Christmas brings warmth to East and not just from a holiday glow

(CNN)That deep warm feeling on Christmas Day wasn't just from the glow of the season -- for much of the country, it was from some unusually warm temperatures outside. After a burst of cool air last weekend, the mercury continued on its way up again over much of the East. It's another chapter in what has been an incredibly warm December over much of the Eastern United States, a pattern that some meteorologists have coined the "blowtorch." As of earlier this week, this month alone saw more than 2,600 record-high temperatures, and many more are expected before the new year. 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. More read