it's WEATHER, okie. WEATHER, NOT CLIMATE. While you're bitching about the cold in the lower 48, Alaskans are bitching that it's too warm. Yes. They are.
http://www.city-data.com/forum/alaska/1171224-ugh-why-so-dang-warm-barrow.html
Someone on that board is actually knowledgeable about what's going on, and tells the rest of them. You might read it and learn something. It's the same thing that happened last winter, when you were bitching about the cold then and Juneau was having a brown Christmas, not a white one.
The jet stream circles the Arctic. It's high altitude winds moving from west to east. Normally they describe a relatively smooth circle around the Arctic Circle, which basically keeps colder arctic winds away from us. Every few years, the jet stream develops kinks, some parts moving farther north, some parts farther sout. In the former areas, they get warmer weather than normal. In the latter, coldeer weather. Last winter and apparently this, the jet stream has been kinky. If you look at the graphic in the article in your cite, you will notice the cold bulge over the continental US. Look at the left, and you'll see Alaska (and apparently Siberia, from what the Alaskans say) in a warm bulge northward.
You've heard the phrase "cold winter"? That's why we have them. It's why we also have a "warm winter" (like the one three or four years ago, when trees were blooming in January in New York and Boston). It's WEATHER, not CLIMATE. Which is why we don't cite warm Alaska as an example of global warming. Which we prbably should, since you're making another faux issue of the cold.
