Winter in europe

[79txl]

John, i've seen that most of europe is currently getting very rough winter conditions. Is it possible that the weather in europe is causing the USA for having such a mild start?

 

[jd]

There is some connection between weather in other areas of the northern hemisphere and in our neck of the woods. There is only so much jetstream energy available at any given time. Think of it as trying to stretch a rubber band around the top of a ball that is big enough that the rubber band can only reach around the top 1/3rd if stretched evenly. The rubber band symbolizes the jetstream. The way the weather works, the jetstream is almost never stretched equally around the top of the northern hemisphere, it has dips (troughs) and hills (ridges). The dipping of the jet in one area can cause the jet to be pulled north in another area. The larger the pull in one area, the larger the push in the other. Right now there is a huge trough forming in the North Atlantic and while there is actually a trough over North America, we are not as cold or stormy as we might otherwise be, I believe this is partly due to the energy being used up to sustain the huge trough over the North Atlantic. So going back to the rubber band, it is being pulled down a lot over the North Atlantic and also being pulled down over North America, but because the pull is bigger over the North Atlantic, you cannot pull it as far down over North America.

So I guess in a nutshell, there is some connection, but now always a perfect cause-effect. Hope this makes sense

-John