Winter Nears?

There's a lot of buzz on the Internets about an Early Winter, and I guess you could say the flipside...Late Harvest. We are entering October after eight months for sure (Jan-Aug) of below average temperatures. I've been pestering the members of my Online Fishing Club for the answer to this question: "How far behind normal is the (insert species here)____ bite?

There's no definitive answer yet, but anecdotal intel says we're running behind by a few to several weeks when it come to King Salmon staging off the Marin County Coast. Halibut in San Francisco Bay were late as well.

My friend the Home Winemaker says his Tempranillo came in two weeks behind average.

Today I saw a tweet from @LavaCapWinery that pointed to the Mountain High Wines blog, where the Lava Cap Winemaker says they're starting their latest harvest ever...going back 26 years!

Wednesday evening, I caught a Sacramento Local News tease about snowfall next week for the Sierra. I've managed to miss every newscast since, but I was downtown doing errands and the coming change in the weather was on everyone's lips.

Down at the Auto Parts Store, there was a flatbed truck parked out front loaded with pallets of Tire Chains. The Counterman said: "Yeah, they're forecasting snow down to 7000ft .

Fellow blogger and friend, Chef of the Jungle, posted this on Facebook Wednesday:

"Getting ready for the coming winter/taking advantage of Indian Summer here in Oregon. Evenings are down into the high-40's and it happened awfully fast. The experts (Kathy included) are predicting and early and cold winter"

Folks, that's a lot of Early/Cold Winter Noise for September. It's about time I start keepin' my ear to the rail.

This I do know...La Niña is back, so odds are good that Winter will be cold in Central California. This year, we have a Negative PDO and La Niña together. Typically when these two cycles align in this manner, we have slightly below normal precipitation, and slightly colder temperatures than average.

I don't feel compelled to issue a Winter Prediction just yet...when I've paid a little more attention, I'll come up with this year's model.