Sharing the weather

The image above comes from the weather blog maintained by Minnesota Public Radio. For many years I kept the temperature from my home city in Minnesota next to the temperature for Siedlce, Poland on my computer. I marveled how many times the temperatures were the same or within 1 or 2 degrees. After doing this for a couple of year I went to book signing by Mark Seeley, a climatologist at the University of Minnesota. In response to a question from an audience member, he said we have a weather system that rotates around the Arctic Circle. I could understand that abstractly, but this photo today really helps one to see how this might be possible.

Now the similarity doesn't always work. Last summer while I was freezing in Poland the weather in Minnesota was setting heat records!

Back to the photo above -- it shows the snow in Siberia. The weather blog writers say there is evidence building that shows that the October snow falls in Siberia have something to do with the cycle of cold weather we will get in Minnesota in the winter. Thus far, we don't call October winter!!  That means late December and early January when its really frigid due for one reason to the shortness of the days and lack of sunshine to warm the world here.