Quote:
Originally Posted by ITD
Thanks CLA, interesting stuff, otta keep me busy for a while and hopefully out of the SL debacle going on the other forum.  Would be nice if our so called unbiased media would report some of that stuff. Oh well, thanks again. |
No problem; happy web surfing! Our media is getting worse all the time, feeding us total fluff while the real stories are going unreported until they reach a point where they needlessly catch us by surprise. On May 2, a volcano erupted in Chile (it's still erupting) and the geologists generally agree that it has the ability to explode powerfully enough to duplicate Mt. Pinatubo's effects on the global climate, or even Mt. Tambora's. On the day the geologists discovered that, it wasn't on the news at all.
I agree with Chipj29 in that there has probably been a lot of "cherry picking" of data, that the climate does go in cycles, and I don't know any more than that. Recently an AP article described a study that concluded there is no link between global warming and stronger hurricanes. Immediately it made sense to me, because all big storms are engines that operate on a mixture of hot and cold. Heat is the gasoline but cold represents the air intake. Take out either element, and you've got a less-powerful engine.
Even if the trend towards cooling down continues to affect us this summer, take heart: The notorious "year without a summer" during which it snowed in New England also gave many summery days. The cold fronts kept knocking on the door like cops at a frat party.
That's what seems to be happening this spring. This warm air we're about to get has more cold air behind it. Currently in the Rocky Mountains, snow is now falling in western Montana, Wyoming, northern Utah, and Arizona. It's not just falling at the mountaintops, either. West Yellowstone, where tourist season is beginning, is forecast to get up to 3 feet of new snow above 7,000 feet (not much higher than valley level.) Salt Lake City has 1-2 inches of snow in today's forecast with 3-7 inches in the hills to the east of town. Flagstaff, Arizona is expecting 2-4 inches of snow tomorrow. This cold air will moderate as it moves east, so I don't expect we'll have that much of a cool-down, although
NH hikers beware: Our northern summits probably aren't done with winter weather, and they don't recognize Memorial Day or any other "start of summer."
Wind forecast for this weekend:
IG, I think we'll see generally northwest winds from now until Saturday night. they will generally trend lighter as we end up between the cold weather system and the upcoming warm one. On Sunday the warm one will take hold, resulting in a wind shift to southwest. That will gradually increase from late Sunday into Monday.
Revised temp forecast: I'm thinking 70 on Saturday and probably a little cooler out on the lake, where the water temp has been struggling to rise. Sunday we'll be around 75 with a few scattered locations hitting 80. Monday I'll go for 77 with a handful of locations low 80s, and a chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon.
Extended hope? Looking at the long range, the national weather pattern shows signs that it wants to repeat itself for the upcoming week... cold air will kill our party late Monday, but will touch off the equal-opposite reaction of heat surging northward into the western US. The heat builds, moves east (again) and finally we get a little piece of it (again) next weekend. If this pattern were to materialize and continue, we'd have cool, showery weeks with warm, sunny weekends. Are we lucky enough to score such a pattern? No guarantees... time will tell... but I just thought I'd share what I think I see as a possibility in the long-range.
I just had a happy thought for the day... with gas prices keeping many a powerboat on the mooring, has anyone considered a return to sailing? Oversized sailboats mapped all the oceans long before there was ever a powerboat. Seems to me that if these cold fronts keep coming, we'll have plenty of northwest wind to run along the NW-SE alignment of Lake Winni. Makes it easy to go with the wind to Alton, or zig-zag all the way to Center Harbor.