August Totals

It is hard to believe that August is now behind us. Those of you who are patiently waiting for the fog totals do not have to wait any longer. For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, I’ll do a little recap.

Several years ago I was flipping through an out-dated Farmers Almanac and as many people do, some little snippet lodges in the folds of the brain and is remembered. The snippet I remember was an old tale of fore-telling the winter forecast by the days of fog in August. I believe the reason I remembered the tale because I had been researching weather patterns like the El Nino and La Nina cyclical oscillations.

It did make some sense to me that the pattern that is formed by the summer months can carry through the fall and winter with regularity, and besides it seemed more scientific that measuring the stripes on a woolly caterpillar (partly because I have never been able to tell the difference in the size of stripes no matter how many years I checked).

This is how I measured the fog. On the month page of the calendar, I put a red line on the top of the day square if the fog was heavy but burned off by 8am. If it burned off after 9am, I put two lines at the top of the day. If it was a really light fog day only a short line at the top.  For days that only had ground fog (formed most likely because we are so close to the river, I put lines at the bottom of the day square and the intensity was designated by the size of the lines. (Confused yet? It made for much easier tracking than writing it out each day.)

Now for the totals.

7 days had heavy fog that burned off around 8am.

Only 4 days had heavy fog that burned off later than 9am.

The ground fog was spotty at best and many times on only one side of the house.

If we follow the Farmers Almanac guide, it should be a milder, less snowy winter in this area than normal.

To test this theory with what NOAA and the professionals say,

Summary* Note: These statements are updated once a month (2ndThursday of each month) in association with the ENSO Diagnostics Discussion, which can be found by clicking here.ENSO Alert System Status: La Niña WatchENSO-neutral conditions are present.*Equatorial sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are near-to-below average across the central to eastern Pacific Ocean.The tropical atmospheric circulation is consistent with ENSO-neutral.There is a ~60% chance of La Niña development during Northern Hemisphere fall 2020 and continuing through winter 2020-21 (~55% chance).

If I understand my La Nina correctly for this area, a warmer, wetter winter is in the offing. Now we will have to wait to see if The Old Farmers Almanac and NOAA are correct.

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