Punxsutawney Phil May Not See Shadow, But Weather Service Expects Cooling
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With all immediate indications pointing to an early spring, it could be expected that when legendary groundhog Punxsutawney Phil moseys out of his burrow this morning he won’t see his shadow.
Officials from the National Weather Service, however, said an unusually warm January, the fourth warmest in the city’s recorded history, could be misleading.
“This time next week, temperatures will be below normal,” a meteorologist with the service, Gary Conte, said.
A cold streak that could last several weeks is on the way, Mr. Conte said.
This winter appears to be influenced strongly by a phenomenon known as La Nina, where a cooling of the sea surface temperature in the central Pacific Ocean leads to weather patterns that displace the polar jet stream. The polar jet stream is the dividing line between cold polar air and more temperate air from the south. When New York is below the stream, the weather is mild and wet. When New York is above the stream, the weather is cold and dry.
La Nina has made weather conditions warmer across the country.
A professor of meteorology at SUNY-Brockport, Scott Rochette, said temperatures there are the warmest in about 60 years. He said it was impossible to tell if global warming was having any effect on the weather.
“Global warming could happen. It might not happen – it may be happening right now. The problem is you are taking about a climate signal that takes years to detect,” he said.
Nonetheless, extraordinarily warm winters like the one New Yorkers are experiencing happen fairly rarely, Mr. Rochette said – which means the approaching cold front will be all the more painful, he said.
“It is going to be quite a shock,” he said. “People forget that it’s winter.”
Down in Punxsutawney, Pa., where Phil the groundhog has been predict ing the weather for townspeople since 1887, a discussion of complex weather patterns is a nonstarter.
“It certainly has been warmer,” a retired member of the inner council that takes care of Phil, Bob “Coldman” Chamber, said. “But we don’t have any control of any of that. Phil takes care of all that.”
