The usual weather patterns of the barren, inhospitable tundra of Buffalo have fluctuated as of late. On Feb. 5, the temperature reached 51 degrees Fahrenheit, coming nine degrees short of the 1890 record temperature of 60 degrees F.
The layer of overnight rain covered UB and eventually turned to ice. The Feb. 6 high temperature was 33 degrees F, which came with a wintry mix of precipitation. The snow, rain and sleet gave cause for flood warnings and winter weather advisories for the area, according to The Weather Channel Web site.
All this came after the Jan. 30 wind and winter storm, which left thousands of Buffalonians without power or flooded out of their lakeshore homes. Between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. on that day, temperatures fell 20 degrees and "hurricane force winds" caused a nearly 12-foot water surge on Lake Erie, according to the WIVB News 4 Web site.
News 2 WGRZ Meteorologist Andy Parker believes that Buffalo's extreme weather is completely normal.
"Only two out of the last seven or eight winters have we not had a temperature above 50 degrees," he said. "Usually in the winter time that's followed by a pretty dramatic drop back to what is normal for us this time of year, which is about 31 degrees. Generally the larger fluctuations you get to the positive, the larger crash back to the negative."
According to Parker, Buffalo weather is dependent on movement of the jet stream. When the stream allows cold artic air across the US-Canadian divide, the cold can get caught in a weather system.
"When you combined a jet stream track that pulls a storm a little bit further to the north west of our area, that's what causes those fluctuations," Parker said.
Parker, a graduate of SUNY Brockport, has recently finished a study concluding that Buffalonians have long experienced these drastic fluctuations.
"If you just look at the 2000s...it is abnormal to go a year without those type of fluctuations. And that is a trend that goes back not only through the 2000s, but back into the nineties and eighties," Parker said.
Beata M. Csatho, Ph.D., a UB professor of geology who studies the ice shifts around the poles, thinks that Buffalo's recent winter strife may be connected to climate change and global warming.
"According to most of the studies people have done, like climate modeling, changes would mean warming or cooling...big changes can also result in extreme weather," Csatho said. "It's not like it's changing smoothly."
Through climate change, Buffalo's extreme weather may be connected to the storms ravaging other parts of the US like Tennessee and the central, according to Csatho.
"When these changes happen, then there can be really extreme variations, which could be like when we have tornadoes and thunder storms and things like that," she said.
WIVB News 4 Meteorologist Mike Cejka disputes whether the ice and windstorms are connected to climate change.
"There's always the tendency to hang your hat on climate change for everything that happens," Cejka said. "You have to keep in mind that climate change is something that takes place over a long period of time and you can't isolate particular events and say that was entirely attributable to climate change."
During the 1980s when Cejka was studying at Lyndon State College in Vermont, he recalled that a Soviet scientist had researched climate change.
"He found that even during a period of climate change there are some portions of the earth that will warm up...and you may even have pockets where it actually turns colder than it had been," Cejka said. "It's not a uniform change on a global scale because the atmosphere's just much too complex for that."
After Wednesday's extreme variation from warm to cold, Cejka sees more white in Buffalo's future.
"There's another storm shooting up into the Great Lakes this weekend," Cejka said. "We may be dealing with a wintry mix around here on Saturday. Then on Sunday...we may even have a little bit of lake effect... One of the long-range forecasts models that we work with here has the daytime temps back down into the teens... I don't think winter is over with just yet."
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
