A January Thaw with no December Freeze?

I have an indoor-outdoor thermometer in my home.  The outdoor sensor is on the North side of my home.  The current temperature is 54 degrees.  The date is January 6.  The sun is shining and the grass is green.  And I am still in Michigan, not someplace south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

January thaws are not unusual in Michigan, except that this year we have not really had a long hard freeze, so what is there to thaw out? 

I am sure the environmentalists are saying this is what happens when you have global warming.  But they were saying the same thing last year when we were buried knee-deep in snow.

And in a world that is over 4 billion years old, we have to expect that there will be temperature changes.  We once had an ice age which wiped out many Neandertal populations. 

If we weren't experiencing warming, we would be having global cooling.  Frankly, I'd rather have small increases than small decreases in temperature.