Bill Biddle's WEATHERWATCH

MAY 2008

The Merrie Month of May is finally here! The long wait for real warmth that will bring green to the valley will again confirm Robert Frost’s dictum that "Nature’s first green is gold, / Her hardest hue to hold. / Her early leaf’s a flower, / But only so an hour."

In 10 days, the valley will explode with the "gold" of aspen leaves and the gold of the Methow sunflower, balsamroot. Hillsides will be palettes, with hundreds of brilliant sun flecks mined from the vibrant earth below. Savor these leaves and flowers—the Merrie Month of May’s badge of distinction!

This Weatherwatch is being written from a rehabilitation center in Seattle where your weathercaster is recovering from angioplastic surgery on his left leg. His forecasting is being done using computer analysis and NOAA broadcasts instead of relying on cloud development and wind direction over and in the valley. We will see if this new approach has any merit.

Before getting into the specifics of the May forecast, a few words from the world of climatology that have a direct bearing on the weather of the Methow Valley. The report from the Carnegie Institution of Washington at Stanford University is much too long to quote here, but it is reporting something that Weatherwatch has been touting for years. All of the northern United States will be wetter, with more snow than normal, while the southern United States will be drier and warmer than normal. The cause of this new climate regime? The jet stream is moving north at the rate of 1.25 miles a year. Weatherwatch will discuss this in more detail during the coming months.

May will start as April ended, but by the first weekend, summer heat will descend. It won’t last more than a few days, but it will be an abrupt lurch into real heat. The heat wave will break with a series of thunderstorms during the middle of the month that will bring rain up and down the valley.

A good way to welcome this rain is to listen to the song of the finch with its "welcome warble." The poet Duane Niatum knows how to catch the finch with the opening two stanzas of his poem, "This Spring the Finch is Songmaker."

Outside the window his voice speaks

of the slow path of the sun;

asks the primroses to rise and dance,

the moment’s warmth to lighten

the nest with fragrant red cedar.

From notecatcher to the morning’s braids,

the sun has burrowed like a woodpecker

into so many birth pulses the rain

is almost dry. The day rocks

like an accidental reflex in the prism

of each direction.

This rain will usher in cool air – a respite from the muggy heat earlier – but by the full moon week of the 19th, late spring will be in full bloom in the valley. Nature’s first green is green!

June? Stay tuned!