Cold and Wet

Wednesday was a poster child for the winter of 2009-10 – cold and wet.

A chilly rain fell much of the day, adding to what will go into the books as the coldest and wettest winter in the Charlotte region in decades. Today’s high is forecast to be only 42 degrees – 16 below average.

“It gets dreary after a while,” Cotswold Elementary School Principal Denise Hearne said shortly before 3 p.m., about 20 minutes before staff members donned heavy coats to get students onto buses or into the car pickup line. “These wet, cold days affect everyone’s mood.”

Temperatures in Charlotte are the coldest in 33 years, and the precipitation total is the heaviest in more than 40 years, said John Tomko, a National Weather Service meteorologist who keeps statistics for the office in Greer, S.C.

“It’s been nasty,” Tomko said.

Looking for a scapegoat? Blame it on El Nino.

That weather phenomenon of above-normal sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean is delivering a steady stream of storm systems across California, the Southwest, Texas and the Southeast.

“It’s a typical El Nino winter – a very wet pattern for the Southeast,” Tomko said.

The Carolinas have been spared outbreaks of truly cold air. Instead, the trend has been a stream of days with temperatures 6, 7 or 8 degrees below average.

Strangely, it hasn’t been a particularly snowy winter for Charlotte, with 5.5 inches having fallen. But Asheville has recorded about 30 inches, for its snowiest winter in 38 years. And much of Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania are setting records for seasonal snow.

Charlotte has escaped heavy snow because temperatures were a degree or two above freezing during two major storms, on Dec. 18 and Feb. 5.

Of course, not everyone is upset with the winter of 2009-10.

“It’s been great for us – more than 100 inches of snow already,” said Kim Jochl, a spokeswoman for the Sugar Mountain Ski Resort in Avery County.