Ntxw wrote:aggiecutter wrote:Portastorm wrote:Great info aggiecutter.
We've been bandying about the whole Niña thing in the Texas Winter thread also. We've had several nice winter weather events in Austin during Niña winters. The last time it snowed here was during a Niña winter (2011).
I just went back and looked more closely at the graph that I posted earlier. Nearly all the years where there was a strong to moderately strong La Nina, the Texarkana area was the recipient of some sort of major winter weather event. 1973- major ice storm in January. 1989- Frigid cold in December. 2000- 2 major winter storms and a catastrophic ice-storm. 2011- on two occasions in January, Texarkana received 6" of snow, and a 4" snowfall the first week of February. As Ryan Maue posted yesterday, there is a correlation between strong to moderately strong La Ninas and severe winter weather.
I would take that even further and say there is also a correlation between extreme weather events and La Ninas. In 2011, there was the Dixie Alley Tornado outbreak in April, the devastating Joplin tornado in May, and the record breaking heat-drought in the southern plains that summer.
1972-1973 was a super El Nino. 1989-1990 was neutral. We do tend to get some powerful spells of cold if the dam does open in moderate to strong Ninas but overall the winters as a whole are above average. Hence we had a strong blast of cold early January (despite the warmest winter on record) just this past Nina.
La Nina winters have produced cold blasts. February 1895, February 1899, December 1924, January/February 1951, December 1983, February 1989, February 1996, and February 2011 occurred in La Nina. There were big ice storms in 1924, 1951, and 1989. There big snowstorm in 1895. 1899 produced epic freeze.
La Nina is not the only factor. There is also North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), Arctic Oscillation (AO), Pacific-North America (PNA), East Pacific Oscillation (EPO), and West Pacific Oscillation (WPO). I also look at Pacific Decadal Oscillation and Gulf of Alaska.