Atmosphere Comparison

[Jim]

The endless chatter of weather.

[big_load]

I forecast snow and an open snowbowl by Thanksgiving weekend.

I don't know about an open snowbowl, but you're not exactly out on a limb with that one. I've been through Flagstaff at least six times the weekend before Thanksgiving, and only once did it fail to snow.

[Jim]

Yeah..Today is the 1st day of autumn.

Perhaps my "clock work" reference was vague.
In Flagstaff, we had warm late monsoon season weather since labor up until Sunday, then yesterday was warm and sunny and more or less calm as the cold front approached in the afternoon, and the high was near 80. Over night the front arrived, the winds picked up, we got down to 38 (with frost predicted for the next 2 nights) and today it is only in the low 60s and it is also pretty windy. So, as solar autumn arrived today, so too did weather that feels like early Autumn in Flag. I guess in PHX autumn is 95 degrees and dusty. That is June up here.

[BobP]

Perhaps my "clock work" reference was vague.

Nope. I just looked at my calender and in red letters is written Autumn begins.

Yeah should have been Yay.

[joebartels]

My youngest niece said Spring starts today, so I'm getting ready for the wildflowers

[chumley]

Is your niece from New Zealand?

[Dschur]

Australias first day of Spring was Sept 1st not sure how NZ does it but OZ does it on the first of the month. Dec 1st is the first of summer, March 1st is the first day of autumn, and June 1st is the first day of winter... Some of the trees in Payson are turning from green to yellow to brown on the same leaves...

[Jim]

We're getting a lot of changing leaves and its going to increase in the next week.
The US observes solar seasons where spring and fall begin when the sun's most direct rays pass over the equator and winter and summer begin when the most direct rays are at their height on the respective tropics. NZ appears to follow meteorological seasons where 9/1, 12/1, 3/1, and 6/1 are the start of their spring, summer, fall, and winter, or the opposite for us.

[chumley]

That's weird. I always thought equinoxes and their resulting seasons were sort of a planet-wide thing. Apparently, it takes us about three weeks to catch up! ;)

Technically, I'd think autumn would start with the harvest moon (Oct 3 this year, I think)? You know, for people who don't have scientific tools to figure out equinoxes and whatnot.

Then again, the monsoon starts on June 15 for no apparent reason, so we're guilty of arbitrary season dating too.

[chumley]

What do I know? ... from a website that has been "Fighting Ignorance Since 1973"

There is a widespread misconception in this country--which extends, I might note, to the makers of most calendars, dictionaries, and encyclopedias--that summer "officially" starts on the day of the summer solstice, June 21 or 22, which is the longest day of the year. Americans also believe (1) that there is some valid scientific reason for doing it that way, and (2) that everybody in the Northern Hemisphere does it that way, and always has.

None of these things is true. So far as I have been able to discover, no scientific or governmental body has ever formally declared that summer starts on the solstice.

Certainly there is no good scientific reason for doing so. In the Northern Hemisphere the period of maximum daylight falls roughly between May 7 and August 7--in other words, the six weeks before and after the solstice. The period of maximum temperature, on the other hand, is June 4 through September 3. (The period of max temperature in the mid-latitudes always lags about 25 to 30 days behind the period of max daylight, due to the fact that the earth heats up and cools off relatively slowly.)

"It isn't really clear how the astronomical definition [i.e., summer starts on the solstice] got started," says Kevin Trenberth, a climate researcher at the University of Illinois in Urbana. "Although the sun-earth geometry is clearly the origin of the seasons on earth, it has nothing directly to do with temperature or weather."

He notes that meteorologists define summer simply as June, July, and August. "For practical purposes, the meteorological definition is the best one, being very closely to the [weather] statistics," he says.

In fact, it appears that June 1 was accepted as the beginning of summer in the United States until relatively recently. According to many older reference books, ranging from The American Cyclopedia (1883) to Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1966), summer in the U.S. comprises the months of June, July, and August. Seasons in Britain, for no particularly good reason, start a month earlier.

The Oxford English Dictionary, somewhat confusingly, says that spring in Britain (and evidently in Ireland) runs from February 1 through April 30, but that summer runs from mid-May to mid-August. This leaves the first two weeks in May mysteriously unaccounted for, by my reckoning, but that is England for you.

The Irish appear to have opted for May 1 as the starting date of their summer, but it was not always thus. I have here an old Irish guidebook (1938) that says summer begins the day after the third Saturday in April (Sunday, presumably) and ends the day after the first Saturday in October. The May 1 starting date may strike Americans as odd, but it sure beats what they were using in 1938.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/rea ... arts-may-1

(Because this weather thread can't beat the nudity and guns thread without a couple of minor deviations off-topic...)

[PaleoRob]

Feels like it up here.

[Jim]

No snow yet, as it has been way too dry, but Flagstaff ended a record long growing season this morning when for the first time since April 30 the temperature dropped below freezing. This was no ordinary freeze, but in fact it was a record of 20 degrees, which broke the old record set in 1982 of 22 degrees. Yes it was cold up here. When I got out of a hot tub last night at 2am I found that both my town and my towel had frozen. Bellemont dipped to 17, and the Grand Canyon got to 16. This was from highs in the middle to upper 60s yesterday. It was 68 for the high and 20 for the low in Utopia, I mean Flagstaff. I know you love it!
Record growing season:
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/FXC/wxstory.php?wfo=fgz
72 hour summary:
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/mesowest/getobe ... FLG&num=72

[chumley]

And it should snow on Saturday night. Maybe not in town, but in the higher elevations. Its always nice to see golden aspens with the peaks covered in a dusting of autumn snow.

[PaleoRob]

Cooler up here as well, though not below the ice line yet.

[JimmyLyding]

I'm hoping for an exceptionally cold winter with a lot of snow if for nothing else to beat back the pine bark beetles for a little while. Hot tubbing after midnight, jhodlof? Our favorite Humphreys summiter officially cannot complain about life ever again!

[writelots]

I'm excited that I finally get to use my hot tub again! Nothing is quite as icky as walking through a hot, humid house, into a hot, humid back yard and dunking yourself into a tub of 103º water. Now, walking through a cool house, into a crisp back yard, and easing yourself into a warm, inviting pool - now THAT's the life! Yay for hot tub weather!

[JoelHazelton]

As soon as it started cooling off the hot tub at my apartment complex stopped working. Lame.

[Jim]

http://www.rmrs.nau.edu/webcam/
There's a light dusting of snow or rime over 11,400' on the Peaks. It looks pretty. On The Weather Channel today one of their people was talking about rain in the SE. He mentioned the el nino and how it might be weakening. That is the first I have heard of it, but if it does weaken the winter could be like 2007, very dry. I'm revising my prediction to snow bowl opening after January 1, and our first real snow after December 20.

[chumley]

Without posting the entire presentation from the Climate Prediction Center, the weekly update posted today, October 5, 2009 is outlined simply:

Summary
•El Niño is present across the equatorial Pacific Ocean.
•Sea surface temperatures (SST) were at least 1.0ºC above-average across much of the central and east-central equatorial Pacific.
•Based on current observations and dynamical model forecasts, El Niño is expected to strengthen and last through Northern Hemisphere winter 2009-10.

What does that mean exactly? In my opinion, it means that neither the NWS nor TWC really have any clue. But neither can admit it because one is trying to get more (or maintain its current level of) government funding, and the other one is trying to sell advertising time for products primarily aimed at people over 80. Good luck to both of them.

And good luck to Arizona achieving a snow-filled winter either way.

[Jim]

I remember people talking about the 2007 one strengthening 3 years ago. When I was back east in PHL in late December of 2006 a weather man mentioned that it was weakening. That was ALL I ever heard of it weakening. Several years later I read about the 2006-2007 el nino weakening and not doing anything for AZ. We'll see what happenes. We all know the NWS suffers from premature precipitation forecasts and I see no exception for an el nino. If one was developing now and strengthening as time went on I would believe it. One guy saying something is showing signs of weakening isn't saying much, but I don't trust the NWS for long range. Especially when they were wrong this summer.

[chumley]

Whoop! There it is!

From Snowbowl's Facebook page ... today registered the first snowfall on the peaks. The photo is of Humphrey's.