La Nina? Muy loco!

According to an announcement by the NOAA Climate Prediction Center a few weeks back, the pacific is now in a La Niña condition that is expected to continue for another three to six months. Reading their helpful FAQ, we learn that the Aussie spring and summer (their fall and winter) should be cooler and wetter than usual. I hope they find it useful.

Meanwhile the jet stream has all but deserted California, and even more rarely buffets SoCal based on what I see in the archives. Without it, all the weather coming from the west pretty much routes itself around us. If you look at the archives and poke around last year, you'll find an express train of wind blowing through the state, bringing us all the weather that Oregon and Washington usually get.

In place of last years rains, we're having the mildest winter I can remember in nearly twenty years of living out here. Outside of a little rain the week before Christmas, we've had zero, zip, nada in the weather department. And this week, with Santa Ana winds blowing (as they tend to do during the winter), it's really been crazy. Yesterday, I'd decided that I had to leave work early just to ride home with the top down under the sun before it turned cool, but I'd foolishly put a jacket on. I had to stop on the way home and take it off.

Today we hit another summit in the silly game of pretending it's winter. It hit the mid eighties here during the day and when I left Harley's this evening with Jon (both of us wearing only shorts and a t-shirt) at 8:45 PM it was warm enough that I asked him if we should ride home with the top down. He was pretty excited by the idea, so we did. He really enjoyed the ride, checking out the stars and basically looking upward the whole ride home (first night time ride with the top down, he was entranced). I enjoyed it too, but I also found it a bit disturbing.

We're already dealing with fires in Orange County and Malibu, and it's only February. That's not a positive sign. I haven't heard of any drastic problems in the Sierras or Rockies so we shouldn't have any major water issues. Still, a little rain and weather isn't a bad thing (I'm not asking for an actual season change here!) and we can certainly use just a little bit. Until then, it feels like we're stuck on a perpetual loop of October.