By Ali Elfakharany, News Correspondent

Students witnessed Boston’s volatile weather at its finest this month. After returning to campus Jan. 7 wearing T-shirts, students had to bundle up to fight frostbite a week later at Frozen Fenway.

“We’ve never had a winter quite like this,” said Chris Rudnick, a freshman and a life-long New England resident. “Although lately it’s starting to get colder, it’s still been far from typical Boston cold.”

Historically, January has an average temperature of 29.3 degrees, according to the National Weather Service in Taunton, with an average high of 36.5 and low of 22.1. Yet already this month, Boston has seen a high of 59 and a low of 9.

“New England has always been known for its unpredictable weather, but in all my years living here I’ve never seen such extremes,” Rudnick said.

In the midst of this volatile winter, many are starting to wonder if this unusual climate is a precursor of things to come. Some are questioning if this abnormal weather is connected to global climate change, but there is no concrete information to support this, according to MIT meteorology Prof. Dr. Edward Boyle.

Boyle said the link between global warming and this unusual weather is “tenuous” at best.

“Even though I agree with the concept of greenhouse gas-induced global warming and expect that other climate (rain, snow, wind) will also change, I don’t ascribe any particular aspect of winter’s weather on climate change,” Boyle said in an email to The News. “Weather is the day-to-day variability in our experience of climate. Climate change is the long slow drift over decades.”

Boston residents aren’t the only ones dealing with unusual weather this winter. For many countries, this winter has been an unusually erratic one. All over Canada and the northeast, the start of winter was much hotter than usual, while it was unseasonably cold in the Middle East and Europe. While the average low for January in Alexandria, Egypt is 48.4 degrees, according to World Weather Information, it snowed earlier this month, which took many by surprise.

“Cairo was actually colder than Boston when I came back. It was the coldest winter I’ve ever seen in Egypt, which was especially weird considering the fact that Boston was warm,” said Mohamed Khattab, a freshman (major) from Egypt. “I picked Boston because I thought I would get to see snow, but somehow it’s Egypt that has had snow this winter.”