I won't argue with anybody who says last month was cold. Overall, December of 2000 ended up about 4.5^oF below average. That might not sound like a lot, but considering it's averaged over an entire month, that's really a pretty significant anomaly.

And I think the chill may have felt even colder than it was, simply because of the recent past that we have to compare it to. Believe it or not, this past December was our coldest month since January 1996. And if you consider winter as December, January, and February, it was also our first winter month of colder-than-average temperatures in almost five years. That's right, we had gone more than four winters in which every month was warmer-than-average, truly a remarkable streak. And some of those months were really mild - January 1998, for example, averaged 10^oF on the warm side.

So yes, last month was cold. But maybe, just maybe, we had forgotten a little about what cold around here can be like.