After a nice warm and dry
start to the normally wet and cool month of May, we are back to a cool and
showery weather pattern for the Memorial Day Weekend in the Rockies.
At least through Sunday,
rain or snow showers are to be expected each day here in Jackson
Hole, with highs only getting into the 50’s the rest of this week.
That’s kind of hard to take after already experiencing several days earlier in
May that were up into the 70’s, and one day tagging 80 degrees!
By Monday, Memorial Day, we
should be back to sunnier skies and temps warming back up above 60 degrees, and
maybe edging back up around 70 by mid-week.
What lies ahead for this Summer?
What I hear on the street is
that we are in for a “hot and dry” summer. A look at the Farmer’s Almanac backs that prognostication up, as well. But I
usually defer to the Climate Prediction Center (CPC), to see how the next few
months are expected to shake out, at least in general.
The CPC is a branch of the
National Weather Service or NOAA whose sole task is to analyze the weather out
beyond the standard 3 to 7-day forecast, as it relates to temperatures and
precipitation being above or below “normal”, over the long term.
These are the maps you see
below, for June-July-August. The 3-Month Temperature Outlook for the Southwestern U.S., especially, is solidly in the “above”
normal category. Most of the rest of the southern tier of the U.S. is expected to be warmer than normal, as is
the northern Rockies, including Idaho & Wyoming.
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However, the only area of
the country that has a high probability of seeing “below” normal precipitation
is northern Idaho and western Montana. Southern Idaho
and Northwestern Wyoming fall under a lesser probability category, and
everywhere else in the country (with the exception of southern Florida), has an “Equal
Chance” (EC) of being either above or below normal, or just normal.
For a little more insight
into how the CPC determines all of this, go to this link:
You will see just how much
data and how many different climate indicators these guys consider when putting
these simple maps together. More than meets the eye!
One of the factors the CPC
considers is the current ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation) or El Nino/La Nina
situation in the equatorial Pacific, which is currently in a Neutral phase, by
the way.
To follow the long range
outlooks throughout the year and to hunt down more info about La Nina and El
Nino you can go through the NWS Discussions & Outlooks page on
mountainweather.com, direct link is here:
What’s My Take?
In the short term, the early
part of June looks slightly cooler and more showery for Jackson
Hole, beyond that, we’ll really have to wait and see as the summer
goes on.
I do expect since the snow
at low elevations has been gone awhile now, that the ground will heat up more
readily and warmer than normal temps this summer would be likely. But it only takes one or two good
thunderstorms a month to bring us our normal, or even above normal, precipitation
amounts. The problem with that is, that more thunderstorms could potentially
lead to more forest fires.
Text submitted by
meteorologist Jim Woodmencey
Graphics from NWS
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