Snowmobile Touring News:
Winter takes a month off
No one can blame Mainers if they pay little attention this
morning when Punxsutawney Phil, the world's most famous groundhog,
makes his prediction of an extended winter or an early spring.
The latter may seem like a sure thing as the state bid farewell
to the second-warmest January since the National Weather Service
began keeping track in 1941.
Portland's average temperature in January was 30.3 degrees,
said meteorologist Tom Hawley, just missing the record of
30.4 set in January 2002. Both averages are well above the
norm of 21.7 degrees.
Maine was not alone. All of New England reported temperatures
well above the normal January numbers. The average temperature
in Vermont, for example, was 10 degrees higher than what the
state usually experiences.
Hawley and other weather experts said the unseasonably warm
weather is easy to explain. The jet stream - fast-moving winds
that blow west to east at high altitudes - has stayed north,
keeping the cold air in Canada and other northern regions.
Eastern Europe and Siberia, Hawley said, have been having
one of the worst winters in recent memory.
"When we're warm, somebody else is cold," he said.
Usually, the jet stream has dips that bring cold air into
Maine and the rest of New England, said Gregory Zielinski,
state climatologist and a University of Maine professor.
"The jet stream has been almost straight west to east
for parts of the winter," Zielinski said.
The warm weather is not necessarily surprising or unusual,
said Zielinski.
"Winter is our most variable season," he said.
"Some are cold, some are warm."
Zielinski said Maine winters have a tendency to run on 10-
to 20-year cycles.
"The 1950s to the 1970s, we had more cold and snowy
winters than not," he said. "In the late 1970s,
1980s and part of the 1990s, we had more warmer and less snowy
winters."
This tendency is the result of the relationship between a
low pressure system near Iceland and a high pressure system
near the Azores, called the North Atlantic Oscillation.
What that all means, Zielinski said, is that pressure differences
in the Atlantic Ocean affect the form of the jet stream, which
in turn influences much of Maine's weather.
Four of Maine's last six winters, he said, have actually
been fairly cold.
"Look at last winter. We had hardly any snow" at
the beginning of the season. "Then, the second half,
we had so much snow it made it an average year."
Ski operators like Bill Harris of Harris Farm in Dayton are
hoping that trend repeats itself this year. Harris, whose
farm offers snowshoeing and cross-country skiing, said he
hopes to build up a good base coat of snow between now and
the next round of school vacations.
"It's been on and off," he said of this year's
season. The skiing, he said, has been good but most of the
base snow that fell before Christmas is gone.
"There should be at least five good weekends left,"
he said. "We've still got time."
Staff Writer Jen Fish can be contacted at 282-8229 or at:
jfish@pressherald.com
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