Saturday, October 21, 2006
Weather Vagaries
October is normally our most beautiful month; a time of endlessly blue skies, and bright sunshine... well, this October has not been normal. It's been the moldy strawberry at the bottom of the basket; a month of clouds and more clouds, and almost unremitting cold... the coldest, cloudiest October since skinny ties and Hula Hoops were in vogue. What's worse, is that global warming is to blame; that, and something called the North Atlantic Oscillation (N.A.O.). It seems that in winter, a warm high pressure bubble sometimes builds up over the North Atlantic. This area of warm air oscillates between Greenland and northern Europe... it currently has been stuck in the former position, and is very powerful due to global warming. When the N.O.A. is over Greenland, it blocks the circumpolar jet stream, which normally circles the globe in the far north, and causes it to buckle down over the central U.S., dumping all the cold air on you-know-who's little garden. Since all of the frigid air is in our backyard, apparently Alaska has been downright balmy; they're also getting all of our rain. With all our gloomy weather, the birds just sit around and look at each other, and even our little cat P.J., normally as cheerful a little soul as you could ever hope to meet, is moping about like she just found out they stopped making crab flavored Whisker Lickin's. Well, someday the sun will shine again, someday flowers will bloom and the birds will sing... just not this month. 
// posted by IBOY @ 8:55 AM 
