An early winter?

Modern cold period? Right on schedule - from The Bellingham Herald:

With this forecast, WSDOT is ‘getting ready for winter across the board‘
If you haven’t had your fill of the North Cascades high country this season, it might be too late.

Weekend snow could close the final stretch of Mount Baker Highway to Artist Point, a popular tourist vista and the trailhead for several mountain hikes.

Andrea Petrich, spokeswoman for the Washington state Department of Transportation, said the forecast might mean an early winter closure.

This is about a month early - Wow!  Last year, the road closed on October 28th.

Now, there is this from Seattle meteorologist Cliff Mass:

Major Snow Event in Montana and Alberta, With Light Snow in Our Mountains
Getting some light snow in September over the higher elevations of the Northwest is quite normal, but what is about to happen over western Montana and southwestern Alberta, will be unusual--with several feet falling at some locations on the eastern side of the Rockies during the next week.

And here in western Washington we will get a taste of much cooler temperatures and a dusting over our high terrain.

And the reason? Our sun - from Spaceweather:

A SUMMER WITHOUT SUNSPOTS
Could northern summer 2019 go down in history as "the summer without sunspots"? From June 21st until Sept 22nd, the sun was blank more than 89% of the time. During the entire season only 6 tiny sunspots briefly appeared, often fading so quickly that readers would complain to Spaceweather.com, "you've labeled a sunspot that doesn't exist!" (No, it just disappeared.) Not a single significant solar flare was detected during this period of extreme quiet.

This is a sign that Solar Minimum is underway and probably near its deepest point. For 2019 overall (January through September), the sun has been blank 72% of the time, comparable to annual averages during the century-class Solar Minimum of 2008 (73%) and 2009 (71%). The current Solar Minimum appears to be century-class as well, meaning you have to go back to the beginning of the 20th century to find lulls in solar activity this deep.

Contrary to the sound of it, "Solar Minimum" is not boring. During this phase of the solar cycle, the sun's magnetic field weakens, allowing cosmic rays to enter the solar system. This doses astronauts and possibly air travelers with extra radiation. The sun also dims, especially at extreme ultraviolet wavelengths, causing the upper atmosphere to cool and collapse. Space junk accumulates in Earth orbit as a result. Finally, streams of solar wind punch through the sun's weakening magnetic field, lashing Earth with gaseous material that can cause geomagnetic storms. (One such stream is due later this week on Sept. 27-28.)

Sunspots are an excellent proxy for solar output. The more sunspots, the more active our sun is and the hotter things get on Earth. We are coming out from under a period of very high solar activity (starting around 1914, really getting going in the 1950's through about 2000) and things are cooling off substantially. This is known as the Modern Maximum and has fuck-all to do with atmospheric Carbon Dioxide levels and all to do with solar activity.

What we are heading towards is very similar to other periods in recorded history - the Maunder Minimum, Dalton Minimum and the Spörer Minimum. Frost fairs anyone?