes in temperature across the United States, including deadly, persistent polar blasts and winter storms in the East.

But for much of the nation west of the Mississippi River, it was either the warmest winter on record or one of the warmest. In the West, the temperatures were sometimes blazing hot.

The preliminary data available shows the three-month winter was warmest on record “by a ridiculous margin in many locations throughout the American west,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources and founder of WeatherWest.com.
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