Saturday, July 19, 2014

My initial view of the coming 2014-15 winter season!

According to the experts,  we may be in for an El Ninõ style winter here in the US! That would mean warmer than normal temps to the north and wetter than normal stuff to the south. I'll go out on a limb and initially forecast a much colder than normal regime for just about everyone. I base this prediction of the lower than normal solar max we've been experiencing as well as the fact that the recent trend for the sun, over the past few years has been fewer and fewer sunspots! In past ages, the lack of sunspots has translated into cooler global temps!

Last fall, I called the Winter of 2013-14 pretty well: "Taking just those factors into consideration, (I've left out the Milanovitch Cycles for this discussion), I've come to feeling that this winter will be a little on the cold side, but still well within the historical averages. That said, (the fly in the ointment being CO2 and the anthropogenic climate forcing it causes), we may see some really weird winter storms this time around. Time will tell..." Click here for that forecast.

More to come....

Feel free to visit my Taney County Missouri weather site...

Friday, July 18, 2014

Was the July 2014 weather in the Midwest a bit unusual!

Not a single sunspot!
If you feel that this July has been a big odd, you'd be right. The month has been over three degrees cooler than normal, in addition t being on the dry side with just .41 inches of rain having fallen in my location near Forsyth Missouri in SW MO. Normally, this area would enjoy close to three and a half inches! (That's not to say that we won't catch up over the next two weeks that remain in the month)!


The sun has likewise been acting a little bit strange with July 17 being the first sun-spotless day in almost three years (the last time this happened was on August 14, 2011)! Sunspots have actually been harder to come by even though we are in the midst of the eleven year solar max!

So, what's this mean. Probably nothing. Although there are some, like myself, who feel that there is a trend here that when combined with lower than normal sunspots could portend a hard and colder than normal winter for the 2014-15 season!