A few weather-related notes for tonight.
Live Science has a few interesting stories.
#1: Looks like we might be headed for an El Nino year this winter in North America. That’s the warm ocean current that hangs out off the West Coast of South America.
Some of it’s known effects.. across North America
Wet and Snowy in the South-East and North East and Prairies to Eastern Canada respectively.
Warmer in the West and US MidWest.. wet on the BC West Coast… but lots of snow on the mountains.
It also often grabs mackerel up to coast to Northern Washington and Souther BC waters… which is bad news for Salmon runs, as the Mackerel love to eat the salmon fry as they exit the rivers in the spring.
#2: Results from a new Antarctic study indicate snowfallprecipitation levels in Antarctica have not changed significantly in the past 50 years. This goes against model predictions that have predicted Global Warming and Climate Change… but 50 years is also a very short period of time geologically, so we may be looking at too small a snapshot. Either way, it’s interesting to see… and will add to the puzzle and the eventually to the general understanding of the Earths incredibly complex weather patterns.
#3: Finally, Live Science reports that the US NOAA has found that nighttime low temperatures across the US have been “much above normal” consistently over the past 8 years. That means, given all their data, US low temperature data has been higher than the highest 10% of temperatures in their archives. Those are hot nights. That means the US just isn’t cooling down at night like it used to. Which means more people get no rest from the heat… more energy use for A/C… etc etc… The record for hot nights was set during the “Dust Bowl” years… in 1941. But the past 3 years have been very close.. and on average, much hotter than even during those hardtimes after the Depression.
Cheers.
Chris