Winter Forecast Smackdown '09

The Farmers' Almanac is predicting a cold winter, while the National Weather Service is calling for warmer-than-normal temperatures across much of the country.

Umpiring the Hatfeilds and McCoys

(HuffPo)

"The almanac's forecast, however, is at odds with the National Weather Service, which is calling for warmer-than-normal temperatures across much of the country because of an El Nino system in the tropical Pacific Ocean, said Mike Halpert, deputy director of the NOAA Climate Prediction Center in Camp Springs, Md."

— Clarke Canfield, AP

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Numbing cold... the Almanac says... in certain places.

Plumes of extreme rising heat in, say, California's central valley, cause thermal troughs that pull extremely cold air in at the periphery of the hot column of rising air, leaving San Francisco relatively well-air conditioned and foggy in the cold air sucked in from the Pacific Ocean... while the central valley is broiling.



Standard models of convection explain the so-called conflict between the Farmer's Almanac and the NOAA.

Where there is unusual cold, there is likely to be unusual heat, somewhere, pulling the cold air in. For instance, the almanacs' prediction of a dry winter in the southeast probably means heat and drought further south, where a thermal trough caused by rising heat is pulling cold air down from Canada, into the Great Lakes and the Midwest.

"This winter, the 200-page publication says it'll be cool and snowy in the Northeast, bitterly cold and dry in the Great Lakes states, and cold and snowy across the North Central states.

"It says the Northwest will be cool with average precipitation, the Southwest will be mild and dry, the South Central states will be cold and wet, and the Southeast will be mild and dry."

For another example, if we are to see hotter temperatures from global warming, we will also see especially colder temperatures on the periphery of hot spots, even as the hot spots grow hotter and wider over the years. Uncharacteristically cold temperatures will be experienced on the periphery of uncharacteristically hot temperatures.

It's standard convection, to be expected, but those stuck in that cold will be scoffing at the lunacy of some kind of climate change conspiracy. All they know is that THEY are cold, while droughts elsewhere drive the price of food skyward. The heat is too far away for them to relate it to their current condition, and they will be apoplectic, like a 9/12 birther-brigadier standing before his death panel, but it's the god Physics... equal and opposite reaction and all of that... not a conspiracy theory.

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