This week I want to discuss the weather forecast for next Tuesday 4 March in the states of Texas and Ohio, as well as Vermont and Rhode Island. The month of February started out stormy due to the collision of a strengthening Obama warm front with an entrenched but rapidly weakening Clinton cold air mass, but ended with spring-like conditions across much of the US brought about by the powerful Obama warm front.
This collision of fronts led to a lot of stormy weather from coast to coast across the United States in early February, with the weakening Clinton mass withstanding the push from the warm Obama front along a line stretching from Massachusetts through New York and New Jersey, down into Tennessee and across the southwestern states of Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona, before it reached the Pacific coast in California.
But the rapidly strengthening Obama front pushed through the bitter Clinton high pressure system along the entire length of the Atlantic coast, following a line from Maine to Connecticut, then down through the Chesapeake Bay peninsula area of Delaware, Maryland, Washington DC and Virginia, before moving south and west across Georgia and Alabama and then finally across the state of Louisiana.
This strong Obama warm front also pushed aside the fading Clinton nippy air mass across the entire mid-west from Illinois through Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah and back across the upper mid-west from Washington state on the Pacific coast through Idaho, North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin, as well as the northernmost state of Alaska and the most southern and western state of Hawaii.
These two opposing weather fronts will be colliding in Texas and in Ohio (a state that was part of Virginia 200 years ago) as well as across the northeast in Vermont and Rhode Island, where the once dominant Clinton mass has weakened in recent weeks. Now the question is: will spring also come early to the rest of these northeastern states, along with Ohio in the mid-west and Texas in the southwest, thanks to the onslaught of the Obama warm front?
Most veteran forecasters are extremely hesitant to make anything beyond the most tepid predictions about what is likely to happen on 4 March, if they are willing to make any predictions at all. Their hesitancy to make any proclamations is due to several factors, the biggest being the strength of the Clinton cold air mass, which has dominated the US political climate for the better part of the past 16 years.
It appeared to be as strong as ever for almost the entire year of 2007 until it finally showed signs of weakening at the very end of the year in Iowa, right in the middle of the country. But while the veteran forecasters will readily acknowledge that the Clinton cold front has weakened dramatically across the entire country since the beginning of 2008, they still have a healthy respect for the long-standing history of dominance over the political climate it has had through the years.
Another factor is the fact that almost all the forecasters failed to predict the sudden strengthening of the Obama warm front. They had all observed a relatively weak low pressure system circulating on the national forecast map throughout 2007, but they had not detected any strengthening of this system throughout the year. This led most forecasters to predict that this Obama front would never gain enough strength to dislodge the massive Clinton high-pressure ridge before the summer and the August convention season.
There are several other factors that have added to the unpredictability of forecasting conditions for 4 March. The first of these is the influence of tropical waves which originated in the African continent hundreds of years ago and which appear to be strengthening the intensity of the Obama front. Countering this development has been the movement of another high-pressure ridge into the southwestern part of the United States from Mexico, which appears to be combining with the Clinton front and reinforcing the strength of the cold air mass.
The other difference between these two fronts (and which also helps to explain the long standing dominance of the Clinton system) is the fact that the Clinton cold air mass is actually a combination of two strong high-pressure ridges. This is in marked contrast with the Obama system’s single warm front, which makes its rapid strengthening over the past two months both unpredictable and also quite remarkable under the circumstances.
Given all of the aforementioned factors, I think the reader can now understand why many weather experts are so hesitant to make predictions for 4 March, much less provide a forecast for the weeks and months that follow.
I am no expert when it comes to predicting political climate change. However, I will make a forecast for 4 March and the weeks and months to follow. I predict that the Obama low pressure system and its attendant warm front will continue to gain strength and will dislodge the Clinton high pressure system and its cold air mass from Texas and Vermont, and will show surprising strength in Rhode Island and Ohio. While the waning Clinton front may still hold its position in Ohio and/or Rhode Island, I foresee it continuing to weaken over the course of the spring. We’ll see how accurate I am next week.
Charles Laffiteau is a lifelong US Republican from Dallas, Texas, and has recently completed DCU's postgraduate programme in Globalisation, International Relations and Conflict
