It’s July In Wyoming & We’re Still Seeing 60°, What Gives?

July 4th, 2023, 2 pm. I was sitting on my front porch, wearing a coat. 

Up in some of the mountains of Wyoming a few people had canceled camping trips due to snow.

Go east, and maybe a little south, it's ROASTING!

What the heck is going on here?

Is this "normal?"

One sure thing about the weather on planet Earth; The word "normal" never applies.

In part, this has to do with La Nina and El Nino. But more on that later.

This also has to do with where high and low-pressure systems park themselves.

A low-pressure system turns counterclockwise.

A high-pressure system turns clockwise.

This has the effect of pulling air from different regions, like up from the Gulf Of Mexico or down from Canada.

Add to that, the end of the drought.

More thunderstorms bring more cold air down from high above along with more cloud cover.

So while some parts of the nation are boiling hot, the Western states have been caught in a cold wet spring and summer.

Not that anyone is complaining out here.

Everything is SO GREEN!

That Wyoming dry season you're used to seeing has not arrived yet.

But fewer of them and more widespread.

The dry season is coming. That much is certain.

The 2023 Old Farmer's Almanac predicted a wet and mild summer.

Score one for them on that forecast.

They also predicted a “Wet & Mild”—spring with rain and temperatures that trend upward by as much as several degrees above average.

So the question is, do we have a summer that is hotter than average?

It's too soon to tell.

But since La Nina and El Nino have swapped places in the Pacific we are back into wet weather for a few years, at least.

The drought across the western states, which lasted several years, has come to an end.

Despite dire predictions from some, the change happened quickly, over the course of one winter.

The Wyoming landscape has not been this green in a very long time.

Every stock pond is overflowing.

Expect more rain and show for a few more years as we have switched from a La Nina to an El Nino pattern.

If you follow long-term weather trends then you know that things like droughts and wet seasons come and go in almost regular patterns.

These patterns follow the cycles of the sun as it goes through warmer and cooler stages.

That creates a warmer and colder effect in the pacific ocean which will bring us more rain at times and at other times, less.

If the trends continue the last 3 years of extremely dry conditions are coming to an end.

Don Day, of Day Weather, just updated his drought forecast with a lot of great news in it. But also a warning.

The last time climate scientist and computer models predicted an end to this drought cycle, they were wrong. REALLY WRONG!

In this case, it might have been an erupting volcano that spewed ash into the atmosphere and changed everything.

They did not see that coming.

That happens a lot in science.

This is why there is never a consensus in science and why science is never settled.

But this time, they might have gotten the forecast correct.

It looks that way at the moment.

Don Day explains in the video, below.

But what happened was a switch in the heat being received in the central Pacific as the sun cycle heated up.

Over the past year, Don Day has spoken a lot about La Nina and El Nino.

During El Niño, trade winds weaken.

Warm water is pushed back east, toward the west coast of the Americas.

This means wet weather for the western states of the United States.

La Niña means colder waters in the Pacific push the jet stream northward.

This tends to lead to drought in the western and southern U.S. and heavy rains and flooding in the Pacific Northwest and Canada.

La Niña can also lead to a more severe hurricane season.

About every 10 or 11 years we go through a 2-year La Nina will coincide with the Sun cycles. According to Don Day, we are now on the backside of a La Nina.