WiNK
Over the past week alone, the weather has been all over the place. From being in the high fifties last Wednesday, to being in the single digits on Tuesday, it's impossible to know what's coming next.
In Connecticut and New York we have a wide range of weather and temperatures throughout the year, some years having a range of over 100 degrees. The reason that the temperature fluctuates so much even within seasons is because of the different air masses or "fronts" that pass through. When the temperature is extremely cold, especially when it gets into the single digits, this is usually caused by something called the Polar Vortex. The Polar Vortex is a mass of very cold air that circles the Arctic. This becomes unstable when it gets pushed by a high pressure system, which is a large mass of air that doesn't have a lot of movement inside itself. As you can see in the picture, once the Polar Vortex gets pushed, the cold air has to go somewhere. New England is a pretty common place for this cold air to go since we don't have mountains like the Himalayas in Asia to push back on it. Usually the Polar Vortex only makes it to New Jersey before it goes back to normal, but in the past it has reached all the way to the Georgia, causing the temperatures there to dip all the way into the twenties.
On the other side of this, there has been some unexpected warm weather. Warmer temperatures come from the South, since there is more direct sunlight there and as a result, warmer air. Almost all the weather we get comes from the south or southwest direction. This is partly because of ocean currents like the Gulf Stream, and partly because storms only form when cold air meets warm air and that almost always happens farther south than where we live. This means that usually after any sort of weather, the temperature increases. For example, on Saturday night, it snowed. Saturday morning at 9:50 am, before the snowstorm, the temperature in Danbury was 19℉. Sunday morning at 9:50 am, after the snowstorm, the temperature was 40℉. Even though this was a very brief period of warmth, which I think we can all agree was too brief, this data shows the pattern of warm weather after a storm.
Weather is a very complex, unpredictable part of nature, but hopefully after reading this article you can understand a little bit better why it changes so much so fast.