Low Temp Record Set In Half Moon Bay, CA; Triple-Dip La Niña Winter Inbound (Like 1976?); + Texas Grid Found “Not Ready” For Winter, Doomed To Repeat Deadly 2021 Blackouts…

Low Temp Record Set In Half Moon Bay, CA

Following the hundreds of low temperature records felled across the U.S. over the past week-or-so, the West is still at it. Records have fallen in Nevada over the past 24-hours, and also in California.

Half Moon Bay –for example– set a cold weather record Thursday, as confirmed by the National Weather Service (NWS). The temperature bottomed out at 37F, making it the coastal Peninsula city’s coldest October 27 in recorded history.

For reference, the previous record stood at 38F, set in 2011.

“It was chilly this morning around the region,” wrote the NWS on Elon’s Twitter.


I am reluctant to trust Musk. I regard his attained level of wealth within The System suspicious. Has he been allowed to be hyper-successful? Or did he sneak up on them? Is his closing the Twit deal a positive thing or not? I will say, it has started well, at least:


Triple-Dip La Niña Winter Inbound (Like 1976?)

We have a cold-season situation looming that only compares to two other winters.

La Niña conditions are ongoing, and are expected to continue through the winter of 2022-23. A La Niña is when the equatorial Pacific Ocean water turns colder than normal. The large area of colder water, which stretches across the Pacific Ocean, will often create a particular storm track and temperature pattern across the U.S. and Europe, in particular.

tripledip
Ocean surface temp anomalies (on Oct 25) show the large area of colder than normal waters.


This will be the third winter in a row with a La Niña setup. Since 1950, there have only been two other winters play out at the end of a three-year stretch of La Niñas — the winter of 1975-76 and the winter of 2000-01.

There has never been a four-year stretch of La Niña.

Both of those winters delivered notably brutal winter weather to the U.S. and Europe. In fact, early March 1976 had one of the most memorable, devastating storms in U.S. history. The Great Ice Storm of 1976 knocked television stations off the air, caused reservoirs to dry up and left more than 600,000 residents in Wisconsin alone without power for days. 

The winter of 1975-76 also brought a lot of snow with it. Lansing, Michigan –for example– totaled a whopping 70 inches.

And similarly, the winter of 2000-01 –the other triple-dip La Niña winter– saw Lansing suffer its snowiest month ever, in Dec 2000; it also brought the snowiest month on record to Grand Rapids, with its 59 inches in Dec; while in Flint, 35 inches meant the city log its snowiest month on record, too, with an unprecedented 35 inches accumulating.

With regards to this upcoming winter, long range forecasters at NOAA say they’re expecting more snow than average. As previously discussed, NOAA foresee large swings with regards to temperatures, going from weeks of warmth to weeks of brutal cold, but overall, the agency says the winter of 2022-23 will likely have a number of “extended stretches of significantly snowy weather” based on the Triple Dip La Niña winters of the past.


Texas Grid Found “Not Ready” For Winter, Doomed To Repeat Deadly 2021 Blackouts

While many in Texas might be ready for a cool down, it seems that the state’s electrical grid isn’t. And aforementioned forecasts of a cold and snowy winter will fill many with dread given last year’s toils.

recent analysis by the Federal Energy Reliability Commission (FERC) indicates that the Texas grid since February 2021’s deadly Winter Storm Uri remains just as vulnerable. 

According to FERC’s report, the ability of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) –an agency tasked with managing the state’s power grid– to handle extreme weather conditions has only very slightly improved since the infamous Texas freeze.

Under similar conditions, demand for electricity could exceed available capacity by 18,000 megawatts, according to FERC. During Uri, demand reached 20,000 megawatts, according to the Austin American-Statesman, which led to ERCOT ordering power providers to cut off energy to millions of customers, resulting in blackouts that cost the state billions of dollars and left more than 700 people dead.


“Basically, what [FERC] is saying is if we get weather conditions like in February ’21, we would have close to a repeat of what happened,” Doug Lewin, president of Austin-based energy consulting company Stoic Energy, told the Statesman. “The risk that existed [in Feb 2021], for all intents and purposes, is about the same heading into this winter.” 

The federal assessment does add that the grid would be able to handle capacity under normal winter conditions and claimed that winter cold isn’t expected to be that bad this time around, citing a NOAA forecast that calls for a 50-80% likelihood of higher-than average temperatures in Texas this winter. So, they haven’t learned then… NOAA made the exact same forecast last year, and we know what played out. Despite the prophesies for a ‘warmer-than-average’ February, the U.S. actually went on to suffer its coldest Feb since 1989, and its 19th coldest in record books dating back to 1895.


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The COLD TIMES are returning, the mid-latitudes are REFREEZING in line with historically low solar activitycloud-nucleating Cosmic Rays, and a meridional jet stream flow (among many other forcings, including the impending release of the Beaufort Gyre).

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