Snow has been missing in action for much of the U.S. the last couple months. But it's not just snow. It's practically the season that's gone AWOL.

"What winter?" asked Mike Halpert, deputy director of the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center. For the Lower 48, January was the third-least snowy on record, according to the Global Snow Lab at Rutgers University. Records for the amount of ground covered by snow go back to 1967.

Last year, more than half the nation was covered in snow as a Groundhog Day blizzard barreled across the country, killing 36 people and causing $1.8 billion in damage. This year, less than a fifth of the country outside of Alaska has snow on the ground.

Bismarck, N.D., has had one-fifth its normal snow, Boston a third. Buffalo is three feet below normal for snowfall this year. Midland, Texas, has had more snow this season than Minneapolis or Chicago.

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"I am disgusted that golfers are golfing on my cross-country ski course," said New Jersey state climatologist David Robinson, director of the Global Snow Lab.

Matt Dulli, an assistant golf pro at The Golf Club at Yankee Trace in the Dayton, Ohio, suburb of Centerville, said 115 rounds were played Tuesday amid balmy temperatures that reached a high of 60 degrees.

"The first thing you hear out of people's mouths is, 'Can you believe we're playing golf in January?' They're just ecstatic that they can get out at this time of year," Dulli said.

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