‘Wet, windy and wild.” That was George Taylor’s winter forecast presented Saturday at the Oregon Chapter of the American Meteorological Society’s annual winter weather conference at OMSI. Taylor, a private consulting climatologist, summed up his above prognostication as he said, “In a nutshell.”
Other forecasters all theorized that due to very strong La Niña conditions that we will get lots of precipitation and be cooler than average this winter. And it most likely will start by the first of November. About 350 people took in the juicy details and savored the thoughts of possible windstorms, piles of powder in the Cascades and maybe an arctic outbreak or two.
From my experience with weather enthusiasts, you never know the depth of a topic and the excitement that can begin brewing. Bottom line here folks is that expect a very active winter season, maybe not lots of snow here in the city but enough weather to delight the storm watching crowd this winter.
And appropriately so, the National Weather Service is declaring their annual “Winter Weather Awareness Campaign” this week, educating the public on winter weather hazards. You can read their insight to winter on their NWS Portland Web page at: www.wrh.noaa.gov/pqr/winterawareweek.php.
