Temperatures unchanged by ‘time shift’
Daylight saving time begins early tomorrow morning. If you have just been getting used to not waking up in the dark every morning – you’ll have to deal with a temporary set back, as sunrise on March 11 and for about another week, will be after 7 a.m.
Though the ramifications of the time shift may seem obvious to most people, it does bring confusion for some to hear that we’ll get more daylight now. Though the days are getting longer, and we’re gaining a few more minutes of daylight with each passing day, the shifting of our clocks has nothing to do with actually receiving more sun. The “time shift” has no effect on our high and low temperatures either.
Temperatures have been quite volatile in the past week though. It was just over a week ago that records for cold temperatures were set across the area. On March 2, Coeur d’Alene saw the mercury dip to 11 degrees. That broke the old record low of 12 degrees set back in 1896. Even colder readings were found in Hayden, which reported a low of 8 degrees. These temperatures were colder than any lows for the entire month of February.
Luckily the frigid air did not stick around and we were able to enjoy some nice mild temperatures, along with sunshine this past Tuesday. With the milder temperatures and the winter season coming to an end soon, it looks like snow totals will go on the record books as above normal. Coeur d’Alene has received just under 80 inches of snow this season, which is about 13 inches above normal.
Though the worst of our weather in the past few weeks has been some moderate snowfalls, folks down South in Alabama are still trying to recover from the deadly tornadoes that struck on the first of the month. Once again, the national media has been looking for something to blame these severe storms on. Though I won’t name any names, a couple of network “weathercasters” (they are definitely not meteorologists) pointed the finger at El Niño and even global warming.
Global warming comes into play because supposedly these storms were abnormally early in the season. Real meteorologists know that springtime is the typical start of the severe weather season. The Southern states, being warmer, always get an earlier jump on the action. As the weather warms farther north, severe weather begins to move into the Central U.S, usually by May and June, with activity peaking just a bit later in the Northern states. This is all in the normal yearly cycle of things, and March tornadoes in Alabama would not be unusual – global warming or not.
The worst offense, however, was trying to attribute the storms to El Niño. I pointed out in an earlier column that it does not make sense to try to pin any particular storm or tornado outbreak (i.e. the Florida tornado outbreak) on El Niño. This time around, it is like trying to pin a new local crime on someone who skipped town months ago.
El Niño conditions – the abnormal warming of the waters in the equatorial Pacific – have dissipated. In fact, the waters are rapidly cooling, signaling the beginnings of a La Niña event. The presence of La Niña conditions do not usually have a significant effect on inland temperatures and precipitation in the spring and summer, so it probably won’t get much press in the next couple of months. It may however, lead to an increased number of Atlantic hurricanes for the 2007 season and fewer than normal hurricanes across the eastern Pacific.