A reader made a tongue-in-cheek observation about my last post, "Quantities of Quail," observing: "Tell-tale sign of long snowy winter!!"
Tongue-in-cheek or not, winter has been on our minds a lot lately. Last week, Don read an article on how a La Niña event might cause a snowier-than-usual winter across the northern U.S.
The trouble with many winter forecast predictions is that Idaho falls into something of a dead zone. There are predictions for the Pacific Northwest, New England, the Atlantic coast, the mid-Atlantic Mountains, the Great Lakes region, the Northern Plains, and other regional designations ... but none of them really cover the "Inland Northwest," which is what we are. The Pacific Northwest tends to "stop" east of the Cascades, and the Northern Plains doesn't include anything west of the Bitterroots, so our specific area gets glossed over quite a bit.
However for the La Niña forecast, it specifically did include Idaho: "Pacific Northwest (Washington, Oregon, Idaho) usually turns wetter than average, with strong storms and heavy mountain snow."
The Farmer's Almanac confirms the prediction: "The season’s coldest temperatures will be found from the Northern Plains to New England. Readers in the Northwest should also prepare for a cold winter, especially in Idaho and Washington."
So whether the weather can be predicted by the quantities of quail, or the quantity of wild fruit, or the thickness of the stripes on woolly-bear caterpillars, or La Niña, or any other index, we're putting up firewood.
I follow a Youtube channel that speaks about weather. He recently posted his weather prediction, mostly based on how various trends tend to interact together. He's non-alarmist and approaches weather forecasting without some of the headline grabbing / doomsday click bait titles that many other sources use.
ReplyDeleteRyan Hall, Y'all channel, video: "This Winter Is Looking VERY Weird..."
He mentions Idaho around the 6 minute mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRYSdYFyMrw
Between the Farmer's Almanac and the Old Farmer's Almanac, they pretty much completely contradicted each other for the winter prediction, so it's a crapshoot. I'm in South-Central Idaho and here our caterpillars are completely black on the top and just a bit of orange on the bottom, have not seen a single one this year with a distinct band around it. Red anthills are huge this year, usually a sign of a harder winter, whether that be colder, more snow, or just longer; it's hard to say. It's been an odd weather year in general, so who knows what winter will bring. Just gotta be prepared for anything.
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