I think the solar activity compares better to the Dalton minimum than the Maunder (so far, this may change). The Dalton as you may know was a period of weak solar activity lasting from about 1795 to 1835; there were peaks in 1801-04 and 1815-16 that resemble 1999-2002 and 2012-13. The next weak cycle peaked in 1829-30 and then a more robust solar activity began with a strong peak in the late 1830s.
There were consecutive years in the Dalton period between those weak peaks with little to no solar activity.
Winter temperatures in Europe were similar in the Dalton and Maunder; summer temperatures were less affected. There isn’t enough reliable weather data from North America especially for the Maunder to make similar comparisons.
It may be a moot point if the weak Dalton and the total shutdown of the Maunder had the same impacts on climate anyway, except that the Dalton lasted 40 years and the Maunder lasted more like 60 with almost no activity for the last third of the 17th century and the first fifteen years of the 18th.
If there is some weak human modification of climate, these trends might partially cancel each other out resulting in a steady state climate through the solar downturn.
My own study of the situation points to a stronger warming from 1987 to 2006 than more recently, more variable trends since 2006, and peaks of warmth in North America and Europe often being simultaneous and very highly correlated with the El Nino cycle.
I agree that this coming winter could produce some severe cold especially in central and western regions, the east coast may be in more of a confluent zone between the cold Midwest and the milder than normal Atlantic provinces of Canada with the storm track running something like Texas to Kentucky to northern New England. If you’re on the northwest side of that, look out for a lot of winter storms. If you’re southeast of it, you’ll have some milder spells with those storms passing north of you. But I think that the east will start out cold too, November could be below average, not sure it will last into the heart of the winter season before flipping to mild.
There will be more unusual cold waves and snowstorms in the higher parts of the southwestern states as we just saw this past week. Kodachrome Basin State Park in Utah had an overnight low of -10 F recently, something that in a normal winter might happen once or twice in midwinter with snow cover. Where I live in southern BC, we had the coldest October low in the past century, and there is snow at about the 5 to 6 thousand feet elevation in the local hills that fell in September and hasn’t melted totally since then. Quite unusual for snow to appear that low before end of October, on summits yes but these are forested areas just above the populated zone in this region. It stays cold in the daytimes and the sun’s heat seems quite feeble compared to a more normal weather pattern in the autumn.
Some Canadian wheat and canola farmers are saying they never really had much of a summer in 2019 and harvesting what little they got has proven difficult.
Winnipeg Manitoba had a heavy snowfall two weeks ago that caused widespread power outages as fully leafed trees were brought down by heavy wet snow. This too was almost unprecedented in modern times. Out of season snowfall records usually correlate to cold years in general, and are not correlated with any manifestations of warming as some climate scientists are trying to imply.
“Some Canadian wheat and canola farmers are saying they never really had much of a summer in 2019 and harvesting what little they got has proven difficult.”
I knew an old geologist (RIP) that studied glaciers and was all into cycles of various sorts. He wrote a paper once that correlated gold prices to solar sun spots. Fewer sun spots correlated to a higher price of gold. I thought he was crazy - but then realized that the gold prices may have been responding to the poor crops.
His research indicated that another cold period would be coming at some point. He did backyard experiments in breeding various crops better suited for cold weather, and ended up working with some University in Sweden with his work - some of his seeds ended up in some “doomsday” vault in some Norwegian mountain.
He was one of those guys that was so smart that he came across as crazy.