STEVE'S "WILD" WORLD OF WEATHER...

When I'm wondering about weather folklore and historical events this is the man I go to. With more than 50 years of statistical and observational research, he's the dude! When it comes to lunar cycles, woolly bear caterpillars, insects, bugs, and animals, he tracks them, records them, and establishes ties to weather patterns. Only one person takes climatology to a level like this. He's even earned a lifetime achievement award from the National Weather Service for his devotion to data and science. His name is Steve Gottschalk by way of Lowden, Iowa. He's a knowledgeable and interesting man. I'm grateful to him for lending his unique perspective to the site. Steve's "wild" world of weather can be found regularly right here on TSwails.com. Take it away Steve!

THE SNOWBIRDS ARE HERE!

I saw my first snowbird (Slate Colored Junco) of the season on October 16th, down by the small creek pecking the seed off of a dried up plant. Looking over the years that I have kept data on them, the average date for them to show up is October 16th. The earliest date that they showed up was October 2nd and the latest date was October 29th.

Using this data I found that you will usually see your first snowfall 26 days later which would be on Nov. 11th this year. Over the years, the date of the first snowfall, after they showed up, was anywhere from 11 days to 52 days later. We shall see how they do this season.

THE COIN TOSS AND WEATHER PREDICTION

I have continued to do the coin toss to see if the following day would be wet or dry. For the month of September the coin was right 93% of the time. For the month of October, so far it has been 83% accurate. I quit using the dice last month because it was right only 25% of the time.

FOGS AND SNOWFALL

There are several different weather sayings dealing with the number of fogs and the upcoming winter's snowfalls.

"Much fog in autumn, much snow in winter."

"So many fogs in August we see, so many snows that year will be." Note: I had 9 fogs that month.

I had a great uncle that told me that the number of fogs you had in August, September and October would be the number of snows for the season. Heavy fogs for heavy snows and light fogs for light snows.

August had 9 fogs.

September had 8 fogs.

October so far has 1 fog.

OCTOBER THUNDER AND SNOWFALL

I have always heard that if you have a lot of thunder in the month of October you will have a lot of snow that following winter.

I had thunder on 3 days in a row (11th-13th) this month. On the evening of the 11th there was considerable lightning and thunder for several hours. You would have thought it was the middle of summer? If this saying is true we should see plenty of snow.

HEAVY OCTOBER RAINFALL AND SNOWFALL

I did some research to see if there was any connection with heavy rainfalls in Octobers and the upcoming season's snowfall. Out of the 10 years that I found, since 1960, 6 of them saw normal to above normal snowfall.

I had a total of 3.46" from the 4 day storm but the N.W.S. gauge on the south end of town had 3.99". It was the heaviest storm total for October in my 64 years of record.

40 YEARS OF LONG RANGE FORECASTING

I started making long range forecasts back in 1983. It is getting harder to make these long range predictions. I use historical weather data and looked for weather trends. Since the late 1990's I have been including the El Nino's and La Nina's. I also use the woolly bears and other Nature signs to make my predictions.

THE HACKBERRY TREES

This year some of the Hackberry trees have lost most of their leaves quite early while other's still have most of theirs. Usually they don't lose them until the first hard freeze with temperatures in the lower 20's and then they all come down at once like rain falling. Don't know if it was on account of the drought or other things.

I have seen some similarity between the weather this year and 1976. Next week I will show what the winter of 1976-77 was like.

That's all for this edition. On the "wild" side of weather, I'm Steve Gottschalk.