Weather to Bother and Bewilder

(sung to the melody of Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered, by Rodgers and Hart)

It's cold again,
Late March! Again!
There's even a forecast of snow again,
Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered am I.

Got some sleep
Cold's good for sleep
The cold that won't let winter fall asleep,
Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered am I.

Tell me that climate's cooling.
That's the least they could do.
Now I hear that it's weirding
Because of what we do.

A pill it is.
This chill it is.
The jet stream gets drunken until it is
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered
Like me.


Some background:
(The "drunken jet stream" is a description of the more exaggerated, less predictable behavior of the jet stream that used to do better at keeping arctic air in the arctic. As I understand it, the jet stream--the powerful winds that blow west to east above the U.S.--is driven by the difference in temperature between polar and more equatorial air masses. It has become weaker as the arctic heats up faster than the rest of the planet. As it weakens and slows, the jet stream meanders more, allowing arctic air to bulge down into the mainland U.S. and remain for longer periods. It's a bit like a very, very large hernia.

If the arctic air is down here, that means it's not somewhere else. As an example of how this drunken jet stream is turning temperatures upside down, the high temperature today in Princeton, NJ and in Anchorage, Alaska, is similar, even though Anchorage would normally be fifteen degrees cooler than NJ this time of year, according to tables at weather.com. )