Mild Winter? Here, We’Re Not So Sure…

A 2-below-zero cold snap before we’ve even raked all of the leaves — doesn’t that seem a bit extreme to you?

It makes me wonder if November’s weather is only the first frozen warning shot of a nasty, cold winter to come.

I don’t want to alarm anyone, but do you remember the last time we had a lengthy cold snap in November? I believe it was in 1996. We called that little event Ice Storm, and if that ice-covered calamity wasn’t bad enough, it marked the beginning of one incessantly snowy December, January and February.

Spokane had 80 inches of snow that year, which is the equivalent of one entire Wilt Chamberlain of snow. Spokane looked like Christmas in Spitsbergen. Our streets looked like bob-sled runs, with cars ricocheting madly from white wall to white wall.

Is this what we have to look forward to again this year?

To find out, I checked the most reliable weather source I could find: my bunions.

I’m just kidding. I don’t even know what a bunion is, and even if I did, I wouldn’t be able to decipher its Doppler Accu-Weather Forecast readout.

Whatever bunions are, I’ll bet they don’t predict the weather nearly as well as the nation’s most reliable weather source: The Weekly World News.

“CIA Weather Experts Warn President: WORST WINTER IN 100 YEARS!” screams the headline in the Nov. 21 issue of this scholarly tome, found at supermarket checkout lines everywhere.

My first reaction on seeing this headline was to say: CIA weather experts? Since when did the CIA have weather experts?

CIA Director: Agent Leiter, I’ve got a top-secret mission for you.

Agent Leiter: Yes, sir.

CIA Director: Find out if Chewelah is getting any rain this weekend.

Agent Leiter: Yes, sir.

CIA Director: I would suggest that you check the Weather Channel first.

In examining the story, I discovered that the CIA does indeed have top-level weather spies, and that they predict “a killer winter that will mark the beginning of a new Ice Age.” The story gives no details about the weather in our corner of the world, but it does say that “everyone agrees that frozen hell will be unleashed from all directions.”

From all directions? Oh my God.

Does this mean that Canadian cold fronts will be arriving even from the south?

I was alarmed, naturally, but then I noticed that this tabloid also had stories that said “Adolf Hitler really wanted to be a cowboy!” and that the latest fashion fad is “mustaches for gals!”

So I decided to check a more traditional source of weather predictions, The Old Farmer’s Almanac. The news was a bit more comforting here. The almanac says that winter temperatures in our region will be near-normal, with snowfall normal or above-normal.

Of course, the Old Farmer’s Almanac lumps our area into the “Rocky Mountain” region, which means we get the same forecast as Salt Lake City and Las Vegas. I have never considered Spokane to be in the same climate zone as Las Vegas, or even in the same galaxy. So precision may not be the strength of the Old Farmer’s Almanac.

Finally, I decided to put my trust in science. I went to the National Weather Service-Spokane Web site and found its winter outlook prediction. The meteorologists say the Pacific Ocean is relatively placid this year: No El Nino, and no La Nina either. This means, essentially, that we can “expect near-normal temperatures and precipitation this winter.”

However, don’t assume that we won’t get much snow. We have been spoiled the last three years with mild winters, so even a normal winter might seem rough. But at least the National Weather Service is not predicting “a killer winter” and “a new Ice Age.”

Yet I still worry that the Weekly World News is correct. The CIA probably has operatives on the ground in Mexico who have noticed some unusual activity. Boy, will the National Weather Service be surprised when a killer Canadian cold front comes roaring in from Guadalajara.