I found a blog from our local guy ... he wrote this in November
A La Nina Winter Ahead (But What Does it Mean??)
Not a few people I spoken with are a little annoyed with the Winter Outlook for 2010-2011 that has been posted by NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. For our part of the country they are non-committal, indicating “equal chances” for a milder or colder winter than normal and “equal chances” for a drier or wetter winter than normal. To some it’s not a forecast at all, but rather a “let’s take things as they come” type of outlook.
The problem is that we’re currently in a rather robust La Nina pattern. La Nina is El Nino’s tempestuous little sister, which history has shown locally can present two different versions of weather extremes in our part of the country. For instance:
We had a La Nina winter in 1998-1999, which contained some incredibly warm winter days. One stand-out was December 7, 1998, where temperatures soared to the mid 70′s for the entire Tri-State Area. I remember telling my wife that maybe we could fill the little wading pool we used to set up in the back yard and dress our then 5-year old daughter in her swim suit and have her take a little swim. We could then take a picture of her and insert it in our Christmas card with a note saying :”Happy December!”
On the other side of the coin, we can have some La Nina years feature some really unusual wintry weather. That was case back in March 1956, when the Northeast US was hit by two major snowstorms in less than a week’s time. Here’s an interesting anecdote about this by the famous science writer, Isaac Asimov:
“On March 16, 1956, it started snowing about noon. It kept on snowing. That in itself was not surprising. It had been a bitterly cold winter, following a bitterly hot, dry summer, and there had been much snow. But THIS snowstorm kept on snowing and storming and turned out to be the worst of the season. The wind blew it into the driveway and the retaining walls on either side kept it there, so that when I woke on Saturday morning, there was three feet of snow in the driveway. I am not exaggerating or being dramatic. I MEASURED the snow depth.”
“Whereupon on Monday, March 19, ANOTHER blizzard hit, and this time we ended with FOUR feet of snow in the driveway. It was the worst one-two snowstorm in the history of the Boston Weather Bureau, nor has anything like it been repeated since.”
So you see . . . the weather pendulum can take some pretty wild swings in a La Nina winter. So it’s still early to see which extreme this winter’s La Nina will prefer (hence the “equal chances” forecast by NOAA).
One interesting note is that the current La Nina is said to already be the most intense one since the winter of 1955-56.
And we did have a ” . . . bitterly hot, dry summer” didn’t we?
Hmmmmmmm . . .
Car
assout: