This Groundhog Day’s Rutland Herald reports:

Vermont’s Eye on the Sky meteorologists faced the question long before someone called last week to report a flock of robins: Could this winter make history as the state’s mildest?

Green Mountain residents usually wake Feb. 2 to learn whether the groundhog saw his shadow. But with last month’s average temperature 5.8 degrees above normal at the National Weather Service in Burlington and this season’s frozen precipitation 19 inches below par, many are wondering if winter itself will ever emerge.

Last year’s historic snowfall — 128.4 inches at the Weather Service — was the third-highest total since the government began tallying in 1884. But while state forecasters reported 55.2 inches at this time in 2011, they measure less than half that — 25.4 inches — today. If the trend continues, this winter could trump that of 1912-13 — with 31.3 inches — as the least snowiest on record.

“The last several years we’ve been at or above normal, so we were due for a below normal,” Weather Service meteorologist Jason Neilson says. “But not this below normal.”

Experts attribute the current mildness to temporary shifts in the jet stream that have blocked Arctic cold from heading south and storms from hovering north. The state has shoveled a few inches of snow, but it is usually washed away by upturns like Wednesday’s rain and near 50-degree temperatures.

At the Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium in St. Johnsbury, Eye on the Sky meteorologist Chris Bouchard has been fielding questions ranging from whether global warming is the culprit to if a recent local robin sighting means spring has sprung.

“All we can really say is, historically, we do have winters like this now and then,” Bouchard says, “and it doesn’t mean there is or isn’t climate change.”

Robins, he adds, occasionally do winter in Vermont if they can find enough food.

As for the next six weeks, meteorologists say the groundhog’s guess is as good as theirs.

“Anytime you’re predicting the future, be it weather or the stock market, sometimes you’re right and sometimes you’re wrong,” Bouchard says.

Neilson is equally noncommittal.

“You’ve got February, March and April — all it takes is a couple of storms and we’re right back in the thick of things.”