Valley shivers as winter weather makes a premature appearance
Big snow flakes fell early Friday evening, turning Downtown Boise into a giant snow globe for people on their way home from work.
The snow caught many people off guard, including this bicyclist heading down Idaho Street between 8th and 9th around 5:45 p.m. Across the Treasure Valley, tree branches heavy with wet, snow-covered leaves fell on power lines, causing scattered power outages.
This is the earliest measurable snowfall in Boise since recordkeeping began in 1898, according to the National Weather Service. At 10 p.m., the Weather Service said 1.7 inches of snow had fallen. The previous earliest recorded snowfall was Oct. 12, 1969, when a little more than an inch fell. And if the snow wasn’t enough, meteorologists say winds across southwestern Idaho will average 25 to 40 mph through Saturday afternoon, with gusts up to 55 mph. Sustained winds of 30 to 40 mph are expected, which can make driving difficult.
There is also some early and record snows in Billings Montana
A snowfall record for Oct. 11 was set in Billings yesterday.
According the National Weather Service, Billings saw 3.1 inches of snow Friday. The old record of 2.8 inches was set in 1969.
Vehicles drive through the snow and slush Highway 3 between Zimmerman Trail and the airport Friday October 10, 2008.
Here in Northern California, we are getting some much earlier than normal cold weather. As you can see on my Bidwell Ranch Weather Station, we got into the 30’s last night, not a record, but darned early for fall weather here:
Russ Steele reports on his Nevada County Watch blog that his first freeze came last night, about a month early. Also a hat tip to him for alerting me to this story.
Pamela Gray in comments points out this record report from the NWS:
000
SXUS76 KPDT 111801
RERPDT
RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE PENDLETON OR
1100 AM PDT SAT OCT 11 2008
…NEW DAILY RECORD LOW TEMPERATURES FOR OCTOBER 11TH…
NOTE: STATIONS MARKED WITH * INDICATE THAT THE STATION REPORTS ONCE
PER DAY. FOR CONSISTENCY…THESE VALUES ARE CONSIDERED TO HAVE
OCCURRED ON THE DAY THE OBSERVATION WAS TAKEN BUT MAY HAVE ACTUALLY
OCCURRED (ESPECIALLY FOR MAX TEMPERATURE) ON THE PREVIOUS DAY.
STATION PREVIOUS NEW RECORDS
RECORD/YEAR RECORD BEGAN
*JOHN DAY(CITY), OR 23 / 1990 21 1953
MEACHAM, OR 20 / 2002 15 1948 :SINCE MID
*MITCHELL, OR 26 / 2002 21 1949
PENDLETON(ARPT), OR 33 / 1990 25 1934 :SINCE MID
*PENDLETON(CITY), OR 24 / 1890 22 1890
*PENDLETON(ES), OR 23 / 1990 18 1956
WALLA WALLA, WA 35 / 1987 33 1949 :SINCE MID
Harbinger of a colder than normal winter perhaps.
Unusual it is.
But it gets offset. Warm out east, and Canada.
http://www.findlocalweather.com/weather_maps/temperature_north_america.html
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp2.html
I’d say the Idaho anamoly is probably related to this PDO thing going on.
The cold weather could be a finger print of the cool phase of the pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) which has started in fall of last year, see Nathan Mantua’s web site: http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/ to verify that.
you may also look at the sea surface temperature anomalies. given by
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.10.9.2008.gif
and realize a big chunk of cold water along the pacific coast and deep into the pacific ocean.
The pacific decadal oscillation fits very well to the global temperature variations of the last century, better than ENSO, the El Nino/Southern Oscillation:
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/people/klaus.wolter/MEI/.
The big question is, whether the cold phase of PDO will last as long as it did in the fifties and sixties.
However, weather will improve again, according to our German weather web site:
http://www.wetteronline.de/namkvor.htm
and you may get the same beautiful Indian summer which we have at the moment, after a very cold September
Where is the story?
This is obviously because of CO2 caused climate change.
🙂
“BULLETIN – EAS ACTIVATION REQUESTED
CIVIL EMERGENCY MESSAGE
YELLOWSTONE COUNTY EMERGENCY SERVICES BILLINGS MONTANA
RELAYED BY NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BILLINGS MT
934 AM MDT SUN OCT 12 2008
THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE IS TRANSMITTED AT THE REQUEST OF THE
YELLOWSTONE COUNTY EMERGENCY SERVICES BILLINGS MONTANA.
LOCAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCIES ARE REQUESTING EMERGENCY TRAVEL ONLY ON CITY AND COUNTY ROADS DUE TO THE HEAVY SNOWFALL.
THIS INCLUDES THE CITY OF BILLINGS. DO NOT VENTURE AWAY FROM YOUR HOME UNLESS IT IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.”
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/byz/
CIVIL EMERGENCY MESSAGE
DAWSON COUNTY EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY
RELAYED BY NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE GLASGOW MT
1210 PM MDT SUN OCT 12 2008
…CIVIL EMERGENCY MESSAGE..
THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE IS TRANSMITTED AT THE REQUEST OF THE DAWSON COUNTY EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY IN GLENDIVE MONTANA.
THE DAWSON COUNTY RED CROSS HAS OPENED A COMFORT STATION FOR RESIDENTS WHO ARE WITHOUT POWER DUE TO THE WINTER STORM.
THE EASTERN PLAINS EVENT CENTER AT 313 SOUTH MERRILL IS CURRENTLY OPEN. COFFEE AND DOUGHNUTS ARE AVAILABLE.
RESIDENTS WHO ARE WITHOUT POWER ARE REMINDED TO SWITCH OFF AND UNPLUG APPLIANCES TO PREVENT INJURY, FIRE AND/OR DAMAGES TO ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT SHOULD A POWER SURGE OCCUR WHEN POWER IS RESTORED.
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/ggw/
How long will it take to see a derivative of the following:
“Global warming trends continue to wreak havoc with weather systems around the globe. Concentrations of C02 have caused major heatwaves near the equator, to the extent that much more heat than normal has been pulled from Northern Regions such as Boise Idaho and Billings Montana, forcing local governments to spend HUGE amounts of money for plowing and road treatments.”
Can’t you just see it coming?
You just can’t make this stuff up.
JimB
Sure it might seem a bit cold, but will the NOAA and GIS “adjustments” be able to sense it?
Those weather reports from Idaho and Montana are, of course, anecdotal and not indicative of climate per se, but they are consistent with the steep rise in Arctic ice development this year. Add to that Bay Area weather where it is running 5° below the average for the day and 2° below the monthly average. But the real chill is in the markets. The media is reporting concerns that concerns over the economy will forestall action on climate change initiatives. Imagine: no action is taken and the climate cools dramatically on its own and the effects (reduced crop production, increased demand on fuels, etc.) are considered undesirable, creating a desire for the Halcyon days of global warming.
Here in Buffalo we’re experiencing Indian summer weather, with highs today around 75° and tomorrow pushing 80°. Which is rather sweet, considering that these two days mark the 2nd anniversary of the October surprise, when a band of snow running from Buffalo towards Rochester totaled up to 2′ of snow {yes, 2 feet}. The leaves were still on the thousands of trees that were destroyed by all that heavy wet snow; over 400,000 consumers lost power for up to a week.
Naturally, AGW believers pointed to the event as proof of their position. Don’t you know, we never ever had extreme weather events until mankind pumped all that nasty CO2 into the atmosphere and suddenly every extreme weather event became a proof of their beloved theory.
In any case, since the weather will do whatever the weather does best, I’m prepared for this winter with a brand new snow shovel – and I’ve named it Al Gore. So this winter season, I’ll be using ‘Al Gore’ to shovel … snow.
Well this has got to due to global warming right or is this the start of a very cold and snowy winter which would be considered by the agw crowd as natural variences.
Well just for the other side of the story; this summer has been warm in southeastern Michigan. Today it’s a very pleasant 80 degrees. Normal high for this date is 61. Personally I’ll take 80 over 61, and certainly over that cold junk they’re having in the west.
“You just can’t make this stuff up.
JimB”
You just did! 😉
Ed Berry’s latest view, from the global perspective…
“…The characteristics of the global circulation have become solidly La-Nina.
“Global relative AAM [Atmospheric Angular Momentum], updated through 9 October removing the QBO [Quasi-Biennial Oscillation] signal, is nearly 2 standard deviations below the R1 data climatology. This is the lowest value since boreal spring…”
http://weatherclimatelink.blogspot.com
In the old days we had a name for this phenomenom. It was, IIRC, “Weather.” 🙂
By the way, anyone know why they have quit updating the AMSU, here?
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps+001
I live in the foothills of the Beartooth Mountains, Southwest of Billings about 56 miles. It has been snowing here since Thursday afternoon. I imagine we have at least 3 feet of snow. It is still up to my hips, and it has been melting from underneath the whole time. We have been in drought for many years, so even this storm is welcomed. Kum is right, though, it is just what was once (accurately) called weather.
Kum,
It looks like it has data until 10 Oct if you scroll the mouse up to the end of the 2008 curve. Is the text comparing 10/7/2008 to last year throwing you off?
Yes its weather, but the correlation to PDO looks interesting. Anchorage Alaska also had a very cold summer. PDO?
To me, the analyses about climate should be focused on these very interesting natural/regional cycles and predicting their impacts – regionally. I also suspect that the predictions could be done more or less empirically and wouldn’t need to rely on the not ready for prime time GCMs.
Its warm in Germany – very warm today. Even this night with a clear sky. Will be a good wine this year. But we had a very good wine too in 1959 – I remember.
When it’s cold out west, it’s warm here in Tennessee. We’re currently at 81.1° at 4 o’clock CDT. While I love snow and can’t wait to get some here, sure like this warm Autumn weather!
Commented on my blog earlier that had this Wyoming, Montana, and other western states event been HOT weather, you would have had all the GW wacko’s coming out of the woodwork blaming it on humans.
I’m sure they’ll figure out a way to tie this to how we must elect the empty suit Obama….if, God forbid, we Americans elect him…watch your freedoms go down the DRAIN and even more funding for the AGW freaks. By the way, his 95% of Americans will see a tax cut is LAUGHABLE….the jr senator from Illinois has NEVER (and I mean NEVER) voted for a single tax cut…hope I wasn’t unclear!
http://www.cookevilleweatherguy.com
Anthony get a load of this AGW nonsense:
Climate study sees refugees in Antarctica
Don’t you know, this is just anecdotal weather!
I lived in Voss, Norway, we had snow on 5 th of October.
This should also be a record breaking for first snow where I live, but I don’t know of the statistics.
BTW, about some other weird weather events.
According to the climate simulations supported by the AGW crowd, much of Spain will soon get a climate similar to that of Sahara.
Right now they are receiving deluge of rain.
A desert town in the middle of Sahara in Algeria, Ghardaia was the victims of flash floods. The flash flood killed over 30 people.
This is a must see photos and videos from the event!
P Folkens
Despite the “steep rise” in Arctic sea ice, the N. Hemisphere snowcover is way, way below normal.
http://moe.met.fsu.edu/snow/
Is the text comparing 10/7/2008 to last year throwing you off?
Yes, I still can’t make it give up anything after 10/07/2008.
What sucks for snow lovers out west is that winter is petering itself out now as there is a growing consensus that when the actual season starts winter weather will be favoring the NE and Mid-Atl more….Sorry westerners but this is our year! 🙂
I don’t think people with power outages etc… etc… will have any patience to continue to buy the warming stuff. They know the whispers are about… I think it will only take one false move, one brave (or calculating) MSM, one quirk of fate, for this South-Seas-are-Bubbling bubble to burst. The question is, who are the fall guys going to be? Mann and Hansen at a guess. Al Gore will no doubt worm his way into florid retirement. He was only the messenger after all. IPCC? it will be quietly dissolved. BBC? If someone can organize a real debate, this could yet be the break point. I don’t think we need do anything but keep the whispers up. The next question is, will Climate Science be overhauled? Yes and no. But it will never be the same again.
Human climate forecast over
Keep up the long haul everyone.