Keeping Up on Crop Weather

We expect a few new weather records to be set each year. This is only normal for weather. After all if a weather station is brand new, every day is a new record. If the station is a year old we would expect that almost no days would have the same temperature as last year so it would be, again, almost a new record every day. As the years go by the chance of setting a new record diminishes but does not disappear. All this describes a climate that is not significantly changing. With most of our records for stations more than 50 years old and many more than 100 years old, the likelihood of setting a new record is diminished but still very real

March 2008 La Nina Update

An area of warm sea surface temperature has formed off the Peru coast. Watch this to possibly “kill” La Nina. By March 3 the water north of Australia was cooling and west of Peru was warming.Two signs of a La Nina about to fade (and with it the risk of serious Midwest drought diminishes somewhat). Also the slight cooling north and east of Hawaii is a step toward a good season for the High Plains. The Trade Winds on March 3 remained stronger than usual near the “date line,” but have diminished to below normal off the coast of S. America (110W). This is may be a step toward a shift to El Nino

La Nina Diminishes

The La Nina of the past several months as determined by the 90-day average Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) has ended. The SOI is a measure of the atmospheric pressure deviation from normal and directly influences meteorological conditions in numerous distant locations. The SOI diminished to 0.8 standard deviations on May 19, 2008