Spring begins Friday at 6:45 p.m.

Allegedly, that is.

New York City should be in the middle of a snowstorm at about that time.

And that’s not the only freaky weather fact New York City has to contend with. It is also just about the only region of the globe that has experienced a sort of reverse global warming. The rest of the world just experienced the warmest winter in recorded history, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

New York’s cold spell continues a trend that began last winter, according to Rutgers Professor Dave Robinson, the New Jersey State Climatologist, who crunched Central Park temperatures for WNYC host Soterios Johnson. The jet stream that moves weather east over North America has a ripple in it, that has made the western part of the continent warmer than usual and the eastern half cooler than normal.

The northeastern United States is running cold, even as the rest of the planet warms up.

(National Climatic Data Center/NOAA/NOAA)

“It is dipped to the south over the eastern part of North America and that has allowed cold air to infiltrate,” Robinson said. “Meanwhile, in the West, the jet stream has bulged to the north and that has left them very dry and extremely mild.”

Robinson said a warm sea temperatures in the north Pacific appear to be responsible for the weather pattern.  

But while New York was colder than the rest of the world in relative terms, it does not stand out as exceptionally cold historically for this area. The winter of 2014-2015 was the 33rd coldest winter since the 1870s, based on Central Park temperatures, according to Robinson.