Before Trenberth, NCAR Did Actual Climate Science – Based On The Sun

I’ve been farming over forty years, don’t bother reading the old farmers almanac but I’m willing to put some faith in a 3-day forecast
Only one out of those forty years would I call a perfect growing year. 2010. That was here, your experience probably differed from mine.

Several decades ago, in the early days of the internet, I stumbled across an interesting site. On it, there were animated graphs that covered weather phenomena over many decades, mapped onto the United States.

Repeated views of the animations brought me to observe that rainfall seemed to wax and wane across the US in a cyclical manner.

The periodicity of the cycle appeared to be about five to ten years from ‘wet’ to ‘dry’ and back again.

I moved to Silicon Valley in July, 1978, just as an extremely dry period was ending. The first ‘clouds in the daytime sky’ appeared around that October. The rains ended the drought in the next winter or two.

But about five or seven years later, drought returned. Hillsides were going up in flames and homes were being destroyed.

Another five or seven years later, the rains returned and ground became saturated and houses all along the Pacific Coast were slipping down the hillsides or into the ocean.

Moving to North Carolina in 2005, I began to observe the same cyclical nature of rainfall. Drought – Wet – Drought – Wet… over and over again since then. But nobody seemed to notice the pattern and virtually every time a wet or dry cycle arrived, just about everyone panicked and assumed that the wet OR dry period would last FOREVER… of course, until it reversed Again.

I’d just like to call these observations of mine to your attention. Enjoy!