There continues to be a number of reports of colder than normal weather and seasons from around the globe. Here are a few.
Loveland Pass Colorado, today
Australia:
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/cold-weather-here-to-stay/9718
Cold weather here to stay
Tom Saunders, Saturday August 16, 2008 – 20:23 EST
August 2008 continues to be one of the coldest on record for most of Australia with temperatures averaging as much as six degrees below normal.
The cold weather has even spread to northern Queensland with Burketown dropping to five degrees on Saturday morning for the first time in 24 years. On the Queensland coast Coolangatta has now dropped to five or less on 10 consecutive mornings, easily beating the old record of six.
Daytime has brought little relief with Orange shivering through 10 consecutive days below eight degrees for the first time in 17 years.
The prolonged cold spell is due to a strong high pressure system anchored south of WA. The high is directing southerly winds over the country, carrying cold air from the Southern Ocean well north into the tropics.
The high will finally move east early next week but a second high will maintain chilly weather until at least Sunday.
– Weatherzone
Canada endures ‘briefest summer’ in decades
A bummer summer
Our sunny hopes for a long, hot season have been dampened by too many wet weekendsAugust 16, 2008(Aug 16, 2008)
Summer, we hardly knew ye. Even the sunniest optimist can’t deny the signs. It’s all but over. Area fall fairs start today. The CNE is under way. (Both, no doubt, doomed to storms that are both unforecast and torrentialWhat, you say summer doesn’t officially end until 11:44 a.m. on Sept. 22? Only if you’re an astronomer.
Back-to-school ads are out, retailers licking their chops in anticipation that Christmas is virtually around the corner. Soon sweaty Olympians will be replaced on TV by sweatier Jerry Lewis, the Ticats thump the Argos on Labour Day weekend, and the wet, brief, Summer of Woe-Eight is history. Has any summer felt shorter? And why does it matter? What is it about summer that so often breaks our hearts?
If you measure the season by blue sky and sunshine, this has been the briefest summer since perhaps the oppressive gloom and cold of the summer of 1992.
It’s not so much the total rainfall this season — although Hamilton has indeed had at least 10 centimetres more rain than average, and three times more than last summer. No, it’s more about timing. Summer is about the weekend. Last year, to this point in the summer, Hamilton had measurable rainfall on a total of four Saturdays or Sundays.
This summer? Sixteen — rain on 16 Saturdays or Sundays. Put another way, last summer there were seven totally dry weekends, this summer, just one (July 4-5).
Worst of all, the weather has been maddeningly schizophrenic, storm clouds on the periphery seemingly every day, and forecasts as scientific as a Ouija board.
“If it’s bright all day, or rains all day, it’s easy to plan, but we’ve seen the weather changing on a dime, by the hour,” said Dave Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment Canada, who is quick to assert that forecasters “never promise anything.”
As if to compound frustration over the summer that wasn’t, there is nothing convenient on which to blame the weather, not global warming, El Nino or El Nina. The cave-like summer of 1992 — perhaps the worst ever for cloud and cold — was attributed to atmospheric fallout of dust from the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines the year prior.
And this summer? There’s no identifiable cause for our season of discontent, other than we have for some reason been trapped beneath what is called an “upper low,” an oxymoronic disturbance parked over the James Bay-Central Quebec area that moves around a bit but never really exits, refusing to spin north or east, which would allow for the arrival of dry warm air from the southern United States.
Complete article here
In Colorado, an early mountain snow, the forecast…http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=97578&catid=339
In addition to the fall-like temperatures, the storm will bring a very good chance for rain to the metro area and snow to the high country.
Scattered showers and a few isolated thunderstorms will first develop along the urban corridor starting late Thursday afternoon. The rain will become more widespread as the main storm system moves into the state Thursday night.
And the results…
DENVER (Map, News) – Heavy rains prompted flood watches and warnings in Colorado‘s foothills, along the Front Range and on the eastern plains Saturday, while snow temporarily closed Loveland Pass in the mountains west of Denver.
http://www.examiner.com/a-1540471~Colorado_sees_flood_warnings__snow.html
Call your broker, tell ’em to look for companies that are everything winter.
If “AGW” is causing a heat wave in the Pacific Northwest, “NGC” (Natural Global Cooling) is causing a cold wave just over the Rockies.
“RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DENVER CO
700 PM MDT FRI AUG 15 2008
…RECORD LOW MAXIMUM TEMPERATURE SET IN DENVER FOR AUGUST 15TH…
THE HIGH TEMPERATURE AT DENVER INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TODAY WAS 59 DEGREES.
THIS WILL REPLACE THE OLD LOW MAXIMUM TEMPERATURE RECORD FOR AUGUST 15TH WHICH WAS 68 DEGREES SET 128 YEARS AGO 1880.”
While Eastern Australia has been cold . Here in the West we have had 2 weeks of warm dry weather. A pleasant 23C today. Overall this August looks like being the coldest in Australia for many years. Almost everywhere (except the west coast) has been colder than normal for the last 2 weeks by substantial amounts.
Australia temperature maps (note monthly values are calendar months)
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/temp_maps.cgi?variable=minanom&area=nat&period=week&time=latest
New Zealand is experiencing record snowfall in some areas.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10527369
From the sunny South. The average temperature for July and now August for the midlands of South Carolina is at the recorded average for the period of all temperature records. In other words, that steep increase in temperature since about 1980 is gone. Antedoctal, but fun.
Also cold & wet here in Portugal, where it’s typically hot & sunny!
Ecotretas
I’ve lived in Charlotte, NC for 2 years. When I first came down here in 2006, the job I had then was partly indoors and partly outdoors. I remember that summer with Heat Warnings due to humidity and temperature at or in excess of 105 degrees. I had to take 2 showers a day because at the end of the day I just felt gross. This summer I think we have had maybe 3 days that even reached 100 degrees. Last summer was noticably mild too. I had one person come up to me one night this month (August) and say that it was “cold outside.” It’s in the mid 80’s to around 90 degrees for high temps for this week, significantly cooler than the mid to upper 90s typical for this time of year. These are temperatures normal to September and early October. To top it all off, with the poor condition of the stations Anthony has been finding, who really knows the real story on the temperature difference. It could be a little, and then again it could be a lot. But whatever it is, I would venture to say that this summer has been slightly below what is average for this area.
A quick and dirty way to check local temps vs local averages is go to the WeatherUnderground page and put in your city or zip code to get the local weather. Scroll down, and there’s a “Calendar View” for that area. You’ll see a calendar that has the average for each day, and what the temperature was this year. You can scroll back to previous months.
Where I am in South Florida it has been a less brutal summer than usual, and eyeballing the calendar view confirms that they’ve consistently reported 1-2 degree F cooler this year than their average.
I have no idea where they get those temps or how accurate they are, but its still interesting to eyeball their averages against this year’s reported temps.
Central heating back on in Oxfordshire, England, it was off for the whole of two weeks. For most of the last two decades (at least until last summer) the central heating has been off from May to September.
Been cold this year for some and warm for others here in the U.S.
http://www.hprcc.unl.edu/products/maps/acis/YearTDeptUS.png
HI,
I live in New Zealand and last July we had a storm and this July 2 storms equivalent to a Cat 2-3 Hurricane. All three hit land, our local coastguard weather station had winds regularly at 90+ Knots – around 160Km/h+
My theory is that record amounts of ice in Antarctica has increased the size of the Polar Maritime air mass and moved the border between Polar and Temperate air masses north. This has caused a steeper temperature gradient so when a block of tropical maritime air moves south and collides with a polar maritime air mass moving north we increasingly get these high energy storms. Can’t be global warming, this is mid-winter for !@!@#$!@!
This winter also feels colder, certainly our wood pile has shrunk faster than last year and I cut more wood as well.
Does this theory hold water?
Let’s not forget that these exteme weather events {a cold summer seems rather extreme} are proof of global warming; ask any well-funded scientist. And this winter, as I’m shoveling record anecdotal events, I’ll keep reminding myself that it’s all because of AGW. And also, remember over the course of the next decade, that all these anecdotal events will keep on masking the warming that should be happening; ask any well-funded computer programmer building models meant to simulate atmospheric events.
DC has had a string of mid-80s throughout the month of August, unseasonably cool for this time of year (average high in August is around 90).
Weather .com projects hitting 90 on Tuesday, then dropping back to the mid-low 80s for the erst of the month. It’s like late September out there.
Reality check. The corn crop in the northern USA is late and needs a warm sunny fall to mature properly. Looks like this is not goning to happen. Fortunately corn is grown in many parts of the USA. Golbal cooling can be bad. Global warming would have alowed a late plated crop to mature how ironic.
Dan,
Thanks for the WeatherUnderground tip.
Quote from the Canadian source :
“If it’s bright all day, or rains all day, it’s easy to plan, but we’ve seen the weather changing on a dime, by the hour,” said Dave Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment Canada, who is quick to assert that forecasters “never promise anything.”
Except those forecasters prophesying doom and gloom for the rest of this century.
You NH people maybe having an early winter on the way, however as reported above, the winter season in Australia is not going away. Ongoing snow is forecast for the highlands for the next week and beyond.
Massive amounts of snow abounds in our ski fields this year. Our government adviser, head climate doom sayer and hero of the year made the rash statement that Australia would be snow free by 2015.
Kagiso (15:55:39) :
‘For most of the last two decades (at least until last summer) the central heating has been off from May to September.’
And how much are you paying in CO2 drives the climate tax?
Kagiso,
You have your heating on in Oxfordshire? Blimey! I’m sitting here in Worcestershire, maybe fifty miles from you, in my shirtsleeves at 1.30 a.m. I agree that it’s been horribly wet, but you should try getting outside when the rain stops – it’s pleasantly warm! Maybe you should consult a doctor? 😉
Very little air conditioning time in New York since June. Usually it’s a blast furnace.
Last winter was unusually warm but this summer has been unusually mild.
Summer is about the weekend.
this is the main problem with anectodal evidence.
a summer with warm nights, rainy weekends and afternoons/evenings will feel cold, even though temperature measurement will show temps much above “average”.
so you need to look at temperature averages. farmers and ski ressort owners will be able to tell you the (local) trend as well.
Just a thought. Its been hot for the past 10 years or so (may no warming, but not a whole lot of cooling either). If we lose all that heat will we find it cold?
I think this may be what we are seeing. I remember the seventies. It was a lot like what we are now seeing. The eighties didn’t seem overly warm (except in summer), but the nineties did. Now we are just going back to what we once had.
I won’t be too worried about a Dalton Minimum unless it continues to cool like this for a few more years (with little or no sun spots too).
I would however like to see the AGW clergy squirm. They have built a pretty big house of cards on a very flimsy table.
We are having a preternaturally cool August here in Indiana. Usually the state fair is a trial of heat and humidity. Last night it was incredibly pleasant (mid-70s). Of course, we are supposed to be suffering through August.
It appears we are running 4-7 degrees low, it’s 71 degrees at about 10:22 pm, headed for a low of 57 degrees (58 this morning), with the average low being 64 degrees.
With Bill McClure, I am concerned about the corn crop (which has recovered nicely from the cold wet spring) having enough heat to finish out. I am very concerned about what things are going to look like this winter. If February runs 4-7 degrees low, it will be miserable.
[…] number of reports of colder than normal weather and seasons from around the globe. Here are a few. Watts Up With That? 16 August, 2008 But will it suit those ringing the leper’s bell? Positive progress […]
Reality check. The corn crop in the northern USA is late and needs a warm sunny fall to mature properly. Looks like this is not goning to happen. Fortunately corn is grown in many parts of the USA. Golbal cooling can be bad. Global warming would have alowed a late plated crop to mature how ironic.
Bill, you are correct, we need some heat units pretty badly.
I drove up from Denver this afternoon and was noticing how the corn is about half it’s normal height. With the very cold temperatures we are having here, it seems unlikely to recover..
Steven Talbot,
I drove through Worcester last week and it was pouring rain and quite cool. You seem to have a chip on your shoulder which makes it difficult for you to be objective.
I’m in South MS and it has been unusually cool all summer. Our shrimp season was delayed due to the Gulf waters being to cool. There have been some blast furnace with 99% humidity days, but overall, much cooler. I’ve been keeping up with the “Departure from Normal Highs” on weather.com. For a few weeks now. On average there have been below normal temps for the U.S. This snow event in Colorado is barely making a peep in the MSM. I guess it doesn’t fit the script.
Antartica ice extent is increasing phenomenonally and now about 1.5 million km2 above same last year. Does this suggest abnormal cooling? it may because ot this rate SH ice could reach 2-3 million km2 above anomaly.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.south.jpg
current artic still 1.5 below but melt seems to be petering out .
Even here in the Phoenix, AZ area, I have noticed that the corn crops are just now getting harvested. Normally, they’re on the second crop of corn by now. Whenever I hear a midwesterner say “knee-high by the fourth of July” I laugh, because it’s usually just about harvest time for the first crop here. Many farmers normally get 2 crops out of the season here.
How this year looks so far in the US, compared to previous years. Average is 1901-2000. Jan-Jul rank is 63 of 114. 114 be the warmest.
http://climvis.ncdc.noaa.gov/tmp/graph-Aug1701:21:264490356445.gif
In the 1970s when I left home in MA in mid August for vacations around the country it was still hot enough for me to be sweating all night; the summer heat usually ended by the time I got back the second week of Sept. This year what little there was to the summer heat ended by July 31st, that is I had to use a blanket. The next night I shut my windows.
Another way of looking at it: I work in an outside plant shop mostly as a cashier but I also water the flowers and trees. I used to need a hat; this year I did not. Also, it used to get so hot in August that we had to physically lift up the smaller perennials and annuals and immerse their pots in water because the surface of the soil turned to hardpan. We have not had to do that this year.
On a more personal level I am really having trouble growing peppers this year. Tomatoes are OK, but the peppers are stunted.
Steven Talbot (17:32:53) :
I live in The sub-trobics of Australia but emigrated here from the UK (I thank my lucky stars for so doing every day). I remember that when the temperature in Blighty reached 60 fahrenheit, all the guys would place knotted handkerchiefs onto their heads, roll up their trousers to just above (only slightly above!) the knees and don black socks drawn up to cover the gap whilst also wearing open toed sandals. I can picture it now even as I pick myself up off the floor after laughing!
Looking at the Central England stats (www.climate-uk.com) seems to suggest a fairly average summer. However the maxima (which are more important in summer since we spend longer at or near them than the minima) have been severely suppressed, with mild nights only keeping the average temperature slightly below average.
Rainfall has once again been way above average, with Northern Ireland in particular flooding badly yesterday (have not seen global warming blamed, yet), this all two years after a hot and dry summer led to calls for us to start using drought-resistant crops. Parts of Ireland have not registered a single completely sunny day all summer – the previous minimum was five days.
I was just looking at http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/. It seems that since the end of July, the blue ice melt curve has a little uptick now and then, but suddenly ‘remembers’ that it is supposed to be going down!
I live in the south of France, where the usual overnight minimum is 17 to 18 °C.
The last four nights fell to 12°C. The summer has been cool so far and it was mid June before I began to wear shorts regularly. This is about a month later than normal!
I have lived in Salvador Brazil for 10 years. This winter is by far the coldest I have experienced. Usually, temperatures don’t drop below 20 C but we have had many nights with temperatures of 16C and 17C.
Northern Ireland yesterday
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7566002.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/7565593.stm has a good video of the Northern Ireland floods, a good example of some typical Britishness in there as well!
This could well be the second successive year that nowhere in Britain manages to register the magic 30c. (well, OK, the London Weather Centre alone made it last year, but their thermometer is stuck on their roof, with a small patch of surrounding grass for climate reporting purposes).
Like Kagiso, I switched the heating on for a short period and put the gas fire on a couple of times here in Southampton England. My outside temperature display has been showing 15 C some evenings early on , when mid August we might expect 20 c early evening. The peak daytime temperature has only been 18 to 19c many days , when we would normally expect 19c to 23c, but some days could easily be 27 or 28c. As I’m a keen gardener I do love sitting outside in my garden with a nice cold beer, watching the fish in the pond, looking at the lovely flowers I have grown. My cats love to sit outside with me. This year its been far to chilly to do this. I might even buy a patio heater! ( ecocrime) I notice Ecotretas from Portugal says its cold & wet. Portugal is normally warm/hot and dry and a very beautiful country, highly recomended for a holiday. Sit outside a restaurant on a warm summer evening with an IceCold Super Bock and tuck into Chicken Piri Piri— heaven.
Steven Talbot: “You have your heating on in Oxfordshire? Blimey! I’m sitting here in Worcestershire, maybe fifty miles from you, in my shirtsleeves at 1.30 a.m.”
Well, I’m sitting in Bristol, wearing a jumper because I can’t afford the gas bill – and it’s 13:00. It may be pleasantly warm when the sun’s out, but we’ve hardly seen the sun this summer.
Gulf of Mexico water temp yesterday morning at the beach was 83, about 5 degrees cooler than it should be. Almost too cold to go in.
I live near Hoosier Pass, Colo., nine miles South of Breckenridge on the Continental Divide at 10,900′. It’s snowing right now. It looks like December, not the 17th of August. We haven’t had much of a summer, with frequent thunderstorms, copious rainfall, and cooler-than-average temperatures (even for the Rockies). Last Winter’s snow still remains on many peaks. And now it’s snowing on top of the old snow.
Gordon Walker
What kind of grape harvest are we going to see in France?
Now there’s a long term proxy for the climate, the quality of the wines in France.
If it keeps getting colder, we may get short on heating fuel in the winters to come. The solution may lie with an obscure energy company called Oynklent Green Corp[OTC:OYNK]. Their clever approach is to utilise fast thermolysis/pyrolysis to create fuel oil from animal flesh–as in the Carthage, Missouri plant that uses poultry offal as feedstock. The difference is that OYNK uses as feedstock all “wholly warmer” orthodox activists, journalists, politicians, and academics who have achieved fame and fortune by misleading the public. As the ice age descends upon an unprepared world, OYNK may be the only path to redemption for the grifters who cashed in on a cruel hoax.
REPLY: Oynklent Green is made of Sheeple!
From the western slope of Colorado. In the first week of June we were wondering if it was spring yet, still had snow and frost. Now, fall comes a month early, with snow sticking above 10K ft. Ususally the first snows that stick are in mid to late September. In the past week, it is 10 degF cooler at night,
40s instead of 50s. One more cold front like this weekend’s will probably end the growing season.
Jack Simmons
I can’t really say. I live in the middle of a major wine growing area and the vendange is three to four weeks away. It has been unusually cool but as dry or even dryer than normal in this mediterranian climate. I have a friend who is a vigneron but he was out when I rang him just now. If he is prepared to risk an opinion I will let you know.
Teleskeez (07:06:01) :
“And now it’s snowing on top of the old snow.”
Isn’t that the basic recipe for growing glaciers?
And then there is this report:
This report
So which is it… warmer or cooler?
Just ask’n
DaveK
I think Deadwood is right its same Summers as we used to have in the early 70s. 1976 was however a very hot dry summer. The 60s were wet and cold, 70s it started to change. The late 70s and early eighties were cold, we used to go night beach fishing and the pebbles would be frozen together on the beach. Then it started to get milder and dryer late eighties and through the nineties although mid 90s and year 2000 were cold winters. The climate moves up and down all the time
Interesting. I just got back from raking hay on a rented farm, and noticed that the Maples in the yard are starting to turn. Now, the Maples are normally the first to turn, but this is August, prime time to see the changing of the trees isn’t normally till sometime in October. Interesting times indeed.
“I won’t be too worried about a Dalton Minimum unless it continues to cool like this for a few more years”
Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?
BUCKS FIZZ!
This from the UK Sunday Telegraph “The cold summer weather has caused confused stags to begin their mating rituals weeks ahead of schedule.
Staff at a farm park say that the seasonal rutting patterns have been upset and male red deer have begun shedding the velvet a month early.” How cool is that?
We had a cold front reach Florida in mid-August. I cannot recall the last time this has occured. Perhaps I am more aware now that I have taken an active interest in the AGW debate (thanks in great part to this excellent web site!)
Funny, Metcheck shows that the CET for England is +0.5Deg C above the average for August and I am just going to put the central heating on.
http://www.metcheck.com/V40/UK/FREE/month.asp
R Sach
DaveK,
Good question. At bottom of the Accuweather story in your link:
“By the way, the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH) lower tropospheric temperature anomaly for the globe was +0.06 C/ +0.11 F, making this past July the 15th warmest over the past 30 years based on this particular satellite measurement.”
So, you ask a good question. Is it the 5th warmest in 128 years? Or the 15th warmest in the last 30? It can’t be both, somebody’s got it wrong. Those of us who keep an eye on this blog and surfacestations and CA will have our own opinions about who to trust. Which will differ from someone at Accuweather who sees two temperature reports, and picks one to lead the story, and the other for the token “yeah but” at the bottom from us grumbling flat-earthers.
Steven Talbot,
I live in North Wales and whilst we haven’t yet resorted to the central heating we have occasionally used the gas fire and frequently donned more clothing. So I had to laugh when, shivering in the bathroom this morning atfer my shower, the BBC weatherman said on the radio that temperatures were normal for this time of year!
The clincher though is when your teenagers, who are normally impervious to this sort of thing, start telling you it is COLD.
An inconvenient truth, or a denialist talking point?: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/news/display_cmsstory.php?wfo=lot&storyid=17450&source=0
On Saturday I read the weather forecast and saw that I had a window of opportunity – two fine days in a row. My friend the meteorologist has assured me that modern weather forecasts can be very accurate, so I spent some quality masculine time in my garden pruning trees.
Unfortunately, the saw was quite blunt so I quickly worked up a sweat, despite the cool 12 deg C temperature. I decided to visit the local hardware store to buy a saw file, and as luck would have it, found one that was just the right size, and for a very reasonable price in these days of high oil prices.
The work went much more quickly after some judicious work with the file, and I finished the job just as the sun was setting, at which time I noticed a distinct drop in temperature.
Next day also dawned fine, so I mowed the lawn and generally cleaned up after my previous day’s efforts. After lunch I dozed off in the sunroom, where the temperatures are often higher, although sometimes lower, than in other parts of the house.
Tonight the rain is falling intermittently, as it tends to do at this time of year. So all in all, nothing much out of the ordinary, but still, makes you think.
R Sach (12:14:37) :
Like so many on this blog try to remember what an average temperature is (i.e. day AND night)!!
Dave Andrews (12:56:28) :
“……the BBC weatherman said on the radio that temperatures were normal for this time of year!”
err, temperatures are normal, and using hormone crazy teenagers as proof the weatherman are wrong..frankly bizarre!
I would think some would be inclined to ferret out an explanation for the difference between the perceptions of a significant, disbursed, population vs the official history.
Mass hysteria, perhaps.
We should build our own weather monitoring network.
garron writes,
We should build our own weather monitoring network.
What a wonderful suggestion. Seems we have posters from all over the globe ( I’m in central Connecticut). Would love to see a suggestion by the boss, Mr. Watts, for such an undertaking.
WRT to the Corn crop – the Corn crop in N Texas was 70-80 bu/ac average vs 100-110 that we would have expected. March and April were cold and cloudy and the corn got too slow of a start. We did not get our first cutting of hay until the end of june vs the end of may. The Sudan crop did not emerge until the middle of june vs april 15th most years.
This may end up being our wettest august on record AND one of the coolest depsite the 100+ degree days at the beginning of the month. Its been very cool the last few days.
Today in Seattle it is raining and will reach only the mid-60s. That is fine after the past few days of 90s and not particularly special, but, on tuesday night what is described by NOAA as an “unusual” cold front will roll over us, bringing snow levels in the Cascade Mountains down to 7,000 feet or lower. That system may roll down to Colorado on Thursday or Friday. So, watch out down there.
Twenty hundred and froze to death. Not quite as extreme as the impacts of Tamobora, but definitely a pretty lame summer in many parts of the NH.
We should build our own weather monitoring network.
sign me up, I can give you a choice of some actual rural locations.
As to own weather networks – what are the rural stations on the wunderground?
Does this theory hold water?
Not if you cut down all the trees . . .
Mary H,
The reference to my teenagers was meant to be humorous.
With regard to temperature, whilst anecdotal, I suspect most posts are not reliant on individual points of view and they are largely consistent from several continents.
Does this prove anything, maybe not, except that the UK Met Office constantly talking up the warming and getting their longer term forecasts spectacularly wrong, in the face of individual peoples actual experience, is going to result in tears for the Met Office.
It has been colder than usual this winter in eastern Australia. Here in Sydney the winter has been more extended and we’ve had more days of frost than usual. Snow has fallen to about 1200Ft (350m) in the south of the state and down to sea level in Tasmania. This would not be unusual in 1970 but we haven’t had many cool winters like this for 30 years. This morning it’s 2.5 degrees again amd we had a sleety shower last evening with the thermometer reading about 4C.
Although this is warm compared with northern Hemisphere climates we are all looking forward to spring here. While it’s still cold though I’m off to the ski fields this weekend to make use of the 2m base of dry powder.
Well second line of thunderstorms ripping though Hamilton today. We did have a rain free weekend for a change. Supposed to be sunny all this week we will see.
A record snow base now exists at Turoa Skifield in New Zealand. Snow graphs are available at
http://www.mtruapehu.com/winter/latest-news/
Unfortunately there was so much snow we couldn’t get to the skifield last weekend, and it is still snowing … 🙂
The weather service in New Zealand and the news media have been strangely silent on any possible connection between the recent cold spell, record snow levels and “climate change” – formerly known as “global warming”. Notwithstanding this, the old media (ie everything excepting the internet) continues to be littered with the usual doom and gloom stories about the feared consequences of carbon dioxide global warming. When will they wake up? They are losing their audience to the internet, because the truth is more accessible here.
i hate windows vista …too!!
all versions!!
in england da weathers terrible too its lyk thunder lighting in summmer weird init
It’s been cooler this Summer in Beaufort, South Carolina except for three days in the second week of August when it reached over 100 degrees F. It’s cooled back down to the low to mid 80’s since then. Trees have started to change color here early. The first trees to change color here for fall is the sycamore they always change in late August but this year they have started to change in late July I have never seen them change this early since I have lived here 37 years. some other trees that have started to change are the red oaks, sweet gum, maples and some dogwoods. There has also been a coolness to the air even on the hotter days this year. It’s usually very hot and humid down here in the summer. Maybe we’ll get some snow down here for winter that has not happened since 1989.
[…] today Australia: http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/cold-weather-here-to-stay/9718 Cold weather herehttp://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/08/16/anecdotal-cold-weather-news-from-around-the-world/Wet, wild weather The Peterborough ExaminerA severe thunderstorm hit the area with torrential […]
Hi all, in Europe it has been a generally cool summer in western side (Uk, Portugal) but warm in the eastern part. In Austria, where I am living, after a very mild winter it was quite a long warm season and we had record thunderstorms. But the warm was average and not the extreme like 2003 and 2007. In September the weather is now much colder than average with already some snowfall in mountains (and its still official summer!).
In Portugal, my home country, it was a warm winter (with really unusual warm in February), then the cold and wet weather follow all spring and summer.
But I guess this is still not extraordinary weather. We forgot quickly how cool was the weather before the rapid warming of the decade of 90. It used to be like this before! The lack of sunspots, la nina, and recent volcanic eruptions help bring this cold weather for 2008 and perhaps still in 2009. But it is still far from being a little ice age climate!
And the AMO and NAO may be about to flip on you. It may prove necessary to batten down the hatches.