Saturday, February 13, 2010

Almanacs “About that winter forecast . . . - Omaha World-Herald” plus 3 more

Almanacs “About that winter forecast . . . - Omaha World-Herald” plus 3 more

About that winter forecast . . . - Omaha World-Herald

Posted: 13 Feb 2010 05:46 AM PST

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So much for that "mild winter."

The Midlands forecast that missed by a mile shows just how little scientists understand long-term weather patterns.

"It is humbling. It shows we have a lot of work to do," said Ed O'Lenic, head of the federal team at the Climate Prediction Center that issued the forecast in October.

"That's not to make excuses. It is a difficult business."

And while it might surprise snowbound Midlanders, the fact is that the Climate Prediction Center's overall forecast was reasonably accurate for many parts of the country:

--The Southeast was projected to be cooler than normal. It has been. Unseasonably cold weather threatened the citrus crop.

--The Southwest was forecast to be wetter than normal. It has seen flooding and mudslides.

--The Northwest was projected to be drier than normal. It has been. Vancouver is short on snow for the Winter Olympics.

But eastern Nebraska and western Iowa are in a pocket of the country where the weather diverged the most from initial long-term projections of both federal scientists and forecasters at AccuWeather Inc., The World-Herald's consultant.

No one knows why.

The explanation could be simple bad luck — getting hit by two massive December snowstorms. So much snow covers the ground that it could be driving the warmth from the air.

There was one correct early forecast for the region — the Old Farmer's Almanac. But it missed the mark for much of the rest of the nation.

Still, meteorologists are getting credit for their short-term forecasts this winter.

When it really mattered — on life-or-death threats posed by numerous individual storms — local forecasters for the National Weather Service have been stunningly accurate.

"They nailed those," said Ken Dewey, an applied climatologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

"They said the storms would start at a certain hour, and they did. The short-term forecast was extremely reliable. I think they saved lives," he said.

Still, what lingers in many minds is last fall's predictions of a mild winter.

Brad Dickson, who writes a weekly sports humor column for The World-Herald, spoke for many when he wrote: "Tuesday is Groundhog Day. … I say after local meteorologists predicted a mild winter, we should start getting all of our weather predictions from rodents."

And this was a winter when forecasters had an ace up their sleeves: the El Niño weather pattern.

El Niño is a periodic, significant warming of the Pacific Ocean. It and its cooling opposite, La Niña, are the best-understood, most predictable engines that drive large-scale weather patterns.

El Niño usually brings higher-than-normal temperatures to the Northern Plains. Scientists can see and measure El Niño brewing months ahead of time. Once ocean temperatures reach El Niño levels, they typically remain that way for months.

In most El Niño/La Niña winters, the Climate Prediction Center's seasonal forecasts are 60 percent more accurate than a simple average of temperatures and precipitation over the previous 30 winters. Sometimes the center's forecasts are 80-plus percent more accurate.

This winter, O'Lenic said, his forecasters scored just 12.5 percent better.

The reason?

A "very rare, extreme climate event," O'Lenic said.

A strengthening El Niño acted in harmony with an unprecedented spike in the Arctic Oscillation over the Atlantic. That atmospheric circulation over the polar region this year aggressively pushed cold air down into North America, Asia and Europe.

An Arctic Oscillation can spike in intensity within a week or two — with no real warning. That happened in December, burying October's "mild winter" forecast after an unseasonably mild November.

The early December and Christmas holiday blizzards contributed to the persistent cold in the Omaha-Lincoln-Norfolk areas, said UNL's Dewey.

Now many feel this winter will never end.

"What people are missing this year is a break from winter, where the snow goes away and temperatures rise," Dewey said.

"We were just unlucky. If we had had just one (December) storm, we could have worked our way out of the problem. But with almost two feet of snow, it was utterly impossible to get out from under it."

Dewey understands why this winter's seasonal forecast might prompt people to conclude that meteorologists don't know what they're talking about.

What the average person doesn't realize, Dewey said, is that the success rate with seasonal forecasts is low.

"The probability of being accurate is not very high. You're going to have failure on a regular basis that you don't have with day-to-day forecasts. This is probably the biggest disconnect I've seen with people," he said.

Dewey said daily forecasts have achieved 90 percent accuracy this winter, something unheard of when he started as a climatologist 30 years ago.

But despite research and technological advances, that level of accuracy won't be reached in long-term forecasting anytime soon.

"Not in my lifetime," Dewey said.

Contact the writer:

444-1102, nancy.gaarder@owh.com


Copyright ©2010 Omaha World-Herald®. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, displayed or redistributed for any purpose without permission from the Omaha World-Herald.

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So, about that forecast of a 'mild' winter ... - North Platte Telegraph

Posted: 13 Feb 2010 02:12 AM PST

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World-Herald News Service

OMAHA - So much for that "mild winter."

The Midlands forecast that missed by a mile shows just how little scientists understand long-term weather patterns.

"It is humbling. It shows we have a lot of work to do," said Ed O'Lenic, head of the federal team at the Climate Prediction Center that issued the forecast in October.

"That's not to make excuses. It is a difficult business."

And while it might surprise snowbound Midlanders, the fact is that the Climate Prediction Center's overall forecast was reasonably accurate for many parts of the country:

The Southeast was projected to be cooler than normal. It has been. Unseasonably cold weather threatened the citrus crop.

The Southwest was forecast to be wetter than normal. It has seen flooding and mudslides.

The Northwest was projected to be drier than normal. It has been. Vancouver is short on snow for the Winter Olympics.

But eastern Nebraska and western Iowa are in a pocket of the country where the weather diverged the most from initial long-term projections of both federal scientists and forecasters at AccuWeather Inc.

No one knows why.

The explanation could be simple bad luck - getting hit by two massive December snowstorms. So much snow covers the ground that it could be driving the warmth from the air.

There was one correct early forecast for the region - the Old Farmer's Almanac. But it missed the mark for much of the rest of the nation.

Still, meteorologists are getting credit for their short-term forecasts this winter.

When it really mattered - on life-or-death threats posed by numerous individual storms - local forecasters for the National Weather Service have been stunningly accurate.

"They nailed those," said Ken Dewey, an applied climatologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

"They said the storms would start at a certain hour, and they did. The short-term forecast was extremely reliable. I think they saved lives," he said.

Still, what lingers in many minds is last fall's predictions of a mild winter.

Brad Dickson, who writes a weekly sports humor column for The Omaha World-Herald, spoke for many when he wrote: "Tuesday is Groundhog Day. I say after local meteorologists predicted a mild winter, we should start getting all of our weather predictions from rodents."

And this was a winter when forecasters had an ace up their sleeves: the El Nino weather pattern.

El Nino is a periodic, significant warming of the Pacific Ocean. It and its cooling opposite, La Nina, are the best-understood, most predictable engines that drive large-scale weather patterns.

El Nino usually brings higher-than-normal temperatures to the Northern Plains. Scientists can see and measure El Nino brewing months ahead of time. Once ocean temperatures reach El Nino levels, they typically remain that way for months.

In most El Nino/La Nina winters, the Climate Prediction Center's seasonal forecasts are 60 percent more accurate than a simple average of temperatures and precipitation over the previous 30 winters. Sometimes the center's forecasts are 80-plus percent more accurate.

This winter, O'Lenic said, his forecasters scored just 12.5 percent better.

The reason?

A "very rare, extreme climate event," O'Lenic said.

A strengthening El Nino acted in harmony with an unprecedented spike in the Arctic Oscillation over the Atlantic. That atmospheric circulation over the polar region this year aggressively pushed cold air down into North America, Asia and Europe.

An Arctic Oscillation can spike in intensity within a week or two - with no real warning. That happened in December, burying October's "mild winter" forecast after an unseasonably mild November.

The early December and Christmas holiday blizzards contributed to the persistent cold in the Omaha-Lincoln-Norfolk areas, said UNL's Dewey.

Now many feel this winter will never end.

"What people are missing this year is a break from winter, where the snow goes away and temperatures rise," Dewey said.

"We were just unlucky. If we had had just one [December] storm, we could have worked our way out of the problem. But with almost two feet of snow, it was utterly impossible to get out from under it."

Dewey understands why this winter's seasonal forecast might prompt people to conclude that meteorologists don't know what they're talking about.

What the average person doesn't realize, Dewey said, is that the success rate with seasonal forecasts is low.

"The probability of being accurate is not very high. You're going to have failure on a regular basis that you don't have with day-to-day forecasts. This is probably the biggest disconnect I've seen with people," he said.

Dewey said daily forecasts have achieved 90 percent accuracy this winter, something unheard of when he started as a climatologist 30 years ago.

But despite research and technological advances, that level of accuracy won't be reached in long-term forecasting anytime soon.

"Not in my lifetime," Dewey said.


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The almanac - United Press International

Posted: 13 Feb 2010 12:31 AM PST

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Today is Saturday, Feb. 13, the 44th day of 2010 with 321 to follow.

The moon is waning. The morning star is Mercury. The evening stars are Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, Venus and Saturn.

Those born on this date are under the sign of Aquarius. They include former first lady Bess Truman, wife of U.S. President Harry Truman, in 1885; artist Grant Wood in 1891; writer Georges Simenon in 1903; entertainer "Tennessee" Ernie Ford and football coach Eddie Robinson, both in 1919; pilot Chuck Yeager, the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound, in 1923 (age 87); actors Kim Novak in 1933 (age 77), George Segal in 1934 (age 76), Oliver Reed in 1938, Carol Lynley in 1942 (age 68) and Stockard Channing in 1944 (age 66); talk show host Jerry Springer, also in 1944 (age 66); musicians Peter Tork of the Monkees in 1942 (age 68) and Peter Gabriel in 1950 (age 60); basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski in 1947 (age 63); and fitness guru Denise Austin in 1957 (age 53).

On this date in history:

In 1635, the oldest public institution in America, the Boston Latin School, was founded.

In 1668, Portugal was recognized as an independent nation by Spain.

In 1861, the first Medal of Honor went to Col. Bernard Irwin, an assistant Army surgeon serving in the first major U.S.-Apache conflict.

In 1945, allied firebombing of the German city of Dresden caused a firestorm that destroyed the city and killed as many as 135,000 people.

Also in 1945, Soviet forces captured Budapest, Hungary. The 49-day battle killed more than 50,000 German troops.

In 1960, France tested its first atomic weapon.

In 1974, the Soviet Union expelled dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

In 1984, Konstantin Chernenko succeeded the late Yuri Andropov as Soviet leader.

In 1990, the two Germanys and the Big Four powers agreed to pursue German unity.

In 1991, Iraq claimed hundreds of civilians were killed when U.S. bombs hit a building in Baghdad; the United States said the building was a heavily fortified military command center.

Also in 1991, 36 people were killed when an Ash Wednesday mass at a Mexican church turned violent.

In 1993, three men were killed and another wounded in a shooting at Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Fla.

In 1998, Cuba began releasing 299 political prisoners following an appeal by Pope John Paul II.

Also in 1998, Nigerian troops overthrew the military junta that had ruled Sierra Leone since ousting the democratically elected government in May 1997.

In 2001, more than 400 people are killed in an earthquake in El Salvador.

In 2002, Pakistani police announced the arrest of the prime suspect in the abduction and slaying of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

In 2003, the Bolivian capital of La Paz was plunged into chaos by protests that got out of hand. Fourteen people were killed.

In 2005, a Shiite-dominated coalition won the Iraqi parliamentary election, taking 48 percent of the 8.5 million votes cast.

Also in 2005, flooding claimed more than 70 lives in Venezuela and Colombia.

In 2006, a U.N. report accused the United States of violating prisoners' rights at its military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In 2007, North Korea agreed to close its nuclear facilities in exchange for a $400 million package of oil and economic aid.

In 2008, Barack Obama won votes in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia by large margins, strengthening his lead over Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. On the Republican side, John McCain won all three primaries as well, solidifying his lead over Mike Huckabee.

Also in 2008, the U.S. government confirmed reports that trailers supplied to survivors of hurricanes Katrina and Rita posed a possibly serious health risk because of formaldehyde.

In 2009, a Continental airlines turbo prop commuter plane crashed into a house near Buffalo, N.Y., killing a reported 50 people, including one person in the house.

Also in 2009, more than 30 people died and 84 were injured when a female suicide bomber detonated a device on a major Shiite pilgrimage route in Iraq.

A thought for the day: it was Oscar Wilde who said, "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go."

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On Feb. 13 in NEPA - Scranton Times-Tribune

Posted: 13 Feb 2010 01:00 AM PST

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On this date in NEPA

75 years ago, Dr. Moses Behrend, president of the Pennsylvania State Medical Society, was in town to speak to members of the Lackawanna Medical Society about proposed legislation in Congress and the state Legislature on the socialization of medicine. Dr. Behrend said the medical profession should organize to combat such vicious bills.

50 years ago, officials with the Scranton post office reported that 250,000 Valentine's Day message were delivered locally. Valentine's Day package deliveries rose 5 percent from the previous year.

25 years ago, Sen. John Heinz, speaking with county officials at the COLTS garage, told them he was opposed to the Reagan administration plan to cut back on federal mass transit assistance. If the cutbacks were to go through, a fare on a COLTS bus would have gone from 65 cents to $1.45.

10 years ago, the Pennsylvania Economy League, the city's recovery plan coordinator, warned city officials that they had to come up with $6 million in revenue for the 2000 budget. Some progress had been made on the revenue front by the city but they needed a plan. Almanac

Today is Saturday, Feb. 13, the 44th day of 2010. There are 321 days left in the year.

In 1741, Andrew Bradford of Pennsylvania published the first American magazine. Titled "The American Magazine, or A Monthly View of the Political State of the British Colonies," it lasted three issues.

In 1914, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, known as ASCAP, was founded in New York.

In 1920, the League of Nations recognized the perpetual neutrality of Switzerland.

In 1935, a jury in Flemington, N.J. found Bruno Richard Hauptmann guilty of first-degree murder in the kidnap-slaying of the son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh. (Hauptmann was later executed.)

In 1939, Justice Louis D. Brandeis retired from the U.S. Supreme Court. (He was succeeded by William O. Douglas.)

In 1945, during World War II, Allied planes began bombing the German city of Dresden. The Soviets captured Budapest, Hungary, from the Germans.

In 1960, France exploded its first atomic bomb, in the Sahara Desert.

In 1980, the 13th Winter Olympics opened in Lake Placid, N.Y.

In 1984, Konstantin Chernenko (chehr-NYEN'-koh) was chosen to be general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee, succeeding the late Yuri Andropov.

In 1988, the 15th winter Olympics opened in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Ten years ago: Charles Schulz's final "Peanuts" strip ran in Sunday newspapers, the day after the cartoonist died in his sleep at his California home at age 77. Tiger Woods saw his streak of six consecutive victories come to an end as he fell short to Phil Mickelson in the Buick Invitational.

Five years ago: Final results showed clergy-backed Shiites (SHEE'-eyetz) and independence-minded Kurds had swept to victory in Iraq's landmark elections. Ray Charles' final album, "Genius Loves Company," won eight Grammy awards. The AFC won the Pro Bowl, defeating the NFC 38-27.

One year ago: A $787 billion stimulus bill aimed at easing the worst economic crisis in decades cleared both houses of Congress. Peanut Corp. of America, the peanut processing company at the heart of a national salmonella outbreak, filed for bankruptcy. A female suicide bomber targeted Shiite pilgrims in Musayyib, Iraq, killing at least 40.

Today's Birthdays: Former test pilot Charles E. "Chuck" Yeager is 87. Actress Kim Novak is 77. Actor George Segal is 76. Actress Carol Lynley is 68. Singer-musician Peter Tork (The Monkees) is 68. Actress Stockard Channing is 66. Talk show host Jerry Springer is 66. Actor Bo Svenson is 66. Singer Peter Gabriel is 60. Actor David Naughton is 59. Rock musician Peter Hook is 54. Actor Matt Salinger is 50. Singer Henry Rollins is 49. Actor Neal McDonough is 44. Singer Freedom Williams is 44. Actress Kelly Hu is 42. Rock musician Todd Harrell (3 Doors Down) is 38. Singer Robbie Williams is 36. Rhythm-and-blues performer Natalie Stewart (Floetry) is 31. Actress Mena Suvari (MEE'-nuh soo-VAHR'-ee) is 31.

Thought for Today: "To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can have." - Theodore H. White, American political writer (1915-1986).

(Above Advance for Use Saturday, Feb. 13)

Copyright 2010, The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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