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La Nina or no? Where will the snow fall? |
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Wednesday, December 14, 2011 18:24 |
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By Lauren Glendenning, Summit Daily News
EAGLE COUNTY — La Nina is supposedly back again this winter, but recent weather patterns have been dumping the most snow on the southern part of the state, which is more typical of an El Nino winter.
Weather forecasters say La Nina — a weather system where cold ocean temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean bring wetter than normal conditions across the Pacific Northwest and drier and warmer than normal conditions across much of the southern United States — is weaker than it was last winter. Recent weather patterns, however, just don't follow any conventional wisdom about snow in northern Colorado, La Nina winter or otherwise.
Joel Gratz, a meteorologist who runs the website www.onthesnow.com (formerly coloradopowderforecaster) calls the weather pattern we've seen over the last six or so weeks “pretty difficult.”
The computer forecasting models that Gratz and other weather forecasters use haven't been helpful in predicting when the current pattern will shift. Gratz said it looked like the shift would come around Dec. 10, and then it looked more like Dec. 17, and now it looks more like Christmas, he said.
“I've lost confidence in when it will shift,” Gratz said, adding that he's confident it will eventually shift.
Read more about the La Nina and El Nino weather patterns and what forecasters are predicting for snow in Colorado.
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