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The rediculously resilient ridge of high pressure that has blocked storms from coming in to California and the Pacific north west for the past few years causes the jet stream to flow up towards the Artic circle, it picks up the bitter cold air there as it plunges back down towards the East coast. When our high pressure block releases its grip on the west coast, storms are allowed to flow their normal track without picking up the artic cold. So, our high pressure ridge that is causing our drought winters is causing your bitter snowy winters. This resilient ridge may be tied to the warmer water that is off our coast, waters up to 12º warmer then normal.
The rediculously resilient ridge of high pressure that has blocked storms from coming in to California and the Pacific north west for the past few years causes the jet stream to flow up towards the Artic circle, it picks up the bitter cold air there as it plunges back down towards the East coast. When our high pressure block releases its grip on the west coast, storms are allowed to flow their normal track without picking up the artic cold. So, our high pressure ridge that is causing our drought winters is causing your bitter snowy winters. This resilient ridge may be tied to the warmer water that is off our coast, waters up to 12º warmer then normal.
Yes, it is. From the incorrect ("It's caused by sun spots.") to the ignorant ("Some global warming, eh? ), most of the explanations have been rather mediocre, haven't they?
Ok if you want to get nit picky, slightly over half the states are "near average" or "below average" and slightly under half the states are above average, according to that map. I would question whether it is really accurate. I live in a "near average" state and there were 14 days in January that were average or slightly above average...most of the remaining days and almost all of February was WELL below average. The last two years have been below average during most months (including the summer). I don't buy that most states had daily warm records in February.
yes, it is. From the incorrect ("it's caused by sun spots.") to the ignorant ("some global warming, eh? ), most of the explanations have been rather mediocre, haven't they?
The rediculously resilient ridge of high pressure that has blocked storms from coming in to California and the Pacific north west for the past few years causes the jet stream to flow up towards the Artic circle, it picks up the bitter cold air there as it plunges back down towards the East coast. When our high pressure block releases its grip on the west coast, storms are allowed to flow their normal track without picking up the artic cold. So, our high pressure ridge that is causing our drought winters is causing your bitter snowy winters. This resilient ridge may be tied to the warmer water that is off our coast, waters up to 12º warmer then normal.
Great explanation, thanks! What's it going to take to reverse the pattern? How long can we expect it to go on like this? I'm not sure that can be predicted but is there a precedent where this has happened before for several years until something changed? Temperatures fluctuate all the time but I've never seen a pattern persist for this long.
I'm also curious as to what caused the mild winters a few years back in the central/eastern US if you or anyone has an explanation for that. I remember it being around 80 degrees for two weeks in mid March! I had never seen anything like that prior to that or since (normal high is mid 40s that time of year)
All those events listed, along with the cold this past winter, were only able to occur due to the effects of the Cold Epoch that is affecting the Eastern US; the phenomenon perturbs atmospheric conditions such that cold air can move in easily to the US than it otherwise is able to, causing the occurrence of record cold temps, skewing the winter temps of the Eastern US (both average and records) towards looking colder than they really are.
At a natural climactic state, the Eastern US is very warm and stable for its latitude; the tropical mangrove tree, for instance, ranges across the entire coastline of the South, farther away from the equator than even on the continent of Africa. In addition, the South has native large reptilians (both crocodiles, and alligators); it takes a naturally warm climate year-round to be even able to support such large cold-blooded organisms. The Eastern US also has warm enough conditions to support the ranging of species of tropical origin into the region, even as far north as the Coastal Northeast, and parts of the Midwest; these include ocelots, jaguars (warm enough climactic conditions exist even into Pennsylvania), flamingoes, armadillos, opossums, pythons, neotropic cormorants, fire ants, jacanas, coral reefs, peccaries, spider monkeys, Africanized honey bees, various species of parrots, etc. These ecological structures of the Eastern US in themselves destroy the idea that such cold is typical for the region; if the cold was typical, then the structures would not be able to exist whatsoever, but that clearly isn't the case, as we can see by extensive mangrove forests on the East Coast. Freeze overs, like that listed for Galveston Bay, and Chesapeake Bay, would destroy the entire ecosystems within the bays. It clearly is not natural for such areas to freeze like that, proving that such past freezes only happened due to an abnormal event on the scale of the Cold Epoch.
Great explanation, thanks! What's it going to take to reverse the pattern? How long can we expect it to go on like this? I'm not sure that can be predicted but is there a precedent where this has happened before for several years until something changed? Temperatures fluctuate all the time but I've never seen a pattern persist for this long.
I'm also curious as to what caused the mild winters a few years back in the central/eastern US if you or anyone has an explanation for that. I remember it being around 80 degrees for two weeks in mid March! I had never seen anything like that prior to that or since (normal high is mid 40s that time of year)
We had a drought in the 70's that was much like this one, it lasted three years, then broke, we had another in the late 80's early 90's and it broke in 92, it too lasted three years, it culminated in the Oakland/Berkeley Hills fire. We had some good years of rain after that. Our last real winter was in 2006 and each year has been warmer and drier. This year looked to be returning to a normal pattern with good rain in the beginning of December, but the ridge built up and the ocean warmed up off our coast to temperatures normally seen down near Monterey. That warm water is helping to keep the high pressure ridge in place. For the ridge to give way, the water needs to return to cooler temperatures. That persistant body of warm water gave us our hottest summer on record with hardly any typical Humboldt fog to speak of and tomatoes growing at the coast. We hit 96 in May, hit 90 twice in October and had many days hit the mid and upper 80's, with most days hitting the 70's and that is unprecedented for us here on the far north coast. Eureka reported having temperatures between 6 and 12º above normal average and only one day hit 59º, a normal summer here would have been 50% of the days foggy, maybe one day hitting 80, a few in the 70's, mostly 60's and a lot of 50's. This winter we only got three days of light frost, normal is about 2 to 3 weeks of frosty days.
But if that were the case, how would one explain the extremely mild winters that took place 2-3 years ago? One would think it would be a gradual cool down, not go from one extreme to the other. I enjoyed those two winters but there was definitely a price to be paid for it.
If I remember right, I do not have my books out right now, when you were getting a warm winter, we on the north coast were gettling slammed by cold artic air sliding down along the coast from Alaska, we got snow right down to the coast at the beach. The ocean off our coast was frigid, in the mid to upper 40's that year, had lots of fog the prior summer. 2006 was our last real Humboldt style winter with 89 inches here in McKinleyville on the coast.
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), most of the explanations have been rather mediocre, haven't they?
