Worcester, MA, 18 February 2003. (Notice snow plow stuck in drift to rear)
Posted on 03/02/2003 8:04:46 AM PST by Indy Pendance
N E W Y O R K, March 1 — It's been brutal, the worst winter in seven years for 80 million people in the East.
It's quite a change from a year ago.
Last winter was so mild that New York City had only 4 inches of snow. This winter, the city has gotten 42 inches — and it may not be over yet.
"We got kind of softened to the idea that warm weather is what we're supposed to get in winter. Now we have a reality check this year with real winter conditions," said Vernon Kousky, a meteorologist with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.
More Than El Niño
People love to blame El Niño, that giant patch of warmth in the Pacific Ocean that sends storms rolling across the South.
But David Adamec, a climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., says there's more to it. He cites a phenomenon called the "North Atlantic Oscillation" — NAO for short.
"It sets up a situation where you've got a lot of moisture hitting cold air," he said, "and that is a recipe for snow."
The North Atlantic Oscillation is a swirling low pressure system off Greenland pulling cold air down from the Arctic. It mixes with a high-pressure system in the tropics pulling moist air up from the Caribbean.
The result is one snowstorm after another.
"The President's Day snowstorm, the whole set-up, the way that was set up, it is absolutely classic NAO," Adamec said. "It's what you'd expect the trending to be."
Scientists have been watching the pattern for years. The last time it was this strong was 1976, when the East suffered record cold.
"For the next week or so, a week to 10 days," Kousky said earlier this week, "we're pretty much going to be locked into this pattern of relatively colder-than-normal conditions and increased storminess in the eastern part of the U.S."
And it's still three weeks until spring.
It's refreshing to read an article about weather which actually talks about weather related reasons and history rather than the usual global warming/radical weather thing.
Worcester, MA, 18 February 2003. (Notice snow plow stuck in drift to rear)
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