Even bears know it’s a mostly mild winter
Sleet’s late February rattle, the March blizzard, the hard April frost, the woodpile depleted. Live through enough winters here and you know these things.
But there is this to know as well. So far, it’s been so mild a winter that black bears, rather than denning up, have been out and about, looking for food.
“We’ve had reports of bears being hit by cars, bears getting into bird feeders,” said Jenny Dickson, director of the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection’s wildlife division “Unfortunately, there have also been depredations. They’ve killed livestock.”
In a normal, cold, snowcovered landscape, Dickson said, black bears — waking from their winter torpor — save energy by rolling over and going back to sleep. In this year’s tepid weather, however, it’s worth getting up for a stroll.
“They’re looking for an easy meal,” she said.
Gail Ridge, an entomologist with the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven, said the station is getting reports of springtails — aka snow fleas — getting into people’s homes.
“They may be drowning outside,” she said of the wet-ground weather we’ve had. There’s no snow for them to spring in.
There has been snow — in November and early December. We’ve also had frosty mornings — just not many in a row.
“It’s not that it hasn’t been cold,” said Bill Jacquemin, senior meteorologist at the Connecticut Weather Center in Danbury. It’s that warmer temperatures have quickly reasserted themselves.
“These temperatures aren’t all that unusual,” Jacquemin said. “But it’s been persistent.”
To explain why, remember: Local weather is never really local.
“It’s so complex,” Jacquermin said.
Complexity #1: The Polar Oscillation stayed put.
The Polar Oscillation is the huge mass of very cold air that sits over Arctic regions. In past years, that cold air has broken through to the south and flowed into North America, putting much of the US into the deep freeze.
But Paul Pastelok, senior meteorologist with AccuWeather, the regional forecasting center in State College, Penn., said that in the autumn of 2019, meteorologists began seeing a pattern of very strong winds in the stratosphere over the Arctic. These winds, he said, have kept the oscillation far to our north.
In past years, there’s also been a flood of cold Siberian air that’s come down from Alaska into the Lower 48. Again, Pastelok said, that cold air stayed Siberian, not Southern New Englandian.
Complexity #2: There’s another temperature pattern, called the Madden Julian Oscillation, that involves tropical waters in the Pacific. It has eight phases. It, too, changes our weather.
“When it’s in Phase 1 or 8, it’s cold here,” said Gary
Lessor, director of The Weather Center at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury. But, Lessor said, it’s stayed out of those phases. As of now.
“They’re seeing the Madden Julian Oscillation is trying to shift,” Lessor said. “It could mean we’ll get a cold February and March.”
Complexity # 3: The Pacific Ocean has been warm.
When there’s a serious, prolonged warming of the Pacific off the coasts of North and South America, meteorologists call it an El Nino year. Severe El Ninos can bring a conveyor belt of storms across the southern tier of the United Sates and milder winters across the northern tier, including southern New England.
Pastelok of AccuWeather said there was a Pacific warming in November and December. While it didn’t reach El Nino status, it may be having an effect.
“The atmosphere’s been acting like there’s an El Nino,” he said.
“The Pacific’s been so warm they may have to worry about hurricanes in Hawaii,” said Jacquemin of the Connecticut Weather Center.
There’s also been a persistent jet stream pattern that’s stayed just to our west. These storms have brought snow to northern New England and New York. But in Connecticut, it’s brought warmer air and a mix of snow, sleet and freezing rain — ice rather than a snow.
In many cases, the difference of a few degrees has made the difference.
“Five degrees colder and we would have gotten more snow,” Jacquemein said.
Could we get a cold March and April? Yes. It’s New England.
But we’re moving toward spring. The days are longer, the sun higher in the sky. Things melt more quickly.
And, Lessor of WestConn’s Weather Center said, with no snow on the ground now, there’s nothing to reflect the sun away.
“There’s nothing to hold the cold,” he said.