Monday 11/24/14

Greetings and welcome!

We had some rain last night, but it wasn’t as bad as expected. Most of the heaviest stuff stayed south and east. It didn’t do much today until mid-afternoon when a light drizzle or an occasional ice pellet cloud would pass by.

112414aBy sunset it had satrted snowing lightly, and by 5 we had about 1/2” in Wausaukee. At 6 when I got home I had almost 2” on the front step. When I stepped out back at 7:15 I measured 3” and maybe a little more in spots. It is still snowing and blowing pretty good, I wouldn’t be surprised if it went 4-5” before it was over.

The ride home was pretty wicked. The powdery snow was coming down fast enough that it was hard to see more than about 50′. The wind was whipping it around too. With no plow piles, fog lines, or other guidance, it would be easy to loose one’s way and hit a ditch or miss a corner. It was slippery stuff too.

Sunday night after sunset we started to get some light rain and the fog really thickened up. It was sub-50 foot visibility in spots. That was some ugly driving conditions too.

The weekend didn’t go well for us at all. Sunday’s near 50s and wind, plus the rain and fog, really took down the snow and ice cover. I still had a compact layer of slushy snow and ice here in Silver Cliff, but in Wausaukee they lost most of their snow. One spot even had the top inch or so of ground soft. The ice on the lakes and rivers took a hit too. The weekend definitely took some of the edge off of our head start on winter.

Right now our normal high temperature is 36. The forecast that I am seeing on the TV weather channel out of Green Bay is showing only Saturday coming close with 34. Otherwise we are looking at mid-20s Tuesday and Wednesday, and low 20s Thursday and Friday. At least we are on the right path.

I gotta tell ya, I am a little nervous about our El Nino. There has been a jump in temperatures in the key regions recently. In the colorful image that big red stripe along the equator is our El Nino. We generally want to see that below +1ºC. As you can see, it is there. I also don’t like the slope and trend of the line in the graph.

112414b 112414c

You can find these graphs and more here, http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/ocean-page/oceanic-oscillation-page and you can click through the graphs to see them at their sources.

I don’t know how this is going to play out. Our weather has been mostly below normal for temperature, and above normal for precip. We could moderate that twenty degrees below normal stuff a little, but generally it would be a favorable trend for winter.

Squib pointed out a while ago that just because the weather trend is positive now, that doesn’t mean that it will be when the season rolls around. Yeah that rings a bell.. an El Nino year with a very promising fall and a disappointing winter. I also remember one El Nino year about 99 or Y2K where I was cutting firewood at 55 degrees in December, and one where we always got the bitter cold and anywhere but here got the snow.

The name El Nino translates to The Boy Child, and is a reference to Christmas when the effect would become apparent. We still have some time. I am not sure how this ends, but I am a little nervous about where it is going.

That is it for me tonight. Have a good night and thank you for visiting!

RJB