El Nino

 There will be a rain dance Friday night, weather permitting.

                                                                                  George Carlin

 

 Unless you’ve been comatose at the bottom of Carlsbad cavern the last couple months, you would have noticed there is a unusual weather pattern called El Nino taking place that well might wreck havoc on the United States this winter...possibly. El Nino, or The Baby, occurs when there is an unusual rise in water temperatures in the central or eastern Pacific ocean causing such phenomena as droughts in Africa, rain showers in the Peruvian Atacombas desert, Typhoons in Thailand & the heartbreak of psoriasis, scientists believe. The Pacific this year has warmed nearly an incredible 10 degrees causing flamingos to fly north & penguins to molt.

 Luckily for the layman such as us there are research scientists such as Dr. Jerry Meehl to explain the situation;

 “Simply put,” says Dr. Meehl. “The Climatic Optimum of 1041 datacomp, combined with Sunspot Minima, in the Maunder Minimum, predictably causing isostatic rebound of the sea level, proportionally & intermittently with the probabilistic nature of a high pressure are coincided with a low-pressure funneled into a downstream trough creating an upper system cold air mass & -- viola...snow.”

 Perhaps this explanation went over mayor Wellington Webbs head as he stood smiling amid a fleet of snowplows on the Friday Oct. 24 Denver Post front page exclaiming “Bring on El Nino. We are ready.’

 You’ll recall there was no sat Oct. 25 Denver Post as said city was virtually paralyzed over night by 51 inches of what Dr. Meehl calls ....snow.

 Even the director of our new very expensive airport DIA was caught with his pants down, ‘shooting ducks in South Dakota or something,’ & failed to even check in at work where there just happened to be 3000 stranded travelers without food or drink.

 Both men would be well advised to listen up to their highly trained weatherman who as you know have had the finest schooling & millions of dollars worth of state of the art equipment to give us such dead on  predictions as this: Dr. Klaus Weickmann “There really is a probabilistic nature when factors come together to produce a system like this Colorado storm. There is no doubt, we believe, that the tropical rainfall off the international dateline two weeks ago rearranged the jet stream bringing warm air north which will cause possible conditions of biblical proportions, possibly...

“Horse Hockey,” said fellow meteorologist  Chad Grimmestad, “You can’t really say that any particular storm occurred or not because of El Nino, the best we can say is there is a tendency to speculate on a physical connection between a particular storm & El Nino...

 “Why you sniveling four eyed twit...”countered Dr. Weickmann “There is little doubt...

 “Oh yeah Dr. Know it all, you don’t know your ionosphere from Uranus...”

“YOU MISERABLE SYNOPTIC DWEEB...”

 Anyway, Our weather bureau as we know it today was formed on Feb. 9 1870. The first meteorologist, lacking today’s modern equipment, used the ‘wet finger’ approach. In other words he licked his finger, stepped outside & raised it to the wind giving us a fairly accurate account of what was happening at that moment. Of course predicting weather became more sophisticated using techniques such as the ‘noticing nature’ techneich. It was observed for instance if the corn husks were abnormally thick...bad winter. If the squirrels were storing every thing from nuts to soup, if the bears were hitch-hiking south, & the ever popular woolly bear caterpillar had unusually thick bands of brown & black. The later system was used successfully into the 1960s upon which time the Government Weather Bureau sent up odd silver weather balloons. One of these balloons crashed in Roswell New Mexico scarring the Be-Jesus out of local residents & igniting wild rumors of a UFO invasion. The balloon crash actually turned out to be a boon for the local economy, which until that time had pretty much existed on prairie dog shoots....but that’s another story.

 To better understand exactly what were dealing with lets start at the beginning.

 What is weather?

 Weather is caused by air masses moving across the land & water. The main source of energy for weather is the sun. Land absorbs radiant energy from the sun faster than water does & also gives it up quicker; therein lies the reason for most of our weather.

 Simple.

 Of course there are some other factors evolving the earth’s rotation & the polar caps, but this is all you need to know for now.

 It is those ‘other factors’ however that continue to confound our forecasters. Basically what this years predictions boil down to is that this years El Ninos pattern is setting up to be suspiciously like the 1982 El Nino which as you’ll remember was not only a dynamite powder year here but,  unfortunately caused 8 billion dollars worth of worldwide damage & killed over 2000 people....but hey who cares about that eh?...as long as the North Face is open huh?

 The 82 El Nino caused record cold in Chicago where 250 died, 15 inches of rain in California, closing the Golden Gate, 140 miles per hour winds in Boulder, 24 inches of snow over night in Denver, 12 feet of snow in Tahoe, Barry Manilow’s ‘Mandy’. & the worst droughts in African history.

 Will this year be a repeat  of ‘the Baby’s;’ 82 tantrum.

 For that answer let us turn to the only reliable source for weather predictions: The Farmers Almanac.

 As Ethan would say; here’s the synopsis: The winter season looks like it will be a nasty one, even by Rocky Mountain standards. November will be relatively mild with above average temperatures & below average precipitation, (that would be snow, for you below average weather students). HOWEVER....the period from November through March will be 4 degrees colder than normal, with above normal snowfall. A mid-December snowfall will bring a white Christmas. Widespread snowstorms will occur the first part of Jan, the first of Feb. the first part of March. HOWEVER... The largest of these storms will hit the middle of April & again the first of May. April & May will be colder than a frogs belly so book now to your favorite beach.

 And that, radical powder-hounds, you can take to the bank.

 

 next week: The truth about the Ozone...practically