What's in store on the weather front?

Just in case everyone needs a heads up, it's now almost fall! The official start will be September the 22^nd. What that means is that pretty soon, the trees will turn colors and then the leaves will begin to drop, leaving stark and bare skeletons behind. To me that's a little sad. I love all the greenery that is the backdrop of all that I do for most of the year, and I hold a grudge against nature when she turns everything brown. (Did you know that the color the sun puts out the strongest is the color green! It's the last color to fade to gray when the suns sets each day)....

As you might guess, fall also means that the sun provides a little bit less warmth as the days become shorter and shorter, until around December the 22^st, when we arrive at the winter solstice and so experience the longest night and shortest day of the year. Before that point arrives, our warm and balmy days of late summer will gradually turn into the cold harshness of winter. all of which starts happening right about now...

So, what's in store for this year? Will it be a typical fall and winter or will things get perhaps a little bit dicey with a either a warmer or colder than normal regime than what we are used to. Certainly, what with global climate change, all the talk of the town, we might expect it to be warmer each winter as the levels of carbon dioxide approach and then surpass the 400 part per billion level (we are currently at 393.05 according to the Keeling Curve). Yet, scientists insist that during periods of true climate change, the one constant is that there is no constant. Rather, they tells us to expect weather that might well swing wildly from one extreme to the other with no discernible pattern, rhyme or reason. And maybe that makes some sense, after all. Our planet's day-to-day weather is the result of an extremely complex interplay of forces working on a grand scale. And much of the input of raw energy into that system comes from a star we call the sun. Her constant outpouring of life giving heat and energy is what makes life possible and is what drives unimaginably huge forces at play on earth. No one man or women knows or can predict the end result of the interplay of solar insolence, volcanism, green house gases and ocean currents on the coming season. The best they can do is to tell us all to buckle up, for it's bound to be a wild ride no matter what!