WHY YOU SHOULD CONSIDER USING THE PRE-BUY PROPANE PROGRAM?

If you use propane, you might want to consider using your company's pre-buy program and lock in the price for your gas this winter.  The Hill Spirit bought extra pre-buy last summer because Joe Bastardi, my favorite forecaster predicted it would be colder than normal last winter and it certainly was.  This winter Joe at Weatherbell.com believes we are in for rough weather this winter.   The Hill Spirit is increasing the pre-buy gallons by another 200.  If we have ice storms and the lines go down, we are due for a big one, how prepared are you for power outages?

HOW COLD IS IT GOING TO BE?

 

PRECIPITATION

SNOWFALL

Article from Accuweather Blog:

Joe Bastardi believes there is a significant chance for particularly frigid winters in 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 into 2014-2015. Bastardi said these winters could be similar to winters of the late 1970s. He said, “While the most consistent of the cold is to the north, severe bouts of cold deep into Texas and Florida would be capable of affecting agriculture more so than we’ve seen in that last 20 years or so.” 

A combination of factors that parallel the precursors to historically cold winters is leading Bastardi to this forecast. He said, “We have a cold Pacific now. We had a La Nina, El Nino, then a stronger La Nina [similar to the cycle] that happened in the early to mid ’70s that set up the winters of the late ’70s.” 

These weather patterns, plus the wild cards of volcanic activity and solar activity, have Bastardi looking ahead. “The last time we had arctic volcanoes go off, in 1912—similar to what we had two winters ago—the winters three years removed got very bad across the United States,” Bastardi said. “If we put together the combination of La Nina, El Nino, La Nina again and we look at what happened when that happened before with a cold Pacific, and we also understand that the volcanoes may be involved along with the low sunspot activity, one could come to the conclusion that a series of very cold winters … could be on the way,” he said. 

Bastardi said this is all part of a natural pattern of reversal which he believes will lead to a crash in global temperatures over the next nine months, from the very warm levels set off by El Nino—as forecast globally by AccuWeather.com. 
 
In the longer term, this is all part of a cyclical event which Bastardi believes will return the earth’s temperatures by 2030 back to where they were in the late ’70s at the end of the last cold PDO [Pacific Decadal Oscillation or El Nino like pattern] and the beginning of the satellite era of measuring temperatures objectively.