Weather Update, Long and Short Term. Updated Saturday

[Saturday - What might become a storm here on Thursday is still over the Pacific.  It will not reach the west coast until Monday.  Projections show it going south of us, but we won't know until Monday or Tuesday.}

There has never really been any controversy about climate change.  There have simply been those who can understand the facts and those who make money by denying them.  So...

Short term:  NOAA has issued an El Niño Watch for the summer and fall of 2014, giving a 50% chance that an El Niño event will occur. 

What this means is that a drop in the easterly trade winds will result in a warmer than usual eastern Pacific Ocean, which might mean …

Fewer hurricanes will form in the Atlantic, they would be weaker, and would be more likely to drift away from the coast of the United States.

  

Precipitation patterns will change.  In particular, the southwest will be much wetter than normal, possibly ending the years-long drought or else washing everyone away.  For Connecticut, normal or slightly drier air.

As for temperature, Connecticut will be fairly normal, while the northwest is warmer and the Gulf Coast is colder.

Longer term (but not all that long!):  According the the US Navy, by 2030, the Arctic’s Northern Sea Route could be ice free and navigable for at least nine weeks each year. The Bering Strait could be ice free for a whopping 27 weeks a year.  

Also, new research from the Institute of Physics predicts that temperatures greater than the 2 °C global average will be experienced in Northern and Eastern Europe in winter and Southern Europe in summer; however, North-Western Europe -- specifically the UK -- will experience a lower relative warming (the shutdown of the Gulf Stream will refrigerate that area).

And researchers  are reporting the first hard evidence that malaria does -- as had long been predicted -- creep to higher elevations during warmer years.  So all of those cities that were built up high to avoid the mosquitoes….

And right now...!   The snow is melting, the birds that normally stay here all winter (chickadees, crows, woodpeckers) are pairing off and looking for nest sites, the buds on the maple trees are swelling....

And as of right this minute there is a 40% chance that there will be no school next Thursday.  Stay tuned for updates.