Foot Dragging?

It's a funny thing...I'm way late writing this installment of CorduroyPlanet. I'm not dragging my feet exactly, I just got hyper busy all of a sudden, and nothing was burning a hole in my pocket so to speak, and when I did catch up, I had San Francisco Giants baseball and Formula 1 practice and qualifying to keep me distracted. Before I knew it, it was 0400 and my eyelids slammed shut.

Oh yeah, my alarm was set to go off at 0500...       Planning FAIL

So I did wake up at 0800.

That's when I saw the Tweet @wattsupwiththat put up a link to a study that looks to me like a possible indicator to refine Winter-Long forecasts for North America...Talk about right in my wheelhouse!

Yesterday's CorduroyPlanet Blog was my 500th post since I began my daily screeds back on August 9th, 2009.

...Whoops...missed...I wouldn't feel right blowin' my own horn too much when I screwed up and failed to post my Saturday blog on time...and now here I am...twelve hours past due...

So the study, by the University of Georgia, Athens: "Northern Eurasian Snowpack Could Be an Important Predictor of Winter Weather in U. S." really aroused my curiosity. If I can find some reliable reporting stations in the areas of the snowpack study, this discovery could become my most powerful prediction tool when it comes to sussing out a season long trend. Wet or dry, colder or not so cold...it's all golden...should it bear out.

To wit:
 "It turns out that snow piling up over a band of frozen tundra from Siberia to far-northern Europe may have as much effect on the climate of the U.S. as the much-better-known El Niño and La Niña."

Let me clarify (italics are mine):
"It turns out that snow piling up in October and November over a band of frozen tundra from Siberia to far-northern Europe, all the way to Northern Scandinavia, may have as much effect on the climate of the U.S. as the much-better-known El Niño and La Niña do for the ensuing winter season"

This is huge! After a long protracted cool spring, we had a three day "mini-heat wave" earlier in the week, and now we've returned to cooler-than-normal weather for what's forecast to be yet another week of below average temperatures...it's getting to be like a stuck record again.

Last week, NOAA's Climate Prediction Center published their monthly 90 Day Climate Outlook Discussion wherein they announced the end of the La Niña regime:

"SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURES (SSTS) ARE NOW VERY CLOSE TO LONG TERM AVERAGES ALONG THE EQUATOR IN THE EAST-CENTRAL PACIFIC OCEAN.  SOME WEAK LARGE SCALE ATMOSPHERIC CIRCULATION ANOMALIES ASSOCIATED WITH LAST WINTER'S LA NINA CONTINUE TO PERSIST OVER THE TROPICAL PACIFIC, BUT THESE HAVE DIMINISHED IN RECENT WEEKS.  THESE OBSERVATIONS INDICATE THAT LAST WINTER'S LA NINA HAS ENDED AND ENSO HAS ENTERED A NEUTRAL PHASE."

Well, there we are. The new toy has arrived just in time to keep my attention as we drift towards next season...cool!