Arrgghh... Bad pun - sorry.
The winter this year is unusual over a very large area - the CONUS (COntinental United States)
Why? La Nada. A three-fer:
First - from Seattle station KING-5 (October 2013):
'La Nada' could mean big Northwest storms - or not
The weather in the Northwest this winter could be very bad - or not so much - because once again we're in a neutral pattern - not an El Nino or La Nina.
The neutral, or "La Nada" event, has persisted since the spring of 2012 and models suggest this pattern will continue into the spring of 2014, according to scientists with the National Weather Service�s Climate Prediction Center.
"Without an El Nino or La Nina signal present, other, less predictable, climatic factors will govern fall, winter and spring weather conditions," said climatologist Bill Patzert of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "Long-range forecasts are most successful during El Nino and La Nina episodes. The 'in between' ocean state, La Nada, is the dominant condition, and is frustrating for long-range forecasters. It's like driving without a decent road map -- it makes forecasting difficult."
Second - from NASA (June 2011):
What's to Blame for Wild Weather? "La Nada"
Record snowfall, killer tornadoes, devastating floods: There's no doubt about it. Since Dec. 2010, the weather in the USA has been positively wild. But why?
Some recent news reports have attributed the phenomenon to an extreme "La Nina," a band of cold water stretching across the Pacific Ocean with global repercussions for climate and weather. But NASA climatologist Bill Patzert names a different suspect: "La Nada."
"La Nina was strong in December," he says. "But back in January it pulled a disappearing act and left us with nothing - La Nada - to constrain the jet stream. Like an unruly teenager, the jet stream took advantage of the newfound freedom--and the results were disastrous."
La Nina and El Nino are opposite extremes of a great Pacific oscillation. Every 2 to 7 years, surface waters across the equatorial Pacific warm up (El Nino) and then they cool down again (La Nina). Each condition has its own distinct effects on weather.
The winter of 2010 began with La Nina conditions taking hold. A "normal" La Nina would have pushed the jet stream northward, pushing cold arctic air (one of the ingredients of severe weather) away from the lower US. But this La Nina petered out quickly, and no El Nino rose up to replace it. The jet stream was free to misbehave.
"By mid-January 2011, La Nina weakened rapidly and by mid-February it was 'adios La Nina,' allowing the jet stream to meander wildly around the US. Consequently the weather pattern became dominated by strong outbreaks of frigid polar air, producing blizzards across the West, Upper Midwest, and northeast US."
Nothing that we did. No CO2 emissions. Just the weather on a variable planet orbiting a variable star...
Third - from The Oregonian (October 2013):
What will Oregon's winter be like? It's a La Nada year, forecasters say
Want to know what the coming winter will be like?
You could get in a boat and travel thousands of miles west into the Pacific Ocean and take the ocean's temperature. Turns out, sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific have a huge impact on not only weather in the Pacific Northwest, but across the U.S. and even globally.
Or you could go to the 21st annual Winter Weather Conference Saturday at OMSI, where three forecasters will make their three-month predictions for the upcoming winter.
So the boffins knew about this about six months ago -- the indicators were there and now, people are surprised at the wandering jet stream, the polar vortices and are blaming all of this on Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming and not the weather.
The political force on this issue is still strong enough to override the actual boots-on-the-ground measurement and scientific force. Time will tell though and people with a good memory will remember who voted to support the theory and who voted to support the facts.
