Phil says six more weeks of winter.
PUNXSUTAWNEY — Folklore's most-famous prognosticating rodent has been weathering a slump, but the human meteorologists who spend their careers mud-wrestling with atmospheric chaos are offering no sympathy. They have their own problems.
In a ritual that has become a national metaphor for the repetitiously tedious, Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow Friday morning, meaning the nation can expect six more weeks of winter. If he had not seen it, winter would have been toast, according to tradition.
So how's he doing? In the last 30 years, Phil is 7-for-30, based on the government's analysis of U.S. temperature data. In short, mathematically, your guess is at least as good as Phil's.
The cold and wintry precipitation expected during a not-so-super weather weekend might be a foretaste of what's to come, as the government's and commercial forecasts favor a chilly and wet, but not necessarily snowy, February.
But a cautionary word: It's not just Phil. The atmosphere, what scientists call a nonlinear chaotic system, continues to bedevil the meteorologists who are trying to figure out how it is going to behave.
They analyze computer models, unavailable to Phil, that simulate the state of the atmosphere into the future. They look at clues, such as temperature changes over the tropical and northwest Pacific and how they might affect weather downstream in the United States, and various large-scale swings in air pressure.
But right now the computer models so successful in shorter ranges are out of their depths beyond about 10 days. (Yes, we know, sometimes 10 hours.) And those clues, or “teleconnections,” aren't always reliable.
This winter has been a case study. Preseason outlooks mentioned La Niña, the anomalous cooling of surface waters over a vast expanse of the tropical Pacific. Historically, the South is warm and dry during La Niña-influenced winters. So what explains the accumulating snows that have fallen atop Atlanta and even Savannah?
“You're not supposed to be getting four snow and ice events in the South,” said Paul Pastelok, the veteran seasonal forecaster at AccuWeather Inc. “Teleconnection ideas are getting outdated.”
