"THAT'S ALL FOLKS!"
-Porky Pig from the oldtime Saturday morning cartoons
Put it this way, wasn't it nice that your underperformer of a winter at least ended on a snowy note? While I did promise those of you in the Mid-Atlantic a "Very Fabulous February" ...you could say it did work out that way for students and teachers hoping to get some time off. However, it is time to break the sad climatological and meteorological truth... looking at long range patterns (going out beyond 144 hours from now) indicate there is little in the way of a similar snow event. There is the rare occurrance of a March 13, 1993 or March 20, 1958...but the atmosphere's teleconnective signals do not point toward anything of that magnitude the remainder of this winter. To clarify from a geographical standpoint...south of I-80, I believe significant snow for the season has ended, except for the Laurel Highlands of western and central Pennsylvania. There remains the possibility of an inch here or there, but another event such as this one looks highly unlikely given reduced availability of Arctic air moving forward in time. So as you bask in the glow of have one more day to see snow out your window, here are two photos submitted by readers in the Baltimore Metro area:
Courtesy of Julee in the Hereford Zone of northern Baltimore County, Maryland
Courtesy of Mr. S from Anne Arundel County, Maryland
Forecasting and analysis of the weather pattern will continue into mid-March, and then the focus of this website shifts to the mundane and non-controversial topics of climate change and pandemic influenza in the ramp up to tropical cyclone season. I can give you a tidbit of that by saying that El Nino is now trending to neutral and we may see La Nina by mid summer, I have a sneaking feeling this will be a bad year for hurricanes and could resemble 2004 or 2005 in terms of frequency and severity of storms. But much research on that awaits me, so if you want more information on that topic, please read over Dr. William Gray's preliminary forecast for the 2007 season.
