Northeast had a broiler of a year in 2010

[jpak]

http://online.wsj.com/article/AP0836f78adba24916b497e900d1cd5c2c.html

As the Northeast hunkers down for winter, hot-weather worshippers with forgetful dispositions can take heart: New Hampshire, Rhode Island and a handful of New England cities from Hartford and Boston to Caribou, Maine, are coming off their warmest year on record.

Climatologists at Cornell University said Wednesday that 23 of the 35 cities they monitor in 12 northeastern states had an average temperature in 2010 that ranked among the 10 hottest on record.

In most cases, last year's all-time highs were just fractions of a degree warmer than previous records. But in Caribou in northern Maine, which had a noticeably balmy autumn, the average 44.2-degree Fahrenheit mark was almost 2 points above the record set there in 2006.

"Usually we're covered by now with snow and it's bitterly cold," Caribou resident Kim Bennett, an administrator at an auto dealership, said Wednesday. "We've actually had very nice weather where you rarely need your mittens or your hat."

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