Foot's Forecast | Weather Intelligence

WHAT DO YOU EXPECT?...
IT'S A GLOBAL WARMING WINTER

What else can I say...but welcome to your future. For those of us who love frolicking in snow and seeing the sun rise and set over a crisp white landscape sparkling with little twinkly crystals…you’re in the wrong country from now on. The media loves to blame our recent warm weather on El Nino, and that’s a nice easy answer for a less-than-patient public. It is also the wrong answer in my opinion. Previous El Nino winters which had readings very close to this year did not produce the long warm spells we have seen across the country. A close match for current conditions is the winter of 02-03, which featured a weak to moderate El Nino ( a seasonal warming of Equatorial waters in the East Pacific of .5 to 1.5 degrees C over a period of several months), but instead of weeks of warm weather, my school district (Baltimore County, Maryland) had 9 snow days. If we use that some unscientific data set, my district has seen our snowday count the past 5 years drop from 9 to 4 in 2004-05 to just 1 last year. Do you think there is any correlation between that and the well-known fact that the important “September Arctic sea ice” count has decreased every year for the past 4 years. Each September NOAA makes a comprehensive assessment of the amount, thickness and extent of floating Arctic sea ice. Each successive year since 2001, the measure of this ice has decreased, which means this September, there was less Arctic sea ice than last September, and so on. Two images from the Earth Observatory System Satellite:

The theory as it relates to snow cover and weather in the United States is simple. As the amount of ice in the Arctic circle decreases, it leaves behind a larger and larger area of darker water, which continues to absorb more of the sun’s energy. This in turn warms the water, the adjacent coastal areas as well as the low atmospheric levels above the water. In fact, since 1970 there has been a decrease of roughly 670,000 THOUSAND square miles of Arctic sea ice. Don’t you find that significant? Wouldn’t it seem plausible that with the Arctic losing more and more ice each year, it becomes increasingly difficult for the Ice cap to provide the “cooling effect” it does on the planetary climate patterns. Continental Polar air masses (read: High Pressure) in turn take longer to become the customary “Cold Canadian Highs” that charge southward in our winter because there is less ice providing a cooling effect on the air. The air simply takes longer to cool down, and the effect in increasing, perhaps geometrically.

So what WE in the U.S. are seeing is the results of that effect: A prolonged fall interspersed with warm spells, and a significant delay in the traditional arrival time of winter-like weather. Since the Arctic is not providing the influx of cold air from the Northern jet stream, and El Nino is weak to moderate, IT becomes the more dominant factor, but NOT because El Nino is simply "so strong it is controlling the weather pattern." My take on this pattern is that the lack of cold air has ALLOWED El Nino to take a larger role for a longer period of time because the customary "clash" of air masses this time of year has been delayed for at least a month.

OKAY FINE, OUR WEATHER IS BEING INFLUENCED BY GLOBAL WARMING. THANKS FOR CLEARING THAT UP, AS IF I DIDN'T KNOW. So what about the snow already?

Oh yeah, I was going to do some analysis of that on here sometime. Here it is:

Storm # 1: Projected for the January 22-25 time frame. Computer models continue to advertise some kind of Tennessee Valley system moving to the coast, which a moderately cold High placed to the north. Not the perfect setup when you consider the NAO is going Negative and that will tend to push storms more to the south. The following set of graphics are three models that indicate what is anticipated for 7AM January 22. First,the GFS:

You can see the 540 thickness line (a good indicator of the general rain/snow line) is right over DC. Sorry Boston, this one will more than likely miss you altogether. Next the JMA:

What's significant about these two maps is they both show a storm reaching the Mid-Atlantic coast fairly juicy with a potential for rapid development once there. The culprit for this lies with the sea surface temperatures in that same area.