MikJournal Monday 08/31/15

Good Monday morning. I always thought that expression was an oxymoron, never anything good about a Monday morning if you have to get up and go to work after a hopefully restful weekend or long vacation. Blah.

Anyway, the last day of meteorological summer has 3 tropical systems that are churning the waters in the Pacific. And I do mean churn. Cat 3 and 4 hurricanes that appear are going to miss the Hawaiian islands, except for some breezy conditions and high surf along with some heavy rain this week.

Also, I've added another new item to the Mik's Piks part of my blog called, "Global Hazards". I invite you to use the program to help you appreciate that weather and other natural hazards are not just an American thing. What may be happening in one part of the globe may eventually affect us here in the United States.

The program highlights up to the minute hazards that include tropical systems, drought, flooding, wildfires, volcanoes, earthquakes, biomedical concerns, extreme heat, and so forth. With El Nino well underway, you can see how parts of the globe are faring, especially as we get nearer to the winter months in the Northern Hemisphere.

We can then gage how strong the El Nino may be. For example, just because the western United States may not get the unusual rainfall that the 1997/1998 El Nino produced does not mean that some part of the globe is not being affected on a historical level. We'll need to wait and see how it all plays out.

As you may have seen in one of my recent posts, I'll be paying close attention to the weather in Glasgow Montana. During the December of 1997, Glasgow did not record a temperature below zero for the entire month. That had never happened before since records were kept. The strong El Nino of '97/98 was partially to blame.

It will be difficult to tell how this El Nino will compare to that one. After all, the water temperatures off of the western United States today are much different than they were in 1997. Further, California was not undergoing a historical drought in and preceding the years 1997.

We have been locked in a similar pattern for the last few years. I expect that the Polar regions will experience a warmer than normal winter. Often, that leads to an Arctic Oscillation signal that will go negative because of the less than impressive pressure differences. The Polar Jet winds will weaken at times and, as has happened the past few winters now, the Jet will buckle and send a plume of very cold air down into the United States, you know it by now as the Polar Vortex, oh my.

Although the cold snap will be just that, not a prolonged icebox, the cold air that spills into the States may well interact with an active southern jet that may produce crippling winter storms for some. Where that sets up, nobody knows. Is a crippling storm or two a definite possibility? Not definite. Will Glasgow Montana remain above zero degrees for December? I am not counting on it. There are other 'measuring sticks' out there for determining how bad the upcoming winter and El Nino could become, and those are not just here in the United States.

I'll be talking more about how other parts of the globe have fared during moderate to strong El Nino years. Perhaps the worst part of El Nino may affect locations outside of the United States this time around. Keep checking back.

Have a good Monday, whatever that means.

MS