The Weird Winter
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This winter had its share of suprises around the globe. Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow and this is the Weather Notebook. Commentator David Laskin, a Seattle resident, is still wondering what happened.

Yes, we've had more than our share of wild meteorological swings of late, but this year's winter was downright weird. Rainless in Seattle, snowless in Anchorage, record precipitation along with bouts of heavy snow in England, drought in Eastern Europe, and some of the coldest weather in a century east of the Mississippi.

I found it somewhat comforting to learn from atmospheric scientist Cliff Mass of the University of Washington that all these hibernal aberrations were linked to the same basic cause - a perturbation, as he put it, in the long wave pattern. Translation: the big troughs and ridges that determine global weather were out of whack. A tenacious ridge hovered off the West Coast practically all winter, sending the rainstorms that usually head for us here in Seattle up to Alaska or down to California. And a kind of chain reaction rippled out from there and circled the globe. It was like a carousel in which the horses have gotten out of phase with the music.

I admit, I'm not only a confirmed weather nut but also a chronic worrier, so I have two questions gnawing at me: why did this happen and when will it end? "I could give you a flip answer and chalk it up to chaotic systems," Cliff Mass told me, "but the truth is no one expected this and every prediction that it would end has turned out to be wrong."

In other words, it's just weather defying the odds we have invented for it once again.

Thanks go to commentator David Laskin . The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory. Log on to mountwashington.org to find out more.