Put it all down to Precession!

Woke up this morning to a most unusual meteorological phenomenon -snow! Apart from the occasional skiffle; at 15-20cm, this has been the only significant snowfall of the winter. In fact the weather has been so balmy in the past few days (-2 to-6C), I have been able to do get out and do two runs and two bike rides on dry roads, although in the latter, durations were limited somewhat by fingertip temperature! Today I have been able to do some cross training -snow shovelling!

The lack of snow is quite extraordinary for Southern Ontario and is so localized that during this same period there have been substantial snowfalls just to the north of here and 30km to the west  in Toronto. It was the same thing last year when snowfall was well below average here in Ajax.

Globally the weather anomalies seem to be becoming more extreme with places like California being on fire last year and under water this.  As well as the many other disaster areas around the world, parts of  Eastern Canada have also been devastated by water over the holiday period.

Quite apart from all the diverse 2012 New Age prophecies, there would seem to be a possible astronomical reason for part if not all of the phenomenon, related to the Precession of the Equinox, the Galactic Alignment and the combined effect of the lining up of the sun with the center of the Milky Way.

     John Major Jenkins is a leading authority on this and his website explains that it is important to define what the Galactic Alignment is in  astronomical terms:-  


 http://alignment2012.com/whatisGA.htm

The Galactic Alignment is the alignment of the December solstice sun with the Galactic equator. This alignment occurs as a result of the precession of the equinoxes.

Precession is caused by the earth wobbling very slowly on its axis and shifts the position of the equinoxes and solstices one degree every 71.5 years. Because the sun is one-half of a degree wide, it will take the December solstice sun 36 years to precess through the Galactic equator (see diagrams below) 

The precise alignment of the solstice point (the precise center-point of the body of the sun as viewed from earth) with the Galactic equator was calculated to occur in 1998 (Jean Meeus, Mathematical Astronomy Morsels, 1997).

Thus, the Galactic Alignment "zone" is 1998 +/- 18 years = 1980 - 2016. This is "era-2012."

This Galactic Alignment occurs only once every 26,000 years, and was what the ancient Maya were pointing to with the 2012 end-date of their Long Count calendar.

From all this it seems that regardless of other possible factors effecting climate change, we might expect to experience extreme effects for at least another five years!

As for me, I've put the shovel away and today at least, hope to get a little down time!