It all depends...

Whether our weather will continue this pattern into March depends on the jetstream and the water vapor supply. Right now, it looks good. As you can see, I've annotated today's jetstream to show the Northern Hemisphere symmetry. Remember that "wagon wheel" analogy I used quite some time ago? Well, this is as symmetrical as the wagon wheel spokes get! The jetstream is exhibiting some real nice behavior in this graphic. Meanwhile, the water vapor production (see below)continues to look good. Siberia is very generous to us. That on-again, off-again subtropical tap shows promise as well.

As you may recall, we started this blog many moons ago on the premise that the Summer 2008 Aleutian volcanic eruptions were going to distort our Northern Hemisphere winter weather patterns. I think we can all safely agree that those patterns have helped produce a real memorable winter. Whether it was due to the volcanic factor will be the topic of much discussion as the climatological postmortems are rolled out in the months ahead.Let's assume for a minute that the volcanic factor was, indeed, at the root level of this winter's interesting weather. If so, the question becomes: "Have those volcanic factors diminished?" The answer would be "Probably." It takes many months for the gas and ash to disperse enough to lessen its impact on deflecting solar energy back into space. However, I'd be inclined to wager there's enough of it left to eek out another 4-6 weeks of solar energy disruption in the far northern latitudes. Maybe less, maybe more. So, if we carry that line of speculation forward, I'm beginning to be inclined to think that March could be a Pretty Good Precipitation Producer. Maybe I should coin an acronym for that--PGPP.

The wild card in this deck remains Mt. Redoubt. So far, it's been a real dud--a little steam here, a little rumble there but nothing remotely resembling the early dire warnings issued by the Chicken Little Volcano Heads. But you never know--a volcano has its own clock that's ticking its own time. We could wake up one morning to a major motion picture on the CNN Headline News. There could be ash and gas getting shot 40-50-60,000 feet into the polar latitudes.

I can tell you one thing pretty much for sure. If Redoubt blows it's top, there's no doubt we're in for a cold, wet spring and probably a cold wet early summer as well. That's where the wild card lies.