Russ Steele
This story by Laura Brown in the Union this morning caught my attention: Wacky weather normal for May, experts say.
Wildly changing weather patterns across the United States in recent days do not portend climate change or La Nina conditions, meteorologists and climatologists from the National Weather Service and NASA said Tuesday.
Mentioned in the story are Bill Patzert, a climatologist from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California and Johnnie Powell, meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Sacramento.
I was interested in finding the source for Laura Brown's story, so I entered Bill Patzert's name in Google along with the quote in the story "We’re having a wild spring in the U.S.,” I could not come up with the source story, though I tried several different variation. But, I did find this quotes by Patzert in reference to two tornadoes at March Air Reserve Base on Thursday afternoon.
"It's not just unusual, it's extremely unusual," said Bill Patzert, a climatologist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. "You would expect this in January, February or March, but not in May." Full story here
I also found this press release from JPL: Larger Pacific Climate Event Helps Current La Nina Linger, April 21, 2008
“This multi-year Pacific Decadal Oscillation 'cool' trend can intensify La Niña or diminish El Niño impacts around the Pacific basin," said Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "The persistence of this large-scale pattern tells us there is much more than an isolated La Niña occurring in the Pacific Ocean." (Emphasis added)
I am still scratching my head how Laura came to the conclusion in her lead paragraph that what we are seeing in just typical May spring weather. Even her source says that there is some thing unusual going on in the Pacific. Johnnie Powell, from the NWS in Sacramento talked about March weather, not the killing frost in May. While I am writing this the Weather Channel is talking about the record number of tornadoes in May.
The lead in Laura's story is misleading. Her cited experts do not support her story that this is normal May weather. Laura could help the reader by providing links to her sources, but that might take the spin out of the story.
