It’s beginning to look a lot like ... spring?

After a month and a half of unseasonably warm temperatures, flowers are blooming, people are going outdoors coatless and ice cream is a big seller.

“We’ve been really busy all week,” said Sonora Santos, manager of Mel’s Downtown Creamery in Pawcatuck. “A lot of people are coming in for peppermint milk shakes, or getting an ice cream cone and walking around downtown. I’m enjoying it.”

Temperatures Saturday reached the low 60s in the New London area, and brushed up against 70 in parts of Long Island, said Jay Engle, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Upton, N.Y.

“We had record warm temperatures in November, and now we’re starting off on the same pattern in December,” he said. “We’re expecting it will stay above normal for the foreseeable future.”

He noted that the West has been experiencing a cold snap, meaning this season is shaping up to be the reverse of the past few winters, when the Northeast felt the Arctic chill while the West stayed relatively warm.

“This year it’s the opposite of last year,” he said.

Gary Lessor, meteorologist with The Weather Center at Western Connecticut State University, said the warm spell is caused by El Nino, the warm current in the central Pacific that is heating up the air currents that travel to the Northeast.

"The entire eastern half of the country is abnormally warm," he said. The average temperature so far this month, he said, is about 44 degrees, six degrees warmer than the long-term average for the first half of December.

"It will cool down some on Friday through Monday, then warm up again through Christmas, maybe through New Year's," Lessor said. "It looks like it could stay warm through mid-January, until El Nino wanes." After that, he said, normally cold temperatures could settle in for the rest of the season.  

Around the region, some flowering trees and shrubs are putting out new buds as though spring came several months early. In New London, blooming plants can be seen on Howard Street, Gov. Winthrop Boulevard and Eugene O’Neill Drive, among other locations.

With winter coats and sweaters left in the closet for the time being, Christmas tree shoppers are picking out live trees and wreaths in short-sleeved shirts and gloveless hands, with not a flake of the snow so prevalent last winter in sight.

Temperatures are predicted to stay in the 50s through the end of the week, then dip into the 40s by Friday and Saturday.

j.benson@theday.com

Twitter: @BensonJudy