{"id":98429,"date":"2015-12-17T16:18:54","date_gmt":"2015-12-17T21:18:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=98429"},"modified":"2016-02-03T16:02:58","modified_gmt":"2016-02-03T21:02:58","slug":"98429","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2015\/12\/17\/98429\/","title":{"rendered":"Slideshow: Balmy Bates in December prompts the question, what’s up?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Several then-and-now photographs got a nice response on social media<\/a> this week, so we’re sharing them in Bates News.<\/p>\n

The “before” images are from two years ago, Dec. 16, 2013, when Bates was digging out from about a foot of snow. The temperature was 18 degrees. The wind was blowing 20 mph from the dread northwest.<\/p>\n

Two years later, it’s a different picture. Like the rest of the East, it’s been balmy; the Quad is green and the wind a mere zephyr.<\/p>\n\t\n\t

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Is this due to climate change? While climate change is a reality, blaming it (or crediting it, for that matter) for this month’s benign weather is a bit like saying that a student’s B grade on her first Bates math quiz happened because of her B average in high school. The two are connected, but too many other factors are at play<\/a> to draw that straight line.<\/p>\n

This December’s warmth might have something to do with El Ni\u00f1o<\/span>, the name of a regular, albeit temporary, period of warmer-than-normal water temperatures in the equatorial Pacific.<\/p>\n

NOAA expects<\/a> that this winter’s El Ni\u00f1o<\/span> will bring an “increased likelihood” of “below-median precipitation” here in the North, while above-average temperatures are also “favored.”<\/p>\n

Still, each El Nino winter produces its own distinctive weather,<\/a> says Greg Postel ’90, storm specialist with The Weather Channel, so you can’t predict this El Ni\u00f1o<\/span> from observing past ones.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the top five warmest Decembers in Portland<\/a> (2001, 2006, 1996, 1990, 1973) were not during strong or even moderate El Ni\u00f1o<\/span> winters.<\/p>\n

An “open winter”?<\/h3>\n

We might be headed toward what Mainers have long called an “open winter.” In 1856, for example, The New England Farmer <\/em>suggested that a warm September gale, when the “wind stood in the same quarter” for several days, established a pattern: “The weather-wise are predicting [an] open winter.”<\/p>\n

If you’re determined to divine this coming winter’s weather from past El Ni\u00f1o<\/span> winters, think about this, especially if you were a Bates student in 1997-98, the last very strong El Ni\u00f1o<\/span> winter:<\/p>\n

That was the winter of the great and infamous Northeast ice storm. Yikes!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photographs show a snowbound Bates two years ago and a verdant campus now. Is it time to say hello to El Nino?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":98437,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10838],"class_list":["post-98429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-batesnews","tag-climate-change"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98429"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98502,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98429\/revisions\/98502"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}