Weather Weirding: Year in Review
Dec. 30th, 2021 11:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
denebalgedi777The civil calendar year of 2021 AD is nearly at an end so what I'm going to do in this post is to discuss the weather weirding that took place in the last year. There have been enough changes in the natural environment over the last few years that they haven't gone unnoticed. One of the themes of this writing project is reflections on local conditions. So I can't let a year go by without chronicling some of the natural world's trends I observed over its course. This year, if I had to describe it with keywords, the weather was nothing short of theatrical or cinematic.
I have already written that this is the continuation of an abandoned writing project that was started in 2020. That series of reflections ended at or around the very beginning of the year 2021. That would only have been about 1/3 of the way through meteorological winter, which in this part of the world lasts from the beginning of December to the end of February. So in other words, it precedes the astronomical ordering of the seasons by about 3 weeks. This goes for every season. But just looking from the vantage point of early January there was no indication of the strange year that would follow. Even then, there were things out of the ordinary however.
January had extensive ice fog events, of both greater geographical extent and also longer duration than at any time in my life. On New Year's Day, the ice fog was so dense that it carried the sound of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railway 5 miles away through the night air as if it were next door. I lost count of the number of days when the forest took on a crystalline aspect. However, apart from this January was not extraordinarily cold. It was actually mild by the standards of January in Minnesota, with very little in the way of deep cold. That did not arrive until early February, and it didn't stay very long although there was a prolonged spell of below zero weather. It turned out to be the only one throughout the entire winter. In all, the winter was mild and didn't compare at all with the sustained iciness of early 2014 or 2019.
The spring was something else again, in late February it became quite mild again, and it was already clear at this point, around the time that the sun enters Pisces, that there would be an early spring. But an early spring in the upper Midwest is never as clear-cut as all that. In a continental climate, it can pretty much be guaranteed that there will be ups and downs. And that's what happened. Still, March was not exceptionally snowy. Eventually, the snow melted off and everything was a drab yellow-brown. At times it was as dusty and windy as the high plains, for dry conditions had prevailed the previous year and not abated totally. April featured a prolonged warming spell, albeit with a few back steps. I should mention that at least half of that month I spent outside of the state of Minnesota, farther down to the south, so I did see days in the 80s. Later April and parts of May also saw returns to cold weather, but they were never very prolonged. I've often said it is rare to see a true spring in the upper Midwest, but this was one of them, or as close to it as we get.
The summer was something else again. When it began it was among the most idyllic summers I could ever recall. After a short cold snap at the end of May, Summer began very bright and cheerful. However June ended up being unusually hot and dry, and all of a sudden the phlegmatic character that had characterized the spring and carried over most joyfully into the beginning of summer changed abruptly into a vision of dystopia and apocalypse. The drought would persist all summer. Lakes, streams, marshes and rivers dried up, the atmosphere became smoggy and uncomfortable, and it was so dreadfully hot outside that people stayed in whenever possible. This past July was the most memorable July of my life I think. Steady blazes in Canada brought in choking clouds of smoke for weeks on end. All of a sudden my metropolitan area took on the character of Beijing, encased in a bubble of gray, the sunlight always inclining to red and pink even at high noon. It certainly resembled the far future dystopias that once only featured in my mind's eye.
Respite from this drastic condition only came later in the month of August. Slowly the periods of heat and of forest fires farther north came to an end. But they were not quick in leaving. The first signs that some new pattern was underway came late in August, when the drought, which had continued unabated through June July and much of August, finally came to an end in a rainstorm, and I once again saw bald eagles, who had been absent for the entire summer with low water conditions. Undoubtedly they had moved their interminable hunts farther to the south where there was still open water. Perhaps it is superstitious of me, but the eagle is the bird of Zeus and its sighting after an absence is usually a sign of good luck. Whatever the case, a rainy pattern continued intermittently for the rest of the fall. I should also mention because it seems significant the spotting of several rainbows during the late summer and autumn storms. Nature sends her own messages.
A different kind of inclement weather took over as soon as I moved down from up north. November was exceptionally windy. Temperatures by themselves would not have been out of the ordinary, but combined with the scouring wind, it was a highly unpleasant November. That excessively windy pattern has continued off and on since then. But be that as it may, we did not receive lasting snow cover until December which is not exactly a harbinger of a grim winter. The trouble is that the pattern can shift on a dime here. Lately with the onset of winter, my prognostications have been in error. The effect has been a seesaw -- snow, then melting. Christmas eve was in the 40s, gray and humid like Oregon, and Christmas Day was just average by the standards of December. Only now, as the new year approaches, do we find ourselves on the cusp of a deep freeze.
So I have come full circle. We are back once more to the beginning of a new year where this narrative began. I live in one of the most changeable climates in the world. As such, no two years are alike. Heat and cold can interchange quickly and unpredictably. And not many people take the time these days to write down their impressions of what goes on around them. This seemed like the perfect context to make note of a year that seemed exceptional to me. The bizarre weather patterns of this year seem to match the description that some meteorologists have given to it - "weather weirding", and I felt I would be remiss if I let another year go by without putting down my own thoughts on the matter in writing.
[Editor's note: This was meant to be posted yesterday but being out all day, I did not get to it.]
I have already written that this is the continuation of an abandoned writing project that was started in 2020. That series of reflections ended at or around the very beginning of the year 2021. That would only have been about 1/3 of the way through meteorological winter, which in this part of the world lasts from the beginning of December to the end of February. So in other words, it precedes the astronomical ordering of the seasons by about 3 weeks. This goes for every season. But just looking from the vantage point of early January there was no indication of the strange year that would follow. Even then, there were things out of the ordinary however.
January had extensive ice fog events, of both greater geographical extent and also longer duration than at any time in my life. On New Year's Day, the ice fog was so dense that it carried the sound of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railway 5 miles away through the night air as if it were next door. I lost count of the number of days when the forest took on a crystalline aspect. However, apart from this January was not extraordinarily cold. It was actually mild by the standards of January in Minnesota, with very little in the way of deep cold. That did not arrive until early February, and it didn't stay very long although there was a prolonged spell of below zero weather. It turned out to be the only one throughout the entire winter. In all, the winter was mild and didn't compare at all with the sustained iciness of early 2014 or 2019.
The spring was something else again, in late February it became quite mild again, and it was already clear at this point, around the time that the sun enters Pisces, that there would be an early spring. But an early spring in the upper Midwest is never as clear-cut as all that. In a continental climate, it can pretty much be guaranteed that there will be ups and downs. And that's what happened. Still, March was not exceptionally snowy. Eventually, the snow melted off and everything was a drab yellow-brown. At times it was as dusty and windy as the high plains, for dry conditions had prevailed the previous year and not abated totally. April featured a prolonged warming spell, albeit with a few back steps. I should mention that at least half of that month I spent outside of the state of Minnesota, farther down to the south, so I did see days in the 80s. Later April and parts of May also saw returns to cold weather, but they were never very prolonged. I've often said it is rare to see a true spring in the upper Midwest, but this was one of them, or as close to it as we get.
The summer was something else again. When it began it was among the most idyllic summers I could ever recall. After a short cold snap at the end of May, Summer began very bright and cheerful. However June ended up being unusually hot and dry, and all of a sudden the phlegmatic character that had characterized the spring and carried over most joyfully into the beginning of summer changed abruptly into a vision of dystopia and apocalypse. The drought would persist all summer. Lakes, streams, marshes and rivers dried up, the atmosphere became smoggy and uncomfortable, and it was so dreadfully hot outside that people stayed in whenever possible. This past July was the most memorable July of my life I think. Steady blazes in Canada brought in choking clouds of smoke for weeks on end. All of a sudden my metropolitan area took on the character of Beijing, encased in a bubble of gray, the sunlight always inclining to red and pink even at high noon. It certainly resembled the far future dystopias that once only featured in my mind's eye.
Respite from this drastic condition only came later in the month of August. Slowly the periods of heat and of forest fires farther north came to an end. But they were not quick in leaving. The first signs that some new pattern was underway came late in August, when the drought, which had continued unabated through June July and much of August, finally came to an end in a rainstorm, and I once again saw bald eagles, who had been absent for the entire summer with low water conditions. Undoubtedly they had moved their interminable hunts farther to the south where there was still open water. Perhaps it is superstitious of me, but the eagle is the bird of Zeus and its sighting after an absence is usually a sign of good luck. Whatever the case, a rainy pattern continued intermittently for the rest of the fall. I should also mention because it seems significant the spotting of several rainbows during the late summer and autumn storms. Nature sends her own messages.
A different kind of inclement weather took over as soon as I moved down from up north. November was exceptionally windy. Temperatures by themselves would not have been out of the ordinary, but combined with the scouring wind, it was a highly unpleasant November. That excessively windy pattern has continued off and on since then. But be that as it may, we did not receive lasting snow cover until December which is not exactly a harbinger of a grim winter. The trouble is that the pattern can shift on a dime here. Lately with the onset of winter, my prognostications have been in error. The effect has been a seesaw -- snow, then melting. Christmas eve was in the 40s, gray and humid like Oregon, and Christmas Day was just average by the standards of December. Only now, as the new year approaches, do we find ourselves on the cusp of a deep freeze.
So I have come full circle. We are back once more to the beginning of a new year where this narrative began. I live in one of the most changeable climates in the world. As such, no two years are alike. Heat and cold can interchange quickly and unpredictably. And not many people take the time these days to write down their impressions of what goes on around them. This seemed like the perfect context to make note of a year that seemed exceptional to me. The bizarre weather patterns of this year seem to match the description that some meteorologists have given to it - "weather weirding", and I felt I would be remiss if I let another year go by without putting down my own thoughts on the matter in writing.
[Editor's note: This was meant to be posted yesterday but being out all day, I did not get to it.]
