The past two winters have been marked by a strange trend in weather patterns: the eastern half of the continent has been swamped by insane snowstorms and frigid temperatures, while the west has luxuriated in spring-like temperatures… Jennifer Francis, research professor in the department of marine and coastal sciences at Rutgers University, is not so sure. Her 2012 paper argued the reduction in ice in the Arctic, which is warming at a much faster rate than other latitudes, would intensify pressure ridges, making them more extreme and persistent… “Last winter and this winter we saw this huge ridge parked over the west coast of North America the whole time. This is exactly the kind of situation we hypothesized,” she said.