We kept hearing that it was the warmest winter ever, and then the blizzard came along and disproved it, right? Not exactly, according to NPR:

Scientists have been doing some forensic work to figure out what set this megastorm in motion. And they think they’ve found a trail that starts with the weather pattern called El Niño…

“A lot of climate change is actually going into the oceans,” he says.

He means the oceans are absorbing a lot of the extra heat from the atmosphere. That can alter their circulation, and where and when they release that heat back into the atmosphere.

“It’s changing the behavior of the oceans in a way that affects weather patterns around the globe,” Mann says.