Stuck Jet Stream, La Nina Causing Weird Weather

America’s winter wonderland is starting out this season as anything but traditional.

The calendar says December, but for much of the country, temperatures beckon for sandals. Umbrellas, if not arks, are needed in the Pacific Northwest, while snow shovels are gathering cobwebs in the Rockies.

Meteorologists attribute the latest batch of record-shattering weather extremes to a stuck jet stream and the effects of a La Nina weather pattern from cooling waters in the equatorial Pacific.

It’s still fall astronomically, but winter starts December 1 for meteorologists. This year, no one told the weather that.

On Thursday, 65 weather stations across the nation set record high temperature marks for December 2, including Springfield, Missouri, hitting 24 Celsius (75 degrees Fahrenheit) and Roanoke, Virginia, 22 Celsius (72 degrees Fahrenheit). Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Billings, Montana, broke long-time high-temperature records by 6 degrees.

Parts of Canada and Montana have seen their highest December temperatures in recorded history. On Friday, parts of South Carolina and Georgia hit record highs.

In Washington state, Seattle, Bellingham and Quillayute all set 90-day fall records for rainfall. Bellingham was doused by nearly 60 centimeters (nearly 24 inches) of rain. The Olympic and Cascade mountains got hit harder, with more than 127 centimeters (50 inches) in three months, according to the National Weather Service. Forks, Washington, received more rain in 90 days than Las Vegas gets in 13 years.

On top of that, there is a blizzard warning on Hawaii’s Big Island summits with up to 30.5 centimeters (12 inches) of snow expected and wind gusts of more than 161 kilometers per hour (100 miles per hour).

Meantime, snow has gone missing in Colorado. Before this year, the latest first measurable snowfall on record in Denver was November 21, in 1934. There’s a slight possibility of snow Monday night, according to the weather service. Yet, with no snow since April 22, this is the third-longest stretch the city has gone without it.

Stationary stream

One big factor: The jet stream — the river of air that moves weather from west to east on a roller coaster-like path — has just been stuck. That means low pressure on one part of the stream is bringing rain to the Pacific Northwest, while high pressure hovering over about two-thirds of the nation produces dry and warmer weather, said Brian Hurley, a senior meteorologist at the weather service’s Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

If the jet stream moves more or bends differently, rain and other extreme weather won’t be as concentrated, Hurley said.

This is a typical weather pattern with a natural La Nina weather oscillation, he said. The flip side of El Nino, a La Nina is a cooling of parts of the central Pacific Ocean that changes weather patterns across the globe. La Ninas tend to bring more rain to the Pacific Northwest and make the South drier and warmer.

These bouts of extreme weather happen more frequently as the world warms, said meteorologist Jeff Masters, founder of Weather Underground who now works at Yale Climate Connections.

In Boulder, Colorado, meteorologist Bob Henson enjoyed a rare December bike ride on Thursday.

Still, “there’s a lot of angst about the lack of snow,” he said. “It puts you in a psychic quandary. You enjoy the warm weather while keeping in mind it’s not good for Earth to be warming.”

VOA NEWS

Despite Risks,Unaccompanied Child Migrants Keep Crossing US Border 

One of the top entry points for migrants under the age of eighteen who enter the United States without proper documentation or adult companions is still South Texas.Although fewer crossings took place in the fiscal year 2024 than in previous years, the risks these children face remain concerning.

Read More

Mary Jane Veloso, a Filipina on Death Row in Indonesia,is Coming Home

Mary Jane Veloso, a Filipina who has spent 14 years on death row in Indonesia, will be coming home but will stay behind bars for the immediate future after being transferred to the custody of Philippine authorities, officials said.

Read More

Trapped in Lebanon, African Migrants Face Unemployment and Rockets

Many of the estimated 176,000 migrants living in Lebanon are African women who are working menial jobs.Many of them have been displaced since the start of the conflict and are facing uncertain futures.

Read More

Permanent Representative of France Briefs Press After Security Council Meeting on Middle East

Nicolas de Rivière,Permanent Representative of France to the United Nations, briefs reporters after the UN Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question.

Read More

The Impact on a Ukrainian Family During 1,000-Days of Russia’s War

This week marks 1,000 days of fighting in Ukraine.For millions of Ukrainians, including 32-year-old Oleh Reshetnyak and his loved ones in Kyiv, the mounting death toll, air raid sirens, and explosions have been a grim reality.

Read More

UN Security Council Meets to Discuss the Situation in Libya

James Kariuki,Deputy Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the United Nations and President of the Security Council for the Month of November, chairs the Security Council meeting on the situation in Libya.

Read More

Syrian Refugees in Lebanon Flee Bombs

Over half a million people, many of them were refugees who initially fled the Syrian conflict, have fled Lebanon into Syria in the last two months.According to those returning to Idlib, Syria’s last opposition stronghold, they are fleeing to a location that is marginally safer than Lebanon,without homes, jobs or humanitarian aid waiting for them.

Read More

AI Embraced by South African Universities,Seeing it as Equalizing Tool

Read More