The Patriot Post® · Another Season of Winter Weather Woes Lurking
Last year, WeatherBELL went out with a cold winter forecast for our clients in July. This year we were out with the cold winter outlook in April, after having forecasted a “Garden of Eden” summer for the nation with a pool of cool over the central part of the U.S., plenty of rain, including in the Southwest, and the second year in a row of relaxation from the extreme heat of the summers of 2010-2012, which were strikingly similar to the summers of 1952-1954.
As far as the hurricane season, most of the activity was in the area we described. Our team said it would be a lower than average year with very little activity in the deep tropics, most of it in the western Atlantic. Arthur was the strongest storm to hit the U.S. so early, on the western side of the center of activity which was mainly between the East Coast and Bermuda.
But here we are again, approaching winter, and we have another cold season forecasted. Last year the early season ideas were cemented when we saw analogs from 1993-1994 and especially 1917-1918. That’s right, 1917-1918. The blend of those two years, when CO2 was way below where it is now, gave us the kind of winter we anticipated. So we looked at the past to confirm our suspicions about the future. We were very confident in our ideas going into the winter because we noticed that no one that we saw in the preseason was keying on what we thought the biggest factor was – the very warm water in the northeast Pacific. I did not see any pre-season discussions even mention it. Even now, there are people who deny it is a factor.
And of course there were people pushing the idea that warming lead to the winter we pegged. It’s amazing how I hear after the fact from people who had no idea before the fact what was going to happen, and who several years beforehand said snow and cold would soon be a thing of the past.
Well, here we are, approaching winter with another cold, snowy weatherbell.com idea out there. From the get-go, we have been targeting a certain kind of El Niño for this winter. For instance, in our mix are the winters of 1976-1977, 1977-1978 and 2002-2003. Amazingly, this year’s snow cover at the end of October in the Northern Hemisphere is in third place, with only 1976 and 2002 ahead of it! And while I have you here, how is it that the remarkable increase in the coverage of snow and ice seen at this time of the year since 2007, when the screams of the Arctic death spiral and snow being a thing of the past, are not brought up by the media as outright refutation of a gross distortion of reality? I am not saying it’s a sign of an ice age, but it sure is not a sign of a global warming catastrophe. And it debunks the absurd missive blaming a lack of ice for increased snow, since there is far more ice now than in 2007.
Any brave media soul want to ask John Kerry or Al Gore about this?
Then there is the Northern Hemispheric sea surface temperature. It looks very similar to the blend of the winters of 1976-1977 and 1977-1978. I wrote about this on weatherbell.com, pointing out a paper given to me by my partner, Joe D'Aleo, written over 30 years ago by Dickson/Nemias on the reasons for the severity of those winter, and how close the set up is this winter. Once again, that was a time when CO2 was not an issue the way it is today. In fact, the winters during that period lead to the ice age scare.
The point is this: I have always felt only the good Lord knows the future. But I have always tried to reach beyond my grasp when I forecast. If the winter forecast, like last winter, turns out to have merit, then it won’t be because of CO2. It will be because we looked at all the physical drivers of the global weather pattern and had lights from the past shining the way for us.
The past is the foundation we stand on today to reach for tomorrow. It’s that way in weather and, I believe, in everything else.
Joe Bastardi is chief forecaster at WeatherBELL Analytics, a meteorological consulting firm.