| The following column appeared in The River Reporter on March 19, 1998. |
By Bert S. Feldman
The Recusant Reporter
Thursday, March 19, 1998
— Charles Dudley Warner
We have been having some mighty peculiar wethre (that's a bad spell of weather) lately, and everybody is blaming it on El Nino. Who, or what, is an El Nino anyway?
Pull out your atlas, the one that is propping up the coffee table, and turn to a map of Europe. Look how far north most of Europe lies! Great Britain and Ireland are nearly on a level with Hudson Bay in Canada's frozen zone and sunny Spain and Italy line up with chilly Maine. Where does their needed warmth come from?
Rising in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean is a mighty current of water known as the Gulf Stream. The warm air the Gulf Stream carries makes its first contact with Europe in the British islands and collides with the cold air arising inland in Holland, Germany, and even Poland and Russia. When warm air meets up with cold air, you have a mist, better known as fog. As you may have heard, fog is common in England. But, without the Gulf Stream, steady as a pump bolt, Europe would be a frozen wasteland.
A similar current arises along the equator in the Pacific, usually ending up along the coast of Peru in South America. Most of the time it is as well-behaved as the Gulf Stream, but once in while it gets a mite frisky. Due to unusual weather patterns and other factors, this change in its regular flow is most common around Christmas time. Thus its nickname — El Nino — which, in Spanish, means "the Boy Child," referring to Him whom we honor at Yuletide.
Besides the Pacific current, there are regular air currents to consider. One such air current passes from west to east over the states of Washington and Oregon and on across the western plains. The usual speed of this air current is about 200 mph. There are slower currents alongside the big wind passage that flow at a lesser speed of about 50 mph. Since the big current of air is six miles up, it's the slower flow that governs the weather in the northwest and central plains states.
Over a year ago, meteorologists noticed that the Pacific current was beginning to be a bit rambunctious, but nobody paid them any mind. By the time Christmas rolled around, they knew that the El Nino for the winter of 1997-98 was going to be a doozy.
The first thing El Nino did was push the northern air stream south over southern California and the Southwest.
Surely you have read of the rainstorms and mudslides in California's southern parts and the rainstorms in Arizona.
Then, like a row of dominos, the freak weather continued across the states down in Dixie and wound up in Florida where, after picking up moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, tornadoes of devastating intensity ripped up homes and killed many people.
We are not done yet. The absence of protecting winds in the northern tier of states caused record winter snow and cold. That barrier of cold air then prevented the usual Arctic cold from extending down into the northeast, giving the poor souls hereabouts the warmest winter on record.
So what's next with El Nino?
"Sea-surface temperatures are still well above normal throughout the tropical Pacific Ocean and are expected to remain that way into April and May," says the Climate Prediction Center.
In our own area, the Northeast, that translates into a drier than usual spring and fewer storms.
Perhaps it is just a warning not to get too uppity with all our gadgets and atomic power and command of the skies and whatever: we are still only just a hop-skip-jump from the time when we sat in front of the cave and played with a new thing — a wheel.
Just remember who is in charge.
