Jennings: Mountain weather, climate can’t seem to agree
Are you as confused by the weather as the robins I saw this week? You’re not alone.
When it comes to weather, even the climate is confused. Weather is what you experience when you go outside today. Climate is how the atmosphere behaves over time. Meteorologists analyze climate patterns and compare them with the past to give us an idea about what kind of weather to expect in the future. According to the most recent analyses, climate can’t decide what to do next.
The El Niño weather pattern, which we associate with warmer, drier winters in the Pacific Northwest, has been threatening to emerge for some time. El Niño and La Niña (which inspire skiers and snowboarders to dance in the streets) are the opposite ends of a climate pattern called the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO).
The National Weather Service (NWS) defines El Niño as a prolonged warming of surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean compared with the average, which is how meteorologists define normal. When sea surface temperatures display a warming of at least 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit above normal in the east-central tropics, El Niño is in effect.
Earlier this month sea surface temperatures exhibited enough of a warming trend so that the Climate Prediction Center of the National Weather Service declared a 50- to 60-percent chance of El Niño conditions during the next two months. The atmosphere is supposed to behave a certain way with El Niño conditions. So far, it doesn’t seem to be in sync.
According to the NWS, overall atmospheric circulation is showing only limited “coupling” with warmer sea surface temperatures. Instead of interacting normally with the warmer water, Pacific Ocean wind and convection patterns continue to behave in a manner associated with a limbo between El Niño and La Niña known as “ENSO-neutral.”
As we near the halfway point of the ski season, winter weather in our region has been as uneventful as the ENSO. A scan of Snow Telemetry (SNOTEL) summary snowpack data for January gives us an idea about the quality of the skiing and riding so far. The snow station near Mount Spokane on Quartz Peak shows a depth of 21 inches – 57 percent of the average (normal) January snowpack of 36 inches. Last year at this time Quartz Peak had 50 inches (72 percent of normal).
Kellogg Peak’s average of 19 inches for January is only 26 percent of normal. Last year at this time its SNOTEL location read 29 inches. The Lookout Pass SNOTEL shows 31 inches – 58 percent of the normal average of 53 inches. Schweitzer’s snowpack summary reads 40 inches – 51 percent of the January average of 78 inches.
It should be noted that the snow reports from some local hills are based on snow stakes that are at higher elevations than the SNOTEL stations. But the below normal summaries for January speak volumes about the skiing and riding conditions.
Our season has been victimized by a series of high pressure ridges along the West Coast that have had a tendency to draw cold, dry arctic air into the region. These ridges break down, only to be shoved aside by warm, wet atmospheric rivers traditionally known as the Pineapple Express. If only the two could converge over us at the same time.
I should be more careful what I wish for. But the 30- and 90-day outlooks from the NWS suggest such a harmonic convergence is unlikely. It’s beginning to sound like a broken record that has been skipping since September – warmer and drier than normal conditions are expected to continue in the Pacific Northwest.
The good news is that despite all the technology, weather always has been, and always will be, unpredictable. The further out from today meteorologists make predictions, the greater their chances are of being wrong. There’s a lot of skiing and riding yet to be done, weather – and climate – permitting.