Don’t let the lake-effect snow in Buffalo delude you. According to NOAA, 2014 is shaping up to be the warmest year on record, globally.

I used to live in that part of the world, and when the Great Lakes are particularly warm, evaporation is high, and the inevitable arctic winter blast usually means lots of precipitation soon follows. And the blast came early this year, because of distortions in the jet stream, allowing cold polar air masses to penetrate deep into eastern North America.

NOAA has more to say about this.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/

The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for October 2014 was the highest on record for October, at 0.74°C (1.33°F) above the 20th century average of 14.0°C (57.1°F).

The global land surface temperature was 1.05°C (1.89°F) above the 20th century average of 9.3°C (48.7°F)—the fifth highest for October on record.

For the ocean, the October global sea surface temperature was 0.62°C (1.12°F) above the 20th century average of 15.9°C (60.6°F) and the highest for October on record.

The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for the January–October period (year-to-date) was 0.68°C (1.22°F) above the 20th century average of 14.1°C (57.4°F).

The first ten months of 2014 were the warmest such period on record.