Weather Storm Grayson, also known as the “Bomb Cyclone,” ravaged the eastern part of the country over the first week of 2018 with extremely cold weather.
Now that the storm has passed, weather experts are expecting parts of the country to return to normal winter weather, while many northeast cities like New York City and Baltimore will see temperatures climb into the 60s.
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“It’s a big change,” Paul Walker, a senior meteorologist for AccuWeather, told TIME on Wednesday. “We’ve had some wild swings with these temperatures.”
Walker said this quick weather turnaround isn’t cause for concern.
“There’s often a point during the winter where the cold relaxes, and that’s what often people think of as the January thaw,” Walker says. “It doesn’t seem like it’s possible most of the time for cold air to persist in one place for a long period of time.”
Walker told TIME the weather change was a result in the jet stream shifting thanks to changing temperatures. When the jet stream shifted north, it caused cold temperatures and heavy rainfall to hit the West Coast, resulting in the mudslides that struck Montecito, California.
Walker said the warm weather will continue up until the weekend, bringing rain with it. That will quickly be followed by normal winter temperatures returning to most parts of the country.
As of Wednesday night, 17 Californians have died as a result of the floods and mudslides in Montecito. Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres both took to social media on Wedneday morning as both had houses affected by the mudslides.
