Wednesday, February 8, 2012

A hobbled together spring 2012 weather forecast!


After looking through some of the technical jargon from the National Weather Service, I was able to come up with a few snippets of information concerning the educated 'guessing' that will make up part of the long range forecast for North America this coming spring and summer.

Two of the large driving forces for weather, the ENSO or El Nina Southern Oscillation and the AO or Arctic Oscillation seem to be change dynamically as we head into early spring. While we have been living under the effects of La Nina for some time now, that appears to be weakening. This may have the effect of bringing wetter conditions along the northwest and northeastern coasts while dryer conditions will prevail across much of the south.

In addition the Arctic Oscillation which had been strongly negative the past two winters has shifted to positive earlier this winter and the trend of warmer weather for the states should then continue. Just these two factors along would imply that southwest Missouri can expect to see dry, but warmer than normal conditions as we head into the spring months.

I'm not sure if anything has been released officially at this point and want to remind my readers that I am not a meteorologist.

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