Weather expert: Expect hot, dry August, September, but too soon to assure drought
February 2, 2012 at 3:02 am in Grand Forks Herald
Leon Osborne, president and chief executive officer of Meridian Environmental Technology in Grand Forks, says that the region “may have turned a climate-shift corner,” though it’s not necessarily headed for drought. Continue Reading
Is this the same Guy who said this would be one of the coldest winters on record? Oops.
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No, it wasn’t.
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Maybe not…But it is pretty funny that from the beginning of Sept through Dec. the Herald kept having “The Sky Is Falling” type articles about the extremely sever winter we were up against. We were suppposed to have extreme cold and snow up to the roof tops…….Maybe they should just stick to a ten day cycle…much easier to get right than predicting months ahead…
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Leon Osborne warms up the crowd at the Prairie Grain Conference with talk about more weather extremes, including drought in parts of the Dakotas.
Lon Tonneson
Published: Dec 8, 2011
It’s going to be exceptionally cold in the Northern Plains from January through March, says Leon Osborne, a climatologist and president of Meridian Environmental Technologies, a private weather forecasting service.
“We will likely see some 30 to 40 year low temperature record lows,” he says.
Osborne spoke this morning to more than 1,000 North Dakota and Minnesota farmers and industry representatives at the Prairie Grains Conference. The conference is sponsored by the Minnesota Association of Wheat Growers, North Dakota Grain Growers, Minnesota Barley Growers Association, North Dakota Barley Council, and the Minnesota Soybean Growers Association and Northland Community and Technical College.
Osborne says that while the winter will be colder than normal, it will also be direr than normal due a shift in the jet stream that will bring cold air straight from artic into the midsection of the country. The position of the jet stream will cut the region off from moisture in the Gulf of Mexico.
“We’ll have snow, but it will be light dry snow that will blow around and end up in the ditches and shelterbelts,” he says.
Spring across the Dakota and Minnesota will be late, Osborne predicts. The delay won’t be due to wet weather, though. The spring will be mostly dry and cold. Soil temps will rise slowly.
“There’s a good chance of frost even into the first week of June in North Dakota,” he says.
The risk of spring flooding risk will be lower than last year, even though the northern Rocky Mountains are expected to get record snowfall. The region isn’t expected to see another round of record spring rain, Osborne says.
The Texas drought will continue and likely spread further north this summer and reach parts of South Dakota, northwest Iowa and Nebraska, according to Osborne.
In June and July, there will be more strong thunderstorms with damaging wind and hail across the Dakotas than normal. Rainfall amounts with the storms will not be excessive.
“We are starting to move down the path of drier conditions,” he says.
“A lot of things are stacking up to indicate a dry down.”
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Winter’s not over yet. We may hae the coldest weather yet in Feb. and March.
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Google Leon Osborne Winter weather prediction. Enough said.
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I predict the weather is going to be different tomorrow than it is today and will change every day thereafter. Some days will be dry, some not, some days wam, some days cold, I think I’m now qualified at predicting future weather as no one can dispute my predictions.
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Along with that I predict a 50/50 chance of complete change any day for the next five days or more……Don’t you just love those 50% change predictions for rain or snow?
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Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
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Lighten up…We’re just busting balls…If you put yourself out there with predicgtions that sometimes don’t come close…you’re bound to get some grief…Comes with the territory….Seeing how you are so sensitive about this then you best stay incognito so no one gives you grief….You want to compare this to real hate filled comments…Go to a Sioux soup or Unions board….Now there’s some muck raking
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The beast is right stormchaser, lighten up! These comments are not hateful, just stating the obvious! Shame on you for being so judgmental!
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Say what you want. This is the guy who predicted a 54′ crest in 1997, while the NWS and UND told him to shut up.
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Just for the record, I have the utmost respect for Leon Osborne, both as an educator and a meteorologist. A prediction that didn’t pan out does not change that.
As Aaron stated, it is not an exact science!
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A 54 foot crest prediction isn’t a weather prediction.
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Betting on a cold winter during La Nina is usually a sure thing… unfortunately for us meteorologists, the one trump card was played by mother nature. Most stories failed to mention this, however, I do recall one NWS/NOAA article that mentioned the possibility of the other teleconnections spoiling La Nina. La Nina/El Nino can be offset by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) teleconnection. So why didn’t we consider this? Well to be frank, we suck at forecasting the NAO months in advance and the NAO pattern has been extremely abnormal.
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This is an example of an accentuated normal pattern, exactly what MMGW predicts. IOW Pacific & Atlantic oscillations are effected by a warmer Troposphere.
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Well the NWLW and the PCKW both predict otherwise.
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elaborate please
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No explanation/
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UND Meteorologist Leon Osborne’s credibility is lacking. His take on MMGW gives UND a worse reputation than the Sioux logo. I’d guess he doesn’t believe in evolution either. His view that sunspots have a greater effect on the climate than man is half baked at best. Yes, the Sun is getting warmer and there are sunspot effects but that wouldn’t matter if the atmosphere wasn’t being loaded by humans with CO2 accentuating the warming. That he can’t see the logic in that process indicates he is a fundamentalist meteorologist.
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Oh yeah, and this is coming from a meteorological expert. Ladies and gentlemen, here is proof that some people’s egos have literally no bounds.
Go sit at your cabin, go fishing, play hearts, collect what little social security is left, and leave the meteorology to the people who ACTUALLY KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
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No stmchsrund, this is coming from 1000s of climatologists that I pay taxes to in order to keep me informed about what I need to know about the science of climatology.
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Because those “thousands of climatologists that you pay for” have basis to judge Leon on the person he is. Do you know Leon? Do you know absolutely anything about the man other than the occasional long range forecast? No? Then how dare you judge him, his character, his intelligence, his ability as a meteorologist. If it weren’t for him there would be no 511 or any of the amazing progress that has been made in surface transport meteorology.
It has been said that a hundred meteorologists can be in the same room, be handed the same observations and come up with a hundred different solutions. Just because he doesn’t agree with “your climatologists” doesn’t make him wrong. Doesn’t make him non credible. And it most certainly cannot be compared to the logo making the university looking like Crap. Go drink your warm milk and go to sleep. What a despicable excuse for a human being
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If I read what he says about global warming & it minimizes the effect humans have on the climate to the detriment of the welfare of future generations then yes I can say he lacks credibility. He does a disservice to society by bolstering the deniers position that there is no MMGW.
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