If you still haven’t shaken the memory of last year’s bitterly cold polar vortex, followed by a disappointingly cool summer, here’s a bit of local weather news to warm you up: The forthcoming winter probably won’t be as bad as the last.
That is to say, the forthcoming winter probably won’t be as bad as one of the worst winters in history – hooray!
The Farmers Almanac predicts the Northeast Ohio area will still see cold temperatures and normal amounts of snow, but we probably won’t see anything as terrible as this or even this over the next 4 – 5 months.
A repeat of last winter is not particularly likely,” Mike Halpert, acting director of the Climate Prediction Center, recently told Detroit’s Free Press.
That’s not to say there won’t be cold air and snow, which is normal for much of the country during winter, Halpert said. It just won’t persist as much as it did last year, when extreme weather seemed to be stuck in place.
Well those are cheery thoughts to usher us in to snowfly season.
This article appears in Oct 22-28, 2014.
Well, seeing as it couldn’t get much worse than last year, I suppose this is good news, if you can even call it that.
Winters here suck if you hate snow (which I do, very much)…and they have gotten snowier in recent times.
Statistical fact: nine of our twelve snowiest winters have come in the past two decades–and you can look it up.
There are worse places to spend the winter months…Chicago and Minneapolis come to mind, but you’re trading always-cloudy skies and 30 degrees here…for sunshine and 5 above zee-row…your call.
It’s not the chill and the snow that wear most people down…it’s the endless overcast…or “Cleveland Sky Gray”…as the Crayola folks call it. Cleveland has a higher percentage of people with winter SAD than almost any other large US city. And among the biggest US cities, only Denver gets more annual snowfall.
If Patrick Henry had moved from Virginia to Ohio, he’d have said: “Give me sunshine or give me death…” Know the feeling, Pat…
Chuckles the Clown