Christmas forecast: Warm and sometimes wet

The mercury is expected to hit the mid-60s in New York City on Christmas Day. “If I never see snow again it’ll be too soon!”

Christmas Eve also broke records, as Manhattan sat around 72 degrees; the record had previously been set at 63 degrees in 1996.

A high of about 65 degrees is predicted across the region for Christmas Eve today, according to the National Weather Service in Binghamton.

A map by ClimateReanalyzer.org and the University of ME shows just how much of the nation is experiencing above-average temperatures, with many areas, in red, about 20 degrees higher than normal.

It’s all part of an unseasonable warm wave across the Eastern U.S. that meteorologists have jokingly called a “blowtorch” on social media, according to weather.com. “I’m thinking it might be Noah”, said Gus Curtin of Annapolis. The record high for today is 80 set in 1931.

Major metropolitan areas in the Northeast saw some of the warmest Christmas Days on record, meaning green grass rather than white snow in time for Santa’s visits.

The sky has cleared out this morning, and we are waking up to near-freezing temperatures.

This afternoon brings more clouds than sun although any sunshine at this point would be quite the Christmas treat. Even with the extra clouds, highs will approach record levels as most locations flirt with the 80 degree mark. A statement released Thursday says the tornado lasted about a minute just before 3:30 a.m. Wednesday and formed at or near Emerald Isle Drive.

Wearing shorts and a T-shirt, Lisa Smith runs past Christmas decorations on a building near Prospect Park, Brooklyn, on Thursday, Dec. 24, 2015, in NY.

Temperatures reached 71 degrees Thursday at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, six degrees above the record high.

The temperature is expected to reach 61 on Friday, too.

The potential for more wild weather comes after at least 14 people were killed as of Thursday night in devastating storms in Mississippi, Tennessee and Arkansas.

A weather station in southern Quebec near Montreal recorded a temperature of 70 degrees, some 40 degrees above average.