We’ve never really breached this topic here at Frosty Garden, so let’s get into it! And that’s predicting the future!
No, we’re not fortune tellers here. But, one thing we do generally look at each year are the general climate predictions for the season. Though it’s mostly for entertainment purposes, and we’re prepared to ride out anything, we do find this science to be both interesting and reasonably accurate.
You’ve probably heard of La Nina and it’s southern counterpart, El Nino. The 15 second primer is that these are climatological patterns that deal with ocean surface temperatures, which have a dramatic impact on the general trends of trade winds, pressure and precipitation across the entire world. La Nina is characterized by a more northerly and stronger jet stream, whereas El Nino is characterized by a more southerly and weaker jet stream.
Since 2020, we’ve been seeing a somewhat uncharacteristic and extended La Nina pattern. At least for Alaska, this is typically characterized by cooler than normal temperatures and somewhat drier conditions. That’s exactly how I’d describe our last several years of growing! Also, regardless of where you live, you can look up the impacts of these cycles on your area!
All signals at this point are indicating that things are shifting towards a more neutral direction this year. In theory, this broadly means that most of Alaska will see warmer conditions this year, along with a return of greater levels of precipitation. Unfortunately, climate science is quite complex and Alaska is massive. Some areas, particularly western Alaska, will simply see an uptick in precipitation.
The reality is, though, we don’t often change our garden timing, planting dates or what we grow based on any of these climate trends. Always remember, climate is the long range outlook whereas weather is what’s happening outside right now. Like we said, this stuff is mostly for entertainment purposes for us! We always make decisions based on the weather, not any climate data!
Also, we generally bet on both sides, every season! We grow things that love cool weather and we also grow things that love warmer weather. This helps us “win,” regardless of what the actual weather decides to do. But, we’ll tell you, we’re definitely ready for a warmer summer, these continual La Nina summers have been brutal on those warm weather crops!
