Bonus Blog

There was some unfinished business in the last blog, and I've had some "feedback" about that and people are really looking for my winter forecast. Ok, well, I'll get to that in a minute. Let me bore you with some house stuff first.

A full cord now sits on my back lawn. 

We got our firewood delivery yesterday after I tracked down the number of the guy I talked to last year. I was kind of late in the season but he managed to scrape together a full cord of seasoned hardwood for me, ready to burn this year. I hope to fit much of it in the garage, with the rest along the side of the house in the alley between the pantry and the sun room. That'll be this weekend's job. Anyway, we really love our fireplace, as inefficient and old fashioned as it is. It does really seem to warm up the room when we use it, and it is nice to stand in front of to warm up. More than anything though, it's great to look at and brings warmth to the room in appearance alone. Household felines Natasha and Katia really don't seem to notice the fire, which surprises me. They seem neither attracted or afraid of it. Cindy loves the fire and, well, you know, happy wife, happy life. This alone makes the work and $200 worth it.

I'm going to grade my efforts to stop leaks in the bathroom at a C-. The most important leak has apparently stopped now, although it has stopped before and began again, so currently we do not have water leaking into the kitchen during showers. That's good. However, the hot water handle began leaking again only a couple days after repacking the fitting, so I need to pull that off and repack it again, hopefully with more success. The cold water handle is not leaking...so far.

Winter. What to expect? As usual it's a complex forecast. The three things to consider are persistence, in other words the weather we are currently having my well just continue, the state of  ENSO, commonly known as El Nino, and the NAO, the North Atlantic Oscillation. There are other considerations but these are the big three. As for persistence, we have been in a warm and dry pattern for some time now, although recently there have been, some cold outbreaks. This fits well into the ENSO, which is currently neutral, but may be heading into a La Nina pattern, the opposite of El Nino. Both persistence and the ENSO are actually poor indicators for predicting our winter, but they are the easiest to forecast. With persistence, you're just kind of hoping that the car keeps going straight, with nothing to influence our weather to change, Using it alone would give us a very dry, and relatively warm winter with few snow storms. Add a developing La Nina to the mix and you kind of re-enforce this thinking, although La Nina especially is easily overcome by other factors, especially here in the northeast U.S. The 800 pound gorilla in the room is the NAO, which is what really drives our winter, but it's really unclear what drives the NAO. The NAO is essentially the pattern of upper troughs or ridges over the northern hemisphere, particularly the North Atlantic. When the NAO is negative, we tend to get cold and snowy winters in the northeast U.S. and in Europe. The opposite is true when the NAO is positive. So what will it be? Well that is THE question. Forecasting it beyond 14 days or so is difficult. Nevertheless, I forge ahead with my forecast. I believe we will have a relative dry winter with slightly above normal temperatures, I believe there will be significant lake effect snows this year, mainly north of Syracuse, and in the Buffalo area. Here in the Binghamton area, I do believe that the NAO will go negative at times, and give us the chance for a couple big storms, mainly after January 1, but with numerous small snow events throughout the winter. At least two significant warm ups or thaws seem likely, limiting the amount of ice on ponds and rivers.

So there it is. No guarantees, no warranty. Please accept this forecast "as is". And please, hold your applause until May. June at the latest.