Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Why is Mother Nature Playing A Cruel Trick on April Fools?

In class today we discussed the present global weather conditions and how they were effected by three dominant conditions. These conditions are: Moderate La Nina Conditions, Strong Polar Circulation, and the Divided North American Jet Stream.
The La Nina is a cold ocean current that occurs in the Pacific Ocean. This ocean current is responsible for colder and longer winters in the U.S./Midwest area and all-around colder, lower-than-average summers too. El Nino as you can guess is another Pacific Ocean current but it is a warm ocean current. But it is obvious to see that this year we have La Nina occurring which explains the harsher, colder winter that us Michiganders have experienced and the predictions of a colder summer.
Strong Polar circulations also have been a bad side effect of the La Nina cold ocean current. Which has resulted in colder winds that have been bringing on the heavier snow storms that have been dumped in Michigan to make a record-breaking year of snow fall, not seen since 1900.
Lastly, the divided North American jet stream (also partly caused by La Nina) has forced colder wind currents from the polar circulations down on the Midwest and Great Plains areas. It also has forced precipitation from the gulf of Mexico up into the Midwest to cause more accumulated snow fall. This will make for a colder summer in the Midwest, and a drier summer in the Great Plains which won't make for a good crop yield for this year!

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