Climate's a complex mistress. There's long cycles (1,000's of years), short cycles, not to mention short cycles tucked inside of long cycles. I believe we tend to remember our best year, last year, this year and hope for better year next year.
It fascinates me that this issue is so quickly politized. The facts of the intermountain west are that plant phenology ("green up") occurs earlier, spring planting dates are also getting earlier. Is that because it was cloudy or rained today or was really hot last summer? Earth has never been a static planet.
At a recent meeting of western states crop and range professionals in Reno, a climatologist speculated the old precipitation "averages" will no longer apply in the near future. We are entering a dry period in this area. We can debate ad nauseum if it's due to "Al Who". But to me that's a "red herring" that only sells papers and gives the pundits something to pundit about.
I'll leave to "man-caused, natural-caused" debate to others. Meanwhile, farmers will be seeding spring crops about 7 days earlier on average than their fathers did in this neck of the woods. I'm not smart enough to know if that's bad or good, I just know it is.
jh
