If you thought winter came a little early again this year, you were correct. The official start of meteorological winter is December 1 but anyone who has been around the block once or twice knows that winter weather can start as early as October and as late as January.

The variations we see from year to year are brought about by numerous factors, a couple of which include ocean temperature oscillations in the Pacific and the positioning of high latitude jet stream road blocks.

After a mild October with nearly no hint of cold weather, high latitude blocking ramped up in a big way early in November helped along initially by a Pacific typhoon that moved north into the Bering Sea, becoming an intense gale.

You may ask how events a world away can affect our weather but the world’s weather is all interconnected. The strong Bering Sea gale pumped warmth northward into Alaska and western North America creating an upper level ridge that blocked the warming influence of the Pacific into interior North America.

Arctic air rapidly developed across Canada and with the developing polar blocking displacing the polar vortex into southern Canada we saw an abrupt change to cold weather just a few days into November.

One byproduct of the cold was the dual snow squall events just south of downtown Buffalo in a narrow band. While this was a big event, the term historic was probably inaccurate with respect to amounts but maybe not with respect to how early in the season it occurred.

The totals in the area of 65-84 inches are impressive but within the past 10 years there have been 3 larger snow squall events through western New York, including a whopping 141 inches in early February of 2007.

Southern New Hampshire escaped any meaningful snow through early and mid-November although a slushy coating on Nov. 14 brought the season’s first measurable snow. Northern parts of the state saw some moderate to heavy snows early in the month, a storm that brought Maine record totals.

Nashua’s turn would come a day before Thanksgiving as low pressure developed south of New England and took the classic track east of Cape Cod. This storm would be a weak nor’easter but brought plenty of moisture.

Temperatures were just cold enough aloft to produce a heavy wet snow around the region which stuck to trees and power lines producing widespread power outages as well as producing major disruptions to travel and Thanksgiving plans.

Fortunately the storm was not that intense and winds weren’t very strong keeping power outage totals lower than if a full blown gale had developed. Even so, the state experienced the fourth highest power loss total on record. Records such as these really can’t be compared to decades past because the population has grown substantially over the years, almost two-fold since 1970.

This was not the first Thanksgiving snow for Nashua. On Thanksgiving 1971, 12.4 inches of snow fell on Thanksgiving Day itself, more than double the amount of this year’s 6 inches. This year amounts built to nearly a foot just 10-20 miles northwest of Nashua.

The 1971 storm crippled travel across the Northeast dropping as much as 20 to 30 inches of snow in some areas. During Thanksgiving 1950 the Great Appalachian Storm brought extensive wind damage to the Northeast including Concord’s highest all-time high wind gust of 72 mph.

Most of the early and mid-part of November saw consistently colder than normal temperatures but late in the month high latitude blocking weakened allowing the polar vortex to retreat back to northeastern Canada. This produced a see-saw temperature pattern at the end of the month.

Just two days before many of us lost our power and had Thanksgiving Day disrupted temperatures topped out at 67 in Nashua, the month’s high. Two days after our infamous snowstorm the mercury fell to 13 in Nashua and as low as 8 in Hudson.

The monthly temperature for Nashua of 38.6 was 1.5 degrees below normal and ranked in a tie for 53rd place as the coolest November of the past 130 years.

Precipitation totaled 5.01 inch which is a surplus of 0.75 inch. November’s precipitation ranking comes in as the 32nd wettest since 1884. Six different precipitation events brought the Gate City its total during the month with the late month snowstorm being by far the most important.

Snowfall totaled 8.3 inches last month, 6.2 inches above normal. November ranked as the 11th snowiest November since 1884 and was the snowiest November since 1986. 1986 also had a Thanksgiving snowstorm, but with about 4 inches of dry snow that only impacted travel.

The fall weather statistics for Nashua show that we had a mild, wet, and snowy month. The average temperature of 51.3 degrees was 0.9 degrees above normal, but both September and November were cooler than normal leaving much of the warm departure on October. Fall 2014 was in a tie for the 28th mildest since 1885.

Precipitation totaled 14.17 inches, a surplus of 1.88 inches making fall 2014 the 20th wettest on the ranking list. The annual total of 44.51 for 2014 is 0.69 inches above normal.

High latitude blocking has weakened substantially during the recent week and this is allowing El Nino conditions to return across the nation, much like what we saw during October. The recent beneficial California rains are a sign of El Nino along with a warmer than average north-central to northwest U.S.

Current thinking is that for at least a couple of weeks mild to very mild conditions may prevail across most of the nation but the Northeast may be one area to see a brief punch of chill and maybe even some snow and rain once in a while. Cold air may remain banked across eastern Canada resulting in more see-saw temperatures for our region while the central U.S. basks in mild readings most of the time.

The shortest days of the year come along in just a couple of weeks and then we start to see a slow increase in day length by Christmas. A white Christmas has a 59% chance of occurring in Nashua based on records dating back to the 1880s. Six of the past nine Christmases have been white ones in Nashua.

Weather & Climate appears the first or second Saturday of the month, depending on weather data availability. Doug Webster, of Hudson, is a senior meteorologist at DTN/The Progressive Farmer, a division of Schneider Electric in Andover, Mass.