I think it's fair to say that the weather has been a little screwy this winter.

It was 72º F and so spring-like in New York that blossoms started to sprout on the trees and sunbathers camped out at the beach. People are thisclose to kayaking to work in Seattle. Minneapolis residents are stymied by thin ice warnings. Avalanches are sweeping cars off on Colorado highways.

Here in New Mexico, we got hit with the same storm systems that paralyzed Denver; it shattered previous records in Albuquerque with a snowfall that topped 15 inches. (Which sent many of us scurrying to hardware stores for something called a "snow shovel.")

So, it shouldn't come as a shock that the Coney Island Polar Bear Club in New York, the group of lunatics enthusiasts who like to brave the icy waters and dunk themselves in Atlantic during the winter, are bummed out by the weirdly balmy weather.

In fact, instead of jumping in, they staged a silent protest this weekend, turned their backs to the ocean, and downright refused to plunge in. They figure that anyone can swim in this weather; where's the fun in that? In fact, they might cancel the swim season altogether if the T-shirt weather continues.

The National Weather Service isn't ready to blame these bizarre conditions on global warming. They cite El Nino, and call this warm spell a tropical air mass that's hovering over the East Coast, while the cooler mass remains in Canada. In fact, weather forecasters expect East Coast temperatures to drop drastically this week.

If I had any sort of meteorological background whatsoever, I'm sure I'd understand why these bizarre climate patterns are unrelated to global warming.

But, to a layperson—a layperson who saw and was impressed by Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth—it's hard to not to jump to the climate change conclusion.

Meanwhile, I'm going to stock up on winter-weather gear. Even though I've got no hard scientific data to back this up, I've got a hunch that we can expect many, many more freak snowstorms.