Our weather may be part of cycle

No one will argue that our weather on a global scale has gone wild over the last five to 10 years. Many scientists claim that it’s part of our so-called “global warming” and conditions may continue to get worse before they get better.

For over 15 years, I have worked closely with climatologist Cliff Harris, who has spent countless hours studying short and long-term climatological cycles. In 1975, he obtained copies of a broad study from an organization that had studied worldwide temperature and precipitation patterns since 600 B.C. They used information from ice cores, tree rings, lake beds and other types of data to determine long-term climate and how it affected human migrations and behaviors.

After the data were compiled, there were clear indications of short- and long-term climatological cycles of global warming, cooling, wet and dry periods. There was also another kind of pattern that was discovered, one that occurs approximately every 500 years. It’s a cycle of wide weather extremes, and we seem to be in the middle of one that is the worst in more than 1,000 years.

We believe this current extreme cycle began around mid-1967. Since that time, over 50,000 worldwide temperature and precipitation records have fallen that once stood for nearly 200 years. Based on the long-term weather charts that date back to 600 B.C., we may be only halfway through this long-term 70-year global cycle of wide weather extremes that probably won’t end until at least the late 2030s.

The weather, like many other things, does appear to go through a variety of short- and long-term cycles. Have you ever noticed that rain will fall on a particular day during the week (usually the weekend days from what I’ve seen) for about six weeks? Or, we’ll notice one region getting deluged from record precipitation while other parts of the country are suffering from parching drought? We believe that the weather does have a number of cycles that range from six and a half days to six weeks and much longer.

Since we’re only about half way through this cycle, we can obviously expect more extreme weather conditions. For example, this year alone, the Inland Northwest experienced one of the wettest spring seasons ever observed. Then, the weather pattern suddenly changed, and now we’re seeing one of the driest summer and early fall seasons in recorded history. In parts of North Idaho, it’s been the driest period ever. In May 2004, for the first time in history, two tornadoes were reported in Eastern Washington within 72 hours of each other. In 1998-99, Mount Baker recorded the highest worldwide snowfall ever with 1,140 inches.

In the last 10 years, we’ve also seen disastrous 500-year floods in the Midwest. But, this year, much of the central United States experienced some of the worst heat and drought conditions since the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s. Last year, there was a record number of named tropical storms and hurricanes, plus it was the most destructive season ever observed. There have also been big floods and drought across other parts of the world as well.

Inland Northwest fall weather outlook

Thanks to the new and strengthening El Niño in south-central Pacific Ocean, we may not see a flake of snow until at least mid-to-late November as temperatures during this fall season should average warmer than normal.

It may take more time for substantial moisture to arrive in our region as the strong ridge of high pressure that brought this area one of the driest summers ever recorded continues to hang on. In fact, Pacific moisture has been primarily falling to the south of our region, a typical El Niño-type pattern.

However, I do expect rainfall to increase by the end of this month. From that point until December, we should see near to above normal moisture with below normal snowfall in the Spokane, Spokane Valley and Coeur d’Alene area. Based on long-term climatological records, we typically see that type of pattern about 70 percent of the time. But, it still may be cold enough to produce enough snow in the mountains for a decent ski season. Stay tuned.