Warm winter makes for strange sights

CHICAGO -- Ice-fishing tournaments in Minnesota are being canceled for lack of ice. Indiana landscaping crews are busy planting shrubs and trees. And golfers are hitting the links in Chicago in January.\nMuch of the Midwest and the East Coast are going through a remarkably warm winter, with temperatures running 10 and 20 degrees higher than normal in many places.\n"I'm not complaining. I can take this," said Rudolph Williams, a doorman in New York City who normally wears a hat this time of year but stood outside in 50-degree weather with his shaved head uncovered. "The Earth is recalibrating itself: Last year, we had a cold winter, and it's balancing itself out now. In January, it feels like the middle of April."\nIn Indiana, the lingering warmth has meant extra income for outdoor businesses, which in a normal winter all but shut down until just before the spring thaw.\nRick Haggard, the president of the Indiana Nursery and Landscape Association, said recent talk among landscapers has focused on the unusually mild weather.\n"For us it's unexpected money," he said. "It's been like October or November weather, rather than January days."\nNew York City saw a November and December without snow for the first time since 1877. And New Jersey had its warmest December since records started being kept 111 years ago.\nMaria Freitas said that not only are crocus bulbs blooming in her Rahway, N.J., backyard, but the asparagus is 3 inches high.\n"They think it's spring. They're so confused," she said.\nMeteorologists say the warm spell is due to a combination of factors: El Niño, a cyclical warming trend now under way in the Pacific Ocean, can lead to milder weather, particularly in the Northeast; and the jet stream, the high-altitude air current that works like a barricade to hold back warm Southern air, is running much farther north than usual over the East Coast.\nThe weather is prone to short-term fluctuations, and forecasters said the mild winter does not necessarily mean global warming is upon us. In fact, the Plains have been hit by back-to-back blizzards in the past two weeks.\n"No cause for alarm. Enjoy it while you have it," said Mike Halpert, head of forecast operations at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center.\nAt the Sydney R. Marovitz Golf Course in Chicago near Lake Michigan, 30 people teed off between 9 a.m. and noon, when there are usually no golfers at all this time of year.\nLeonard Berg, the course's superintendent for maintenance, gestured to the fairways with pride: "Normally this time of year there would be a brown singe to it. Look at that nice emerald green."\nBut the mild weather is also hurting some businesses and events.\nIn Minnesota, where a water skier in a wet suit was recently seen on the Mississippi River near St. Paul, ice-fishing tournaments have been canceled. The U.S. Pond Hockey Championships -- scheduled for Jan. 19-21 in Minneapolis -- have only a 50-50 chance of being held.\nAnd organizers of the St. Paul Winter Carnival, scheduled to begin late this month, said the ice is not thick enough to harvest into 1,400 blocks for the ice maze. They may have to switch to plastic blocks.\n"It would give the effect, but it's not exactly Minnesota winter," said Mary Huss, a spokeswoman for the event.\nKeith Baughman, a landscape architect with Lawn Pride in Indianapolis, said that since no significant snow has fallen in central Indiana so far this winter, his company has been short of trucks without the heavy blades for the landscape work his crews find before them.\n"We're geared up for snow removal to try to make money that way, but that's not happening," Baughman said. "Everything's converted over for snow, so that's kind of minimized our equipment. You kind of have to go back and forth from one day to the next as to what we're going to be able to do."\nIn Ohio, Dan Motz said sales for his firewood business in a Cincinnati suburb are down about 25 percent.\nIn New Jersey, the Mountain Creek ski resort in Vernon is struggling to open more trails. There haven't been many nights cold enough to make snow.\n"We're keeping our fingers crossed that the cold weather will get here soon," resort spokeswoman Shannon McSweeney said. "Either that, or sending trucks out to Colorado to steal some of their snow."\n--Associated Press writers Rick Callahan in Indianapolis, Archie Ingersoll in Minneapolis, Chris Williams in Minneapolis, Ben Greeve in Baltimore, Michael Felberbaum in Richmond, Va., Wayne Parry in Kenilworth, N.J., Terry Kinney in Cincinnati, Nahal Toosi in New York and Laurel Jorgensen in Chicago also contributed to this report.