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Bad? She is horrid!

Mar 24, 2011 | 7:32 AM

for paNOW

“And when she is good, she is very, very good and when she is bad, she is horrid!”

La Niña is her name and lousy weather is her game. The exact nature of the beast isn’t all that interesting, but the results are awe inspiring. La Niña (the girl in Spanish) has been ruling supreme in the Pacific Ocean for many months now. Essentially, she is colder water where she shouldn’t be and that affects the winds, the water, the currents and tempers in Saskatchewan.

She also brings the floods, the droughts, the hurricanes, a crummy winter for Saskatchewan and just about any other weather you care to blame her for. Except the no snow Olympics. That was her rotten brother El Niño. Typical boy, he acts exactly the opposite way. Where she rains, he doesn’t. Where she snow, he doesn’t. Where he brings on droughts, she rains them out.

This is the third largest La Niña in more than a hundred years. She started out slowly in the fall and has steadily become stronger. Usually, la Niñas disappear about now, but this girl is going to stick around, maybe as late as May. The people in Queensland, Australia will be thrilled silly to hear that. La Niña is the reason they are over their boot tops in water. She is also why the lands in Africa, north of the equator are in a drought and south of the equator, Africa is wet, wet, wet.

Speaking of wet, Sri Lanka flooded for the first time. There were more hurricanes than usual in the Atlantic last fall, and more that topped the bench mark of steady winds of at least 174 kilometres per hour. Queensland, as if it hadn’t had enough to contend with, being mostly under water, was gifted with a Category 5 hurricane. As I said, when she is bad she is horrid.

According to weather specialists, she gave us a cooler winter with more snow than usual. Yes she did so! You don’t really want to know about the summer predictions. What makes it all so cheering, is that once she goes back under the Pacific where she belongs, the effects will last for a while longer. I don’t know if that means lots of snow in the summer or not. I know I don’t want to know.

(Sure, sure. Blame it on the females).