Midsouth Weather Buzz: June 2009

Here is an interesting article from the folks at Accuweather.com concerning the long-range weather pattern change that may be taking place.......never mind the current heat we are experiencing.

Multiyear Pattern Linkage

By Mark Vogan
Produced: Tuesday, June 16, 2009

This summer's cool start across much of the US is not just a coincidence or fluke.
I believe the powerful La Nina of 2007-2008 has engraved the long-term pattern across North America with evidence of significant change during not only the winter of its occurrence, but through summer of 2008, and now driving its icy iron fist down through an increasingly chillier North America to present day. Just look at the past few summers; they have been growing cooler, more evidently the eastern US FROM 2002, when considering the significant drought which led to the extreme heat. Since 2007's blistering heat across the West and Southeast, two-straight winters of fierce cold across Alaska and Canada have laid down the carpet, and the evidence shows up in last summer’s chill from Alaska to the lower Midwest; when I say chill, I mean lack of extreme or record-breaking heat. Winter 2007-2008 was a prelude to even greater things to come in '08-'09 with a deeper but more significantly expansive distribution of significant arctic air, this time around covering much of Canada and the northern tier of the USA for much of winter, rather than smaller pockets of deep arctic air that would come and ago. That wider, deeper pool of super cold air has had a tough time shrinking, leaving Canada frigid in its interior throughout April and May into the first week of June. The tail end of that unusually cold late spring air is significantly chilling the northern Plains, Great Lakes and Northeast and pushing the jet stream to unusual early summer positions, with the chill eye-catchingly evident on June 1 when heavy snow fell at Saranac Lake, NY, as well as in Ontario and Quebec. Mount Washington, NH reported a low of 18 degrees, and winds gusting to over 80 mph pushed wind-chills below zero. Even take last May, one of the USA’s coldest, and June 2008 brought 40 inches of snow to Browning, MT, all evidence of a cooling continent. The longer, deeper and more expansive the cold becomes, the harder it is to get rid of. The cold corridor I alluded to in winter 2007-08 simply set itself up with the strong La Nina episode that simply remained, albeit in a more modified summer state, through the 2008 summer season, but then re-fired again when winter struck early in 2008-2009 (as early as September in the Arctic thanks in part to a strong positive Arctic Oscillation). The cold of 2008 was simply there all along, strengthening through early 2009, but only the field of cold was EXPANDED, and with a strong stratospheric flip at the turn of the year, this simply shoved all the bottled up arctic cold over Canada south into the Midwest, bringing the coldest period in 15 years.

Once again, the lasting effects continue to live on, haunting the pro-global warming community as Canada experiences one of its coldest ever Mays, and that more expansive cold pool (than 2008) will stick a knife in the heat balloon throughout this summer across North America as the northern Plains, likely the Northeast, Southeast and even potentially the West, end up COOLER than normal when the June-August period is calculated. With an El Nino knocking at the door now, the equation is changed, BUT NOT FOR A RECORD WARM YEAR COMING! I believe the opposite.

La Nina of 2008 will be remembered for not only bringing once-in-a-lifetime snowfall to the American West, Quebec, Ontario and New England, as well as the Alpine region of Europe, but may have shaped the next 5-10 years, and the La Nina represents the COLD PDO, which was like a sleeping giant. The other giant appears to be reawakening after a dormancy of some 30 years, bringing many human beings into a false sense of security and also pulling the big boys of government and science out of the woodwork who "believe" they can construct a new industry in its own right and a way of getting global attention and sense of godliness for their almighty doomsday theories... manmade, elaborate and with NO EVIDENCE to support them. Thing is, we have FACTUAL EVIDENCE of global warming which was FOLLOWED, yes FOLLOWED, by exceptional cooling. Remember the 1970s? The 1930s were hotter than the 1990s when high temperatures are concerned, despite record highs breaking, it was nothing close to those records broken in the '30s that have never been touched since, then after that hot period, we saw the brutal winters return and rumors of an ice age surfaced, I wonder if those rumors will return in the years ahead, and I‘m not talking 50 years from now.

The 2008 La Nina is not the driving force here, like many would like to over emphasize, but merely a drop of paint on a brush that is painting the picture, that picture being painted is our newly evolving climate pattern, long term for the next 20-30 years. There will be many more La Ninas in that time period, plus El Ninos! The 2008 La Nina may likely have showed key evidence, a knee-jerk reaction to the cold PDO. It may very well have flipped us back to a cold global pattern, or certainly across the Western Hemisphere.

The signs may just well be surfacing now across the Atlantic, firstly with a sharp cooling down of the tropical belt of the Atlantic (2004-2005 peaked the AMO's warm period) and the sudden cooldown to the Western European Winter Cycle, which has been stuck on warm mode for 20 years plus.

When combing all this together and joining up the dots, in my eyes, this is how I see things playing out. The La Nina of 2008 raised its head, sharply cooling things down from Alaska, southward through western Canada and into the Northern states, the warm AMO continued to pump the Bermuda High into the Southeast, bringing record heat into December and keeping the Global Warming alarmists happy, better still was the warmth of the Arctic Ocean, melting off the ice to a point, and many claims circled the world that this was the least amount of ice across the North Pole ever! Or on “record” this all tied into the fact we just recently went from warm to cold PDO, and scientists know the warm mode of the PDO heats the Pacific south to north, and therefore it’s only natural that warmer northward spreading waters would warm the Arctic and melt off the ice.

Then comes the cold PDO, allow for two-four years for the adjustment, then feedback to the atmosphere above (remembering that such a huge system will take longer to charge), and finally after a few weak to moderate La Ninas and El Ninos, BANG, the one powerhouse La Nina throws the system back onto the cold side of things, and from there, it’s off to the races as far as the fight back of old man winter is concerned. Like a bear, he will hibernate when things get warm across the Northern Hemisphere, it’s spring in the Pacific’s “bear season” and he‘s up and prowling, bringing cold winters and shivers in summer. It’s still winter in the Atlantic’s “bear season,” but days are getting longer and spring will soon be knocking on the door of the Atlantic’s “bear season.” When he, like the Pacific, awakens WATCH OUT; we will be back to the 1970s once again.

Winter 2009-2010.

By Mark Vogan
Produced: Tuesday, June 16, 2009

A weak to moderate El Nino will force global warming folks to shout, "warm, warm, warm," but I am becoming increasingly concerned at what this upcoming winter may bring. Looking closely at what’s happening, the hurricane season, the winter season, and the overall bigger weather picture, and I believe the Northeast and even into the South may be in for a winter that will take their breath away.

Those shouting last December when it was 70-80 degrees across the Southeast about how winters aren’t the same and they're warm and wimpy. Well, the increasing evidence ringing clear in the cooling SST’s deep in the heart of the tropical Atlantic may force the abandonment of that nice, warm high that keeps a corridor from New Orleans to Washington, D.C. sub-tropical feeling in mid-winter and shut many up who say, "the Earth is at tipping point, look at all the warm air around, look at the blooming trees along the Mall in Washington or in Central Park." That growing blanket of hellish cold is growing by the year, and it’s knocking on the doors of those very places that plan to get the shorts out and light up the grill this December and January.

The corridor of cold shifts this winter to the East Coast, after three winters of little snow and mild temps as the El Nino will push the moderating high off the Atlantic Seaboard by a persistent trough, which may very well regularly rotate arctic air in to cause problems. I am becoming increasingly worried about a cool, wet summer in the populated Northeast from D.C. to Boston and the stage being set for the weak to possibly collapsing (by November) El Nino, which enhances the southern branch jet and has a notorious reputation of producing severe winters for this part of the country in particular. Enhance the southern jet, which sweeps across the South and up the East Coast, and pull a trough of arctic air in, and you have big cyclogenesis potential. Pull the storm north off the coast, and that trough drags frigid air straight off the Hudson Bay vortex and produces subzero air temps into the heavily populated, oil-fueled Northeast.

The potential for a severe winter, that this part of the country has not seen in 20 years, is highly possible when you consider the building cold caused by the past winters and a weak El Nino that has a bad habit of bringing a bad winter, even in warmer times. Northwestern Europe has the same type of potential as the Northeast. All you would need is to pull a few hurricanes up the East Coast, stripping away surface heat off the Eastern Seaboard, and those arctic highs may be less moderated by recent winters, where waters were warm enough to moderate arctic highs pulling down from Canada.

The only region of the country I see having a warmer-than-normal winter may be the West, where a ridge may persist as the trough drops into the East; however, this may be one of those seasons where the amount of cold availability may be such that it overwhelms the lower 48 from coast to coast.