Good Sunday evening. As February draws to a close, I’ve decided
to take a look back at the Winter – or essentially non-Winter –
of 2011-1012, with an emphasis on why we saw such an extensive
snow drought. Here’s a map of the current snow cover across the
lower 48 as of today: And for exactly a year ago: It’s easy to
see that we’re far below the level of snow cover when comparing
this year to the prior. This year, the deepest snows are
confined to northern New England, the upper Great Lakes, and the
higher elevations of the central and northern Rockies and Sierra
Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges out west, while last year,
essentially the entire northern half of the country was covered
by a decent snowpack. So how is this year different from last?
The are a lot of factors, but I’m going to try to simply it to
just a few, which I believe are the most important. The first
factor is the El Nino Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, which
fluctuates from: (1) El Nino, where the equatorial waters of the
Pacific west of S