Column by Chris Graham
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Take solace, folks. The meteorologists can’t explain why it’s snowing all the time, either.
“To a large extent, it’s just one of those things. But one of those things means we don’t fully understand all the dynamics that go on with this, all the atmospheric physics involved,” said Jerry Stenger, the director of the Virginia State Climatology Office at the University of Virginia.
I had Stenger on the line for a segment on The AFP Show news podcast. My question led him to the “one of those things” quote, the thrust of where I was going with the topic being, Surely you guys know what’s going on, right, or is it just one of those things?
“There does seem to be some interplay with the El Nino conditions that are developing in the South Pacific Ocean, but those are not always very strong indicators of exactly what our winter weather will be,” Stenger said.
“This particular winter, the weather does seem to be linked to the El Nino pattern, but it’s difficult to say exactly how much it’s attributable to that, how much is attributable to other forces in the atmosphere that we really don’t necessarily have quantified at this point,” Stenger said.
This much we do know – the winter storm that could dump 5 to 10 inches of the white stuff on Augusta County, Staunton and Waynesboro could break a record for measured snowfall dating back to the winter of 1898-1899.
Stenger said the official records have the recording station at Staunton at 53.9 inches of snowfall so far this winter. The record: 61 inches back during the winter that the history books say was the year of the Spanish-American War.
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