Troublesome Siblings
by Wayne Gentry, Meteorologist

If you peruse the national news networks, you might think the planet’s weather has gone haywire. In reality, extreme weather events have always been a part of living on planet earth. Just a few decades ago you might have seen a newspaper article about floods, hurricanes, or drought in distant places, but you wouldn’t see images of the chaos, and the story wouldn’t segue into someone predicting the eve of destruction. Over all, it’s a good thing to be aware that we live on a fragile blue planet…not such a good thing to dwell on something beyond our control.

Most everyone has heard of El Nino (Spanish for the male child), a temporary warming of equatorial waters in the central Pacific. Among other things, a strong El Nino is responsible for large storms and high surf along the California coastline, and for us, less tropical activity in the Atlantic. Believe it or not, water temperatures half a world away affect the strength of winds around the globe, as well as hurricanes in our neck of the woods (southeastern U.S.) As you might expect cooler water along the equatorial Pacific occasionally occurs as well. This event is called La Nina, (the girl child). A strong La Nina also influences wind flow, and could allow tropical storms in the Atlantic to form and strengthen more easily.

It appears that 2006 is a La Nina year, and some news media have already reacted by saying that Hurricane season will be much more active than originally thought. But this game is in early innings…we don’t yet know if La Nina will continue into the summer months. NOAA has yet to issue it’s official Hurricane forecast for 2006, but when they do, all facets of the equation will have been examined and weighed many times over. Until the official forecast arrives, I’m going to take all the media hype on 2006 hurricanes with a grain of salt (or a glass of sea water).

I’ll keep watching the sky…you keep watching The Tourist Network.

I hear that. 20 years ago, all the "experts" said we were headed for global cooling. Now some say we are headed for global warming because we've had a couple of years of warmer weather and more storms (excluding the record snow that just hit New York and the North East US).

Recently, news stories of a seemingly credible Russian weather group saying we'll see global cooling 40 years from now that will freeze canals in Europe.

Bottom line is that you are more apt to visit Chicago or New York and get hit by snow in the winter than visit Florida in the summer had have issues with a storm. You can plan and enjoy vacations ... and live life ... or you can stay home and miss some fun and relaxation. Me? I choose to live life.