The Super La Nina and the Coming Winter (Things might get real cold.)

At my work, we’re particularly wary of the upcoming winter season. I work at a company that takes people to and from the Seattle airport. Two years ago, just before Christmas, we had an unexpected major snowfall. It was bad enough that we had major trouble getting up into the hilly areas around Bellevue, Redmond, and the east side, not to mention downtown Seattle. (Someone once said “Seattle must be a city of destiny. Why else would they build one at a 45-degree angle?”)

We had to cut back our service to just the scheduled stops we could get to, as well as designated areas that didn’t normally have scheduled stops. It turned our business on it’s ear for about three days, and produced some of the nastiest, most mean and profane phone calls I’ve ever had the displeasure to receive. Seattleites are normally passive-aggressive, but if you mess with their travel plans, they become gutter-crawlin’, venom-spittin’ MEAN. I mean, you should’ve heard some of the threats we received. Some of my fellow agents left work in tears from the abuse they were getting.

We created a new ‘snow-plan’ after that, and it’s posted on our website, so if anyone has any questions what is going to happen should we encounter those conditions again, they have no excuses like “nobody told me”. And, if the weather-guessers predictions hold true, we’re going to be using that snow plan this winter. I am NOT looking forward to this.

spraying with Roundup—

Instead read the label for products that are for woody brush-different product. I use it on trash trees, spraying the leaves, waiting a couple of weeks til dead- it takes out roots and all. Then I clip it near the ground and that is that. This kind of product is labeled for poison ivy.

I also sometimes cut a small trash tree, immediately (before the small trunk can seal over) brush it with full strength brush killer- wear heavy rubber gloves when you do this-that will kill down to the root also.

Actually, it’s been going on now (colder temps) for more than a year.

I always save my monthly electric bills from Puget Power.

Each month, it shows average temperature for the month, and the average temp for the same month last year.

I believe every month this year was colder than the same month last year, and every month last year was cooler than the same month in 2008.

I’ll have to dig them out and maybe do some stats...

I made a spreadsheet just to see what I had. It gave me 45 months of continuous data. Because I don’t have the stuff from 2006, I only got 37 months of Delta (this months temp versus same month last year).

Am I seeing global warming?

Well, not really. 37 months of delta added up to a total delta of -18 degrees F. So it would average out for three years to be, each month, about 1/2 degree cooler than the same month last year.

Highlights:
Spring 2008 (Apr, May, Jun) was quite a bit warmer than 2007 with a total delta for the 3 months of 14, or about 4.6 degrees per day. Spring of 2009 came back and probably ended up averaging out by being cooler than 2008, with a delta of -14 for the 3 months.
Winter 2008 and winter 2009 was about 2 degrees cooler than previous years. But winter 2010 really warmed up with a delta over 2009 of 15, or about 5 degrees F per day. After that, it cooled alot, with the delta for the next 5 months being -15, or 3 degrees per day for spring/early summer 2010.
The only thing that gave us any kind of summer at all was Sept, which was up a whopping 8 degrees per day over Sep of 2009.

So besides from a warm winter, probably because of El Nino, and a warm Sept., this year was cooler than usual.

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