The Charlotte Observer reports:
The jet stream – the river of air high above Earth that generally dictates the weather – usually rushes rapidly from west to east in a mostly straight direction.
But lately it seems to be wobbling and weaving like a drunken driver, wreaking havoc as it goes.
The more the jet stream undulates north and south, the more changeable and extreme the weather.
The most recent example occurred in mid-June when some towns in Alaska hit record highs. McGrath, Alaska, recorded an all-time high of 94 degrees on June 17. A few weeks earlier, the same spot was 15 degrees, the coldest recorded for so late in the year.
You can blame the heat wave on a large northward bulge in the jet stream, Rutgers University climate scientist Jennifer Francis said.
Several scientists are blaming weather whiplash – both high and low extremes – on a jet stream that’s not quite playing by its old rules. It’s a relatively new phenomenon that experts are still trying to understand.
Some say it’s related to global warming, but others say it’s not.
The Jet Stream has always been problematic in the State of Alaska since the dawn of aviation. In short, it doesn’t act like the jet stream at lower parallels. As a result, weather in Alaska often sits for weeks. It may be cold or it may be warm, it may be wet or it may be dry but change is all too often slow in coming.
Last year we were told that the excessive rain was caused by global warming and no change in the jet stream. This winter we had excessive cold but we heard nothing from the warmists. Now we are enjoying a dry, warm summer and once again we hear that the jet stream won’t change due to global warming.
I thought science was about following the facts to a conclusion not the other way around.
Sounds like a geometrically and science-challenged journalism major. When I moved to Michigan I kept hearing that this wasn’t a normal spring/summer/winter/fall. When I moved to Virginia, I heard the same thing. Maybe the normal weather is “not-normal”.
The jet stream has never been a straight-line flow, for heaven’s sake, nor all that stable.
Too bad they don’t listen to and check Piers Corbyn’s work that shows the Jet Stream is primarily influenced by the sun.
Balderdash.