It seems a bit too early to be putting much faith in models, but there is a lot of murmuring going on about the fact some models are showing a “warming event” in the stratosphere in early February. Here is the current condition, with the Pole cold and warming around the periphery:
And here is the forecast for February 5:
These are anomaly maps, and show the Stratosphere over the Pole swinging from twenty degrees below normal to over twenty-five degrees above normal.
This “warming” expands the stratosphere, which means it presses down on the troposphere beneath. The cold air at the Pole is, in a manner of speaking, gets squished south. And who is to the south? We are. What we shall then see, (if this happens), is that the “warming event” is not the slightest bit warming, for us poor mortals miles below the stratosphere, but rather rather is a “tropospheric cooling event” which dumps the North Pole in our laps.
I fear this will heap insult onto injury, for already it is looking like the more populous parts of the northern hemisphere will be moving from benign warm anomalies (which currently are kind to our energy supplies) to more stressful cold anomalies, by the end of January:
With models already showing China, Europe and most of North America below normal, we do not need the Stratosphere making us even colder. So I hope the forecast is a bust.
So maybe there might be some good in extreme cold. There’s an old saying, “It is too cold to snow”, and I must admit above-normal temperatures are not helping my neighborhood escape snow. I suppose it is because in the depth of winter temperatures it can be above-normal and still below freezing. Here is what “above normal temperatures” looks like in my backyard this morning.
We have six to ten more inches of “above normal temperatures” forecast for tonight, which ought make Monday morning even more grouchy than usual.
I guess “warming” isn’t what it used to be.
Sunrise's Swansong 