Pirate Joe Weather Outlook for Winter/Spring 2011

Well, we all know that winter came early (as most unwelcome guests do)
dug in and got right down to business, hard at work on its mission of misery.
It's done a “good” job. Since mid December, we've been “treated” to a steady
diet of heavy snows and below average temperatures. It seems as if winter is
truly permenant this year. All this leads me to suspect that we will see
one of two extreme scenarios on our path to summer, (and) that spring 2011
will be anything but a “middle of the road” or “normal” experience this
year. The probabilities are almost an even split, I'd say 55 to 45. Let's take
the “55” first:

Here's The Global Warming (at last, at last..) (55%)

Under this scenario, our colder than normal winter has been caused by the
fact that the natural cycle of warm and cold spells has drifted into phase
for a while with the regular seasonal variations, meaning that the
combination of a cold spell aligning itself with winter will produce a
colder than normal winter. If this phase lock holds, producing an alignment
with spring/summer as we pass through the upswing of that cycle, spring
could come upon us almost overnight, producing a fast dramatic green up as
plants, spurred on by warmer than normal temperatures and abundant
mositure from plenty of melting snow and precipitation, take off running
and don't look back.
You might remember a few years ago when we had a partial alignment in
reverse, giving us balmy mid-spring temperatures into mid January.
Now let's take a look a scenairio 2:

Spring Will Take A Beating This Year (45%)

Here we have a different set of possibilities to deal with. Spring would
actually be on time (15 March for Dutchess County), yet I would doubt that
the daffodils will be blooming on time. (last week of March) Under this
scenario, spring's effects will be hard to discern as winter keeps pouring in
the cold from Canada. Look for a long, drawn out battle: days that should
be 56 degrees F (12 degrees for the rest of the world) will end up being 36
degrees (2 degrees for the rest of the world). Continuing, as the weeks
drift by, days that should be 68 degrees F ( 20 for the rest of the world)
would be 50 degrees, (10 for the rest of the world).This torturious path
could very well be punctuated unusual late March or April snowstorms.

...And Precipitation:

I think the high activity will continue, at least until we hit the June/July
border, when we will hit a drier period.