Get your copy of our weekly print products at any of these convenient locations.

Rob Zaleski: Winter not such a wonderland this year

Rob Zaleski  —  2/19/2008 11:59 am

Is this somebody's idea of a cruel joke?

That question crosses Jessica Potter's mind a lot these days.

Potter, who is 24 and attends Madison Area Technical College, moved here from Clearwater, Fla., last fall to be closer to her boyfriend, Zach Bruns, 21, a student at UW-Madison.

They met four years ago and finally grew weary of the long-distance relationship thing, Potter explained last Friday at Electric Earth Cafe on Randall Street, where she works part time.

"So we flipped a coin to decide where we'd live -- Clearwater or Madison," she said. "I lost."

Potter says she accepted the decision gracefully at first because she'd heard that, thanks to global warming, Wisconsin's brutal winters were a thing of the past. But she was stunned after the first snowstorm of the season hit on Dec. 1, dumping six inches of ice and snow on the area. And she was still reeling last week after yet another storm on Feb. 12 dumped 3.7 more inches of white stuff on the city, bringing our total for the season to 79.2 inches -- an all-time record. (Which, of course, was before Ma Nature slapped us around again over the weekend, boosting the total to 83.7 inches as of this morning.)

That broke the mark of 76.1 inches set in the notorious winter of 1978-79, after which several people I know actually moved South and vowed they'd never come back.

"I think I'm finally adjusting," Potter said. "But to be honest," she added with a smile, "I still check out the airline prices to Florida every day."

Of course, it's not just newcomers who are wondering what's going on and, more importantly, whether this is just a freak thing.

Ed Hopkins, assistant state climatologist at UW-Madison, says he wishes he had the answer and notes that many of his colleagues are scratching their heads as well.

Hopkins says he does remember telling a reporter back in November that we were probably looking at above average precipitation in southern Wisconsin this winter. But he never imagined we'd break the snowfall record from 1978-79 -- and by mid-February no less.

Like many of us old-timers, Hopkins can still recall some of the grim details of that winter and says it's hard to say if the situation is worse today.

He remembers that we had six blizzards in 25 days and how during the worst of it, the American Automobile Association was fielding 100 emergency calls an HOUR. He remembers that roofs collapsed at La Follette High School and six local businesses, and that in the midst of it all a house on Segoe Road burned down -- in part because firefighters couldn't find the hydrants.

And he remembers how at one point, new Gov. Lee Dreyfus called out the National Guard to clear streets in Milwaukee and Kenosha.

What's causing our problems this winter, Hopkins says, is a relentless series of low-pressure (or storm) systems that are tracking lower than normal from west to east across the nation's midsection. The pattern is due in part to La Nina -- cooler than normal surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean that affect global weather conditions.

If we were on the southern side of those systems, we'd be experiencing heavy rains and tornadoes, similar to what's occurred in Missouri, Arkansas and Tennessee, Hopkins says. But being on the northern side, we're being pummelled with snow, followed by plummetting temperatures.

"The rule of thumb meteorologists use is that the heaviest snow band stays roughly 100 to 150 miles north of the low pressure center as it tracks across the country," he says. "And Madison is right in the middle of that band."

How goofy has the pattern been? Well, get this. Eau Claire's total snowfall for the season was just 43 inches heading into last weekend. And the Twin Cities had a mere 27.3 inches -- or six inches below normal.

Hopkins says he's very much aware that many people here are demoralized. And a big reason they're demoralized, he suggests, is because they were lulled into thinking that, due to climate change, our winters would continue to be shorter and milder.

"Not necessarily," he says.

However, there is one bit of encouraging news, Hopkins says. A statistical study he was involved in years ago showed that it's highly unlikely to have two heavy-snowfall winters in a row. So the 2008-2009 winter shouldn't be nearly as bad.

"There are no guarantees, of course," he adds. "But the odds are in our favor."

And the odds of an early spring?

Hopkins won't even speculate. While short-range forecasting is far more accurate today -- better than 90 percent in most cases -- he says long-range predictions are still pretty much a guessing game.

Besides, we really don't want an early spring, he says.

We don't?

Absolutely not, Hopkins says. If temperatures were to climb into the 40s and 50s in the next month, it would cause massive flooding, with much of the water ending up in our basements. And if we were to get into a thaw-freeze cycle, it would wreak havoc on plants and cause considerable winter kill.

The best thing that could happen, he says, would be a very slow rise in temperatures, even if it means that winter would drag on for several more months.

"Keep in mind it's still mid-February -- and we all know what that means," Hopkins says.

We sure do. That it's 70 and sunny in Clearwater.

Rob Zaleski  —  2/19/2008 11:59 am