We use a tossed salad of variables in determining our winter weather outlook. The northern Pacific Ocean, central and tropical Atlantic Ocean offers some great clues as do the tropical patterns that stretch from central Africa over the Indian Ocean eastward over the central Pacific Ocean. The upper atmosphere over the tropics reveals connections to jet stream position which dictate how variable the cold, arctic intrusions will be over the Great Lakes. By analyzing these variables from past winters, we come up with the "best match" that fits the upcoming winter for Cleveland and Northeastern Ohio.
Dividing up the winter into two parts gives a bit more clarity to the winter outlook.
First November and December and early January:
One of the main drivers of our weather patterns are from ENSO or the changes in the tropical Pacific Ocean sea surface temperatures better known as El Nino (warmer than normal) or La Nina (cooler than normal).
Based on these parameters above, the years that match up fairly well are: 1949-50 1950-51 1954-55 1955-56 2007-08 2008-09 2010-11
Add up these winters NOVEMBER, DECEMBER AND JANUARY to come up temperatures compared to normal would be:
Andre Bernier has an excellent blog post on the "tricky, harder to predict" variables of winter. These variables all describe changes in the arctic and the north Atlantic which are more random than ENSO. You will notice that in the years these Arctic and north Atlantic factors were the strongest/coldest--early 60s, mid 1970s--(see Andre's first graphic), LA NINAS WERE PRESENT which fits this upcoming winter. One of the strongest La Nina periods in recent times was the mid 1970s and we all know, if you are from Cleveland, how snowy those winters were! These "wild cards" will play a significant role in how and when the arctic air pushes south and, early on, when and how much lake effect snow we will receive.
Watch what happens when we ADD the years in the mid 1970s where a weak to strong La Nina persisted with VERY STRONG/COLD ARCTIC patterns which subside in January, February and March: THOSE WINTERS FEATURED NEAR NORMAL TO SLIGHTLY ABOVE NORMAL TEMPERATURES FOR NORTHERN OHIO!
Let's hope for this weaker arctic pattern to return later this winter with its drier, less cold air in January and February. That should allow for the snow cover to melt which would keep the snow mold from forming on our lawns as it has in recent winters.
As always, let the data soak in. Let it breathe like a fine scotch. Chew it for a bit. Take it for a ride in your mind. Feel the synapses fire; the serotonin flowing throughout your cerebral cortex. Then and only then, create an opinion based on the data.
This data is from NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory which you can look up at any time.
Its open to the public.
Here in Cleveland, we are about to break the all-time rainfall record set back in 1990. So I decided to check the rest of the country's rainfall data as compared with the last 60+ years.
I used the years previous that best fit this year's conditions:
Strong-weakening-then-building La Nina, Pacific is in a cold mode (PDO negative) and the Atlantic in a warm mode (AMO is positive).
Plugging in these conditions, we get 4 solid fits. 1918, 1951, 1956 and 2011. (2009 fits but I left it out because the Arctic Oscillation was super-negative and would skew the temperature data way too cold)
Below are the three sets of data I dug up from January to September of each of the 4 years. Precipitation compared to normal, Temperatures compared to normal and the Palmer Drought Index which describes how severe the ground conditions are wet or dry.
The LEFT MAP shows PRECIP ANOMALIES.
The RIGHT MAP shows TEMPERATURE ANOMALIES.
The BOTTOM MAP shows PALMER DROUGHT INDEX. I've circled the anomalies that are high/low for comparison sake. The purple shows Cleveland.
First 1918...
Now, 1951...
Then 1956...
Finally, this year:
No wonder my tomato plants didn't do well this year. Way too much rain and not enough sustained heat this summer.
Just for the heck of it, what was it like in the middle of the Dust Bowl 30s? Here is 1934: The above normal rainfall off of the coast was due to a tropical storm in September. Otherwise, it would have been a very dry year indeed!
As you can see, severe drought in Texas and in the Midwest is frequent in La Nina years with a Cold PDO especially.
What the media never mentions are these naturally occurring climate teleconnections IN CONJUNCTION WITH human induced global climate change.
While they are not mutually exclusive, naturally occurring teleconnections are well documented going back to the 1880s. I'd like to think that Climate Change is a toss salad of both natural climate cycles/teleconnections and AGW.
My beef is you only hear about the AGW component. It only reinforces the "science isn't cool" mindset among the general public. Scientists are already viewed as "geeks" and "elitists" completely out of touch with reality. Painting an incomplete scientific picture only makes this notion worse.
Back to the comparison: Could this record-setting rainfall be a harbinger of what is to come for this winter? See my previous post on some hints on January. The winter weather Outlook is coming on November 3rd!
Over the years, we have learned to use analogues from previous winter in formulating our winter weather forecast. Recently, most of this data was made accessible on the internet for anyone to play with. Want to compare El Nino with temperatures in February for instance? Its right there. How about the arctic cold in December with January snowfall? Not to worry. its readily available to any backyard weather fan to analyze.
Without going into great detail, the indices we are looking at for this winter parallel several winters in the past especially the early 1950s--not completely but pretty close.
One of the factors that doesn't completely match up is the Atlantic tropical sea surface temperatures. Many meteorologists.climatologists believe the role the Atlantic Ocean plays in our winter temperatures can be significant. Why would we pay any attention to this when its obviously so far away from North America? The same question we could ask about El Nino since it occurs in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Yet we know that changes in the Pacific Ocean play a direct role in the weather across the US.
First, look at the sea surface temps from January of 1950 and 1951. Notice the colder than normal water in the middle of the Atlantic
.
Although this isn't the only factor that had an effect on temperatures in these years, look at the warmer than normal temps across the eastern US
The high off of the coast in both years was fairly strong although stronger in 1950 than in 1951. A reflection of this weaker high is evident in the snowfall in Cleveland in January: 3.7" in 1950, 17.5" in 1951
Compare those Januarys to the last January (2009) that best fit the early 1950s: January 2009. Notice how much warmer the sea surface temperatures were.
The resulting temperatures were well below normal
The high was well off of the coast and the cold, trough was smack, dab in the middle of the Great Lakes and eastern US. The resulting snow for Cleveland was mindblowing: 40.5", second most only behind January of 1978
How about this January? Look at the Atlantic sea surface temperatures going into October. They are not as cold as 1950 or 1951 but there is some evidence of cooling in pockets. Whether or not this continues for the remainder in the fall is still uncertain.
Could this "Atlantic cooling"--if it continues--create a "not as brutal" January for northern Ohio and much of the east coast (all other factors being equal)?
If you are a snowplow driver, stay tuned. More on this in mid-November when the new temperatures come out!
After the past week we had with low, hanging cloud cover with intermittent rain, its easy to answer a resounding YES! But the pattern has done an about-face highlighted by a fall "Omega Block" over the central US. When lows stall and get cutoff, the result is the week that we had last week. When the Omega Block sits overhead, we bask in long periods of sunshine and super-dry air as we have now
So far, this year ranks 4th all-time.
1. 53.83 inches - 1990
2. 53.51 inches - 1878
3. 50.38 inches - 1950
4. 49.97 inches - 2011
5. 48.53 inches - 1992
Rainfall since July 4th even in the 95 degree heat was well above normal
For those of you who like graphs, the rainfall numbers each month are well above the norms
So back to the original question. Will we break the record this month? The long range projections squeeze out the Omega Block slowly. First, rainfall Monday of next week. Still dry here in Northern Ohio
Thursday the 13th, the southern moisture and the cold front out west eliminates the Blocking Pattern almost entirely
Blocking patterns don't last long late October/early November. Rain will return late next week but not enough to break the record. We'll have to wait for another system by month's end or early November. By then, we won't care about rain as much as the start of the lake effect snow countdown. I can't wait!
After more than 5 days with rain and a thick low, hanging overcast, its nice to see the sun. October typically sees 52% sunshine overall so we have some ground to make up.
In fact, this stretch of dry days will be long lasting. The 8 day shows roughly 8 days of sunshine with above normal temps. Does this happen very often? The data shows it happens more than we think; 4 times since 1990!
Here is our 8day stretch starting today: 65, 70, 73, 75, 78, 78, 75, 71
10 DAYS: 10/3 to 10/12 in 2004 - 64, 59, 57, 68, 75, 75, 70, 61, 61, 60
8 DAYS: 10/5 to 10/12 in 2002 - 68, 71, 65, 60, 66, 68, 69, 63
8 DAYS: 10/10 to 10/17 in 1998 - 60, 65, 73, 64, 56, 58, 70, 77
8 DAYS: 10/10 to 10/17 in 1994 - 55, 62, 69, 64, 67, 68, 70, 75
So if you are heading to Szalay's in Peninsula to pick out some pumpkins and try the corn maze or walk along the Cuyahoga River on the bike path, the temps and sun will be perfect. Also, head out to Mapleside Farms. The hayrides are fantastic!
What does the early winter have in store? Here is a hint: The pattern is looking eerily like the winters of the early 1950s. More on this later this month....Here we go!
Its almost apple picking time! The cooler temps are a bit early...or are they.
I ran some numbers looking back at all of the September high temps since 1901--all 110 years worth--to check for 50 degree high temperature occurrences.
If you are heading to high school games Friday night, the temps will resemble more mid-October than mid-September. Frankly, I am ready for it.
Lots of numbers so here are the highlights of what I found:
Days with temps in the 50s in September by decade:
My memory of 9/11 actually begins the night before. My wife and I were--let the cold shivers begin--planning a trip to visit her friend in New York City. We were on the web looking at maps of the city familiarizing ourselves with the locations of the tourist attractions in relation to where my wife's friend lived in Queens. At that time, I had never traveled to New York City so street grid was as foreign to me as a city grid of Moscow.
I distinctly remember pointing to several spots on the map of Manhattan and Long Island that I wanted to check out on our trip. The Statue of Liberty, Central Park, Yankee Stadium, Greenwich Village and the of course, The World Trade Center. As we studied the map, I made mental snapshots of the region remembering how far Yankee Stadium was from the subway stop, etc. Time that evening was slipping away. I had to get up to go to work at the local NBC affiliate the next day. I was the morning meteorologist at WSAZ in Huntington, West Virginia back then so I needed to get up at 3AM.
The morning of 9/11 started out as normal as any other day. Our morning show started at 5AM. The news was fairly typically. No outlandish stories. The weather was quiet. I do remember a powerful hurricane off of the New England named Erin but that was heading away from land. We had just finished our 8:35AM news cut-in before we "tossed" our morning news to The Today Show. About 8:40AM, The Today Show interrupted their segment to show one of the The World Trade Center Towers on fire. The in-studio monitors all showed the fire engulfing multiple floors. The fire was big. It captured our attention. But at the time, not one of us watching EVER thought this was linked to something bigger, more global and temporally far-reaching.
One of our camera operators and I commented that it looked like someone hit the building with a rocket launcher from a nearby rooftop. Our conversation was purely speculative, half contrived for the sake of conversation and at the time not a bit realistic. We went back and forth, as news people do, debating how that was logistically very difficult. How could someone get a weapon through a building undetected we both said almost simultaneously. In the span of 15 seconds, we quickly dismissed it.
Our eyes were affixed to the monitors at 8:45AM. I was tense, rigid and more alert. So was my co-anchor. Nothing was said but we knew that something was terribly wrong. W all quietly attempted to persuade ourselves in thinking that this was an accident. Some electrical fire. Some gas line rupture. Keep in mind at this time, we had no official word it was a jet airliner that hit The World Trade Towers.
A few minutes later, Matt Lauer and Katie Couric were scrambling to inform us that a plane just hit the second tower. This was ON LIVE TV! Eye-witness accounts were all they had. We all said a "few colorful words" filled with anger, frustration and horror. We were all stunned. We just listened. Total silence in the studio. No one said anything. No talk of Iraq. No commentary on military retaliation. No link to Al-Qaeda. No comparisons to Pearl Harbor. No War in Afghanistan. Nothing prophetic. We sat and stood and watched as the events became--whether we wanted them or not--etched as a permanent memories. In no way did I think that these series of events would pervade our collective national consciousness for YEARS or a decade or longer. At the time, no one did.
In breaking news situations in television, your body language changes from one of relaxation to one that conveys rigidity and alertness. Your adrenaline surges. Your ability to disseminate massive amounts of information increases while simultaneously conveying the story in an intelligible way on camera as if it was scripted. Time doesn't go by slow or fast. It becomes frozen. There is no "did I do this right?" or "Will the segment look okay?". You perform in the present ONLY. Your instincts take over. Only in hindsight do you fully grasp the story and its complexity. We all did our jobs purely in the present. The morning of 9-11 was the same at the start. Yet the tone of our broadcasts soon became dreadfully different than anything we had done before.
The newsroom was scrambling to record the national NBC feed along with all other news feeds filled with new video of what was happening. The news alert beeps were non-ending as more video was ready to be recorded. Remember that this was before computer editing so everything was recorded VCR style. No real-time you-tube clips. No cell-phone video. No text messages. No real-time tweets. You waited at a tape deck for the satellite to "beam" you latest. The clanking of tapes into tape decks was deafening. Yet no one said "Al-Qaeda". No one said "Bin Laden". No one said "middle east terrorists". That would change as I went into my boss's office for my 6 month review.
We sat down and said a few things about my past 6 months work but he was only half paying attention. My boss--the best multi-tasker I've ever known--was bouncing around from jotting down notes on the coverage to juggling my file on his desk all the while answering the phone. I sat patiently waiting for the whirl of papers above his desk to settle. The phone stopped ringing. His note pad resting on his desk at arm's reach. He paused for a moment, looked out his window into the newsroom then to the bank of TVs on his wall and said, "Its Bin Laden. Its Bin Laden." I thought, "Who? What is talking about?". In 2001, the name "Osama Bin Laden" for most was unknown. Maybe a few remember him as architect of the USS Cole bombing in 2000. He was certainly not a household name like he soon would be.
My boss had the uncanny ability of having 20/20 hindsight vision in the present. He could see events happen before they happened then project into the future what the effects the event would cause. This is what made him an innovative news director. Either you accepted his unearthly ability or you let it consume you. After all, who is comfortable with their boss knowing what you would do before you would do it. In the weeks ahead, my boss's prophetic realization became the most pivotal, surreal memory of that morning.
As the next plane hit the Pentagon followed by Flight 93 nose first into the field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, my review faded into the chaos of the morning. The rest of the day was a blur. National coverage continued as it would for a week uninterrupted even for commercials. No television shows just coverage of 9-11. Somehow at the time, it didn't seem enough.
By noon that day, most of the pieces began to fall into place. Two attacks in New York City at the World Trade Center. The collapse of both towers. Another plane attack, this time into the Pentagon. The other foiled attack on The White House resulted in the crash in Shanksville, PA. All were connected. Everyone knew life would be different from this point forward.
There are certain topics that can't be won if debated. Climate change is one of them. The cognitive dissonance experienced when I bring up the topic with people is powerful, almost surreal.
I admit it. I will often bring up climate change in instances where I know the group leans sharply to either side of the political spectrum to yield a sharper response. Regardless of their political persuasion, the emotional response are textbook: People react by siting examples of why their viewpoint is the correct one even though their logic and science is far from correct. Then I respond with a piece of science or data that gently and politely refutes their viewpoint. Their final response--purely a defense mechanism--is to blame someone else or some entity, i.e the government or a specific political party. "Its those liberals..." or "Its those Jesus-freaks..." or "Its the BIG government..." or "Its the BIG corporations...". Its at that point that I realize their mind is made up. Try as I might to stay unbiased and balanced in my approach or presenting my information; it doesn't matter. Their confirmation biases already won, the conversation results in a total collapse of anything constructive and right into a chaotic mess of blaming others.
For all of the talk concerning Irene being blown out of proportion, areas from New Jersey to New England are still under water. Hundreds of thousands of people are still without power. The bottom line: Never underestimate hurricanes.
We are entering the peak hurricane season
All eyes are on the eastern Atlantic where another tropical system is in its infancy.
The question remains whether or not this "soon to be" hurricane (by Thursday) will take a similar track to Irene.
Here are several different projections: You can see the "blob" in the center by Sunday
Here is the projection by NEXT THURSDAY (10 days away). The projections take the hurricane north and away from land next week.
So if you are heading to Disney over the next several weeks, watch the tropics. Its going to get real bumpy.
