Goodness! We have entered into that transitional period in the calendar here in Your Nation’s Capital! It could be mild or chilly. The skies above could be like the ones in the image below- steel gray with a dusting of moist snow. We have only two holidays to get through in the next few weeks. We will honor Veterans in just a few days with a commemoration of their own. Later, there will be the Thanksgiving celebration that formally launches the holiday season.

(If there was a thicket of late model autos- imports and domestic- an approximate balance of Old Fogies, a handful of Salts and a bunch of young First Jobbers in the Imperial City, this could be Big Pink, our residence in the Imperial City. It is not, of course. It is Shanghai’s first brush with the winter of 2023. We venture with unease into this territory is filled with controversy. Splash summed it up nicely when he rose to refresh his third Chock Full O’ Nuts mug, muttering: “Didn’t we already have a Winter this year?”)

There was some general head-nodding about that one, since we vividly recall some chilly weather not long ago. There are some interesting things up there in the heavens. Let’s get this out of the way: there are weather systems that proceed generally West to East. They do dramatically different things though they have similar names. “El Nino” and “La Nina.”

Those two phrases reflect “colder” and “warmer” general trends in “weather.” The word from our National Weather Service yesterday was that we are going to have a classic El Nino winter. You can see the ominous azure tint to the skies above our Commonwealth in the image below. The Weather Service hastens to remind us that just because it is more humid and chill than usual, but that those two factors don’t necessarily mean more snow. They do reflect more solar activity but they cannot tell us what that means for the next few weeks even if their forecast guesses for the next hundred years is Settled Science.
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We are pleased to present the prospects for the Winter of 2023. It looks like it might be a little humid due to irregular solar variations. That could direct a little more snow in the January-March period approaching. Here in the National Capital Region, that could mean anything. Thankfully, we have already been though the “boiling oceans” of this seasonal change, and some of the excesses of the public messaging have diminished. We checked, and the oceans were not simmering this week.

That is not to say that they won’t, but probably not this coming winter. Maybe next one? In any event, colder or warmer, we are confident the Experts won’t let us down!

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com