Mike Ronanye writes:
Photo from Sky News
Story from UK Telegraph:
UK brought to standstill as five inches of snow falls in an hour
The press still can’t convert between Celsius and Fahrenheit.
The lowest weekend temperature was reported in rural Oxfordshire, where it sank to -21F (-6 C) overnight on Saturday. With gritters and snow ploughs out in force, most major roads remained open, although the going was slow on minor roads and police received a high volume of calls reporting minor accidents.
Assuming that -6C was the actual temperature, +21F was the correct conversion not -21F.
“The weather conditions were Arctic”
So -6C is “Arctic” these days? Aren’t they taking this whole Global Warming thing a little far?
Crosspatch, these guys live at the other end of the gulf stream. For them, zero is frightening. Hehehe, global warming has some answering to do. I remember snow as a kid in England.
Same goes for the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Swiss, Austria, parts of Italy, parts of Spain and a great part of France, Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Batlic States, Eastern Europe, great parts of Russia, Turkey and former Yugoslavia.
Crosspatch, it’s not Arctic but it certainly is not global warming. Call it an early sniff of winter?
Plus, Sweden, Finland and part of Russia were hit pretty hard as well. The latest snow cover map has a good portion of Europe east of France snow covered now.
A bit of a shock I’m sure after their mild and generally snow free winter last year.
As Robert says temperatures below zero is frightening in England (Scots are a bit hardier though).
Any snow brings utter disruption to the transport network and most schools will close due to “health and safety fears” (as well as teachers / kids not being able to get into school).
-6 in November in one of the southern counties is pretty much unheard of – and anything colder than about 3, especially if it is windy, would be described as arctic in most of the UK.
Looks like they can’t convert cm. to in. either. The 14 cm is right, the five should become 2.0″. Sigh.
Downright Dickensonian. Now all we need are some kids walking around in tattered clothing …
Okay, I am wondering why everyone is calling this “snow”. This word has been officially removed from civil discourse by the UN. The new accepted word for this, uh, unusual condition is “bad weather”. Also don’t forget that the accepted word for “cold” is now “slightly crisp”. Before you write any posts or comments please go to wwwdotUNdotcom and click on “Politically Correct Language”, then “Proper Weather Terms”. Failure to comply will have consequences.
Thank You
Every year it’s the same. Less than an inch of snow can bring the whole of the UK to a halt. I think it’s nothing to do with the snow myself. It’s just the rigid, miserable ‘box ticking’ work culture over there that makes people look for any excuse to take the day off.
Over here on Vancouver Island, unless your road is blocked by fallen trees it’s not really a ‘snow day’.
so what will hansen do? will all the temp records come through from europe with 6 days missing which will need to be interpolated
nov 22, nov 23 nov 24 nov 25 nov 26 suddenly missing?
It’s not just ºC/ºF conversion the title says 5″/hr whereas it was 5cm/hr. Also the 5.5″ of snowfall was in Aberdeen at ~58ºN, about as far North as Churchill, Manitoba! In the south the snow didn’t last long, being washed away by rain the next day. In the 70s when I lived in Yorkshire I recall snowfalls of this magnitude in mid November.
Snow in England in November may not be all that unusual, but this weather certainly is:
http://www.necn.com/Boston/Weather/2008/11/23/Snow-falls-a-week-before/1227440711.html
I think the word is Dickensian 😉
Off topic, but important news:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/25/world/europe/25klaus.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic is about to assume the rotating presidency of the European Union in January.
“He has blamed what he calls the misguided fight against global warming for contributing to the international financial crisis, branded Al Gore an “apostle of arrogance” for his role in that fight, and accused the European Union of acting like a Communist state.”
Go Vaclav!!
A plea from we in the UK who are bound to be snowed in this year.
Please can U send us beknighted miserable wretches sum food parcels mister. It’s gonna be WW2 orl ofer again over ‘ere missus. We is in terrible trouble wif our repayments. Would U like to buy the Tower of Lunnen sir? S’not expensive. £21 billion is a right good bargain!
Tower Bridge is an’ver item 4 sail, if U is interested. £1 billion to U toffs in kanadia. I fink that’ ‘ow u spells it.
Pleeze ‘elp the muvverland. U knows we deserves it. We is good wiv munny.
Eastern Australia had widespread snow at the same time, only a few days before the official start of summer.
Meanwhile here in Western Australia we are having an unseasonably cold November. Only 2 days so far this November have reached our average max of 26.4C and then only just. This year’s (with 5 days to go) average is 3C below the long term average average. The interior is even colder.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/dwo/IDCJDW6111.latest.shtml
BTW, the reason is the weather has been unusually cloudy. Clouds always equal cold weather in Australia.
Scotland manages to cope well with snow and normally when it snows up there it does not meet the headlines, but you get a bit of snow in England and the press goes into overdrive with it splashed all about. No wonder the Scots laugh at us 🙁 .
2 years ago we had about 1cm in Kent and they started selling snow shovels at the local DIY superstore. I bought one as they are handy for getting up leaves.
As a person who regularily spends nights out in the shed I can assure you that for the last 2 winters they have been milder than the one or 2 before. Even so we are only talking down to -5C in cold winters and -1C or so in the warmer ones, not really a talking point when you consider Canada or Russia. Our prevailing maritime winds tend to soften the weather and it is only when we get direct polar wind from NW to NE that we have a cold snap. We had one a few weeks ago and we have one now.
Looking at
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/se/biggin_hill_forecast_weather.html
you do have to worry why the Brits like to complain about the weather when we have some of the best in the world all told, not too dry, not too hot, not too cold, not too wet…..
Regards
Andy
Ric Werme wrote:
< Looks like they can’t convert cm. to in. either. The 14 cm is
< right, the five should become 2.0″. Sigh.
No, those 5.5 inches are correct.
1 inch = 2.54 cm, whence 14 cm = 14/2.54 = 5.5 inches.
By the way, I didn’t heard one word about “global warming” on the Belgian television the last three days. 🙂
An amusing comment spotted among the reader’s replies on a recent BBC article on ‘the bad weather’.
I really don’t know how I’m going to cope. It says two whole days of cold weather! I’m worried sick!
I’m not sure if I need to have my winter coat and boots in readiness, or maybe even get my sledge out from the shed: does anyone know if I’m likely to need it this time?
Should I buy in extra food in case we’re snowed in? Ought I to invest in anti-freeze for the car, or is it be too late? Maybe I should put the central heating on.
I don’t know what to do!
Rachel R, United Kingdom
Now, there’s a lass with a fine sense of humour.
Some norwegian glaciers are growing again
The following link is in norwegian (You can do a google translate, but the result is far from perfect)
The last sentence puts things into perspective: “Hallgeir Elvehøy says Briksdalsbreen was very small in 1950 – and 1960s. But he believes that this glacier now hardly have been so low since the Viking era, or before “the little ice age”, that is, before 1350″.
i.e. the glaciers were small also during the Viking era 1000 years ago, so today’s situation is not unprecedented.
Sorry, that link was lost, trying again
http://www.nrk.no/nyheter/1.6322673
The UK snow was far from widespread. We didn’t see any in in the midlands and the SW had temps around 10 deg C.
The CET record shows November 2008 (up to 24th) +1.2 deg C above normal and 2008, as a whole, +0.7 deg C above normal. We’re still some way off the next LIA.
Philip B.
BTW, the reason is the weather has been unusually cloudy. Clouds always equal cold weather in Australia.
Very true but overnight cloud cover keeps the
heatwarmth in. This was noticed earlier this year (Jan/Feb (?)) when the alarmists stated that the temps were a record high, not during the day though.Norm on the East Coast (Aus)
The story is simply wrong to claim the UK was brought to a standstill.
Some parts of the UK had snow, mostly near the east coast and in Scotland. MOST places did not have any significant snow.
I live high up on Dartmoor in the SW of England. So far this Autumn I think I’ve possibly seen a few wet snowflakes in some cold rain in October, and we’ve had a whopping one frost. Yet I can remember Autumns from the past that featured many frosts and quite a bit of snow – some not all that long ago. This IS NOT the really cold Autumn recent stories posted on WUWT might make readers think and stories about snow in a few places will not alter that simple reality, in fact temperatures have been around normal so far this Autumn.
But, the British do, these days, seem to be absolutely terrified of a even a covering of snow. What a real winter like the ones we got in the past would do to us I shudder to think.
Interesting that in the same newspaper only about a month ago, it was predicted by a so called expert that “because of increasingly mild winters”, trees are dropping their leaves later and later and he then predicted that the likelihood was a green Christmas as opposed to a white one !
Don’t know where this “expert” is now, but from where I am in the New Forest in the south of England, it’s cold and all the trees I can see out of my window are either bare or have leaves of the most beautiful russets and gold !
Ignore the British media – we have amongst the most exaggerating Press in the world. Yes, it’s been cold, but hardly Arctic.
Snowy, icy conditions are not that unusual this time of year in much of the UK, although it rarely gets down to the south-east. I know, because it is my sister’s birthday, and we’ve been snowed in a couple of times. The snow a month ago was very unusual though – a great bit of irony given the Parliament debate on the Climate Change Bill on that day.
As for why light snow often causes such disruption, it’s partly because the temperature is very close to 0 deg C, and so the snow can melt and re-freeze and so can tend to become ice very quickly especially on untreated roads, and partly because most of the drivers on British roads are rubbish at driving in snowy and icy conditions because we don’t get much practice at it.
AndyW, Britain is similar to Ireland – a fantastic climate spoiled by poor weather. 😉
“Widespread” snow in Eastern Australia might be literally correct, but the actual percentage of area where snow fell would be fairly minute.
But watching the BBC my dear Jean Meeus ( BBC World)” Global Warming / Climate Change” was said 26 times in 3 hours of program/publicty. If you can stand the idiotic reporting ( target for those that have a minus IQ ) try you luck, my wife won the last round with 14 in one hour.
Jeff Alberts (21:46:34) :
Downright Dickensonian. Now all we need are some kids walking around in tattered clothing …
I think the word is Dickensian 😉
Please sir, can I have some more [snow?] 🙂
Mike Nicholson (02:01:30) :
Interesting that in the same newspaper only about a month ago, it was predicted by a so called expert that “because of increasingly mild winters”, trees are dropping their leaves later and later and he then predicted that the likelihood was a green Christmas as opposed to a white one !
I wouldn’t deny that winters have been getting milder in the British Isles if I was you…they have! Isn’t winter from December to February? We haven’t reached winter yet, still in autumn/fall.
Ah, they won’t admit it, but the Sun has been caught napping on the job again.
Bruce Foutch (21:54:30) :
“Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic is about to assume the rotating presidency of the European Union in January.”
Wow.
Obama’s advisers better start doing some real good advising or one of the 1st of His pronouncemetns on GW is going to bite him. You don’t want a major stumble getting out of the blocks.
“Mary” (03:58:39)
You said:
Maybe things are just getting back to “normal”. After all, this is what Newsweek told us in 1975.
Interesting item about narwhals trapped in Arctic ice:
“It happens occasionally at Eclipse Sound east of here,” said Allooloo. “But no one in Pond Inlet remembers anything like this happening around here in at least 75 years. This is very new to us.”
Still odd things going on with the UK’s Met Office – who say that the November temp in England is running at 1.1 degrees C above normal! http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/cet_info_mean.html
No one here that I know would agree with that.
Interesting how this reading would have appeared in the infamous ‘global temperature’ average-In the South west of the country (and its not a big one) the day temperature was 11C (52F) it was sunny and we have not had a frost yet this year!
tonyB
‘Downright Dickensonian.’
__Bleak House__ features one of the most exciting descriptions of a winter storm in English lit, although such an event, featuring snow mixing with sleet, would be disappointing judged by the standards of one who has spent vrtually all of his winters in the New York metro area.
Another great Dickensian storm, of hurricane-like magnitude, blows in at the end of __David Copperfield__.
Well, it was toward the tail-end of the Little Ice Age that Dickens had his
–floruit–.
I wonder if such fictional weather events can be grounded in actual occurrences in the first half of the nineteenth century. __Weatherwise__, back when it was still worth reading, once featured an article that persuasively argued for a specific storm 0f the 1870’s as the model for a storm in one of the Sherlock Holmes stories.
‘Isn’t winter from December to February?’
Technically correct, of course, but winter weather is not restricted by the calendar, as much of the eastern U.S. has learned over the past week–and even back in October.
Jean Meeus
Well, pour vos Belges, il y’a toujours le soulagement d’un flacon de Chimay.
While interesting, this type of weather is not terribly unusual over history, just the last 20 years or so. The US, Europe and most of Asia will likely have a VERY cold start to the Winter in December but it will be followed by a fairly mild Jan-Feb. for most of those same areas. Overall the winter will average pretty close to normal except for the SE US which should be above normal. People in the US Midwest will probably get the brunt of it this winter.
Don’t forget that the trains still ran on time. It must have been the “right sort of snow”
(You have to live in the UK to understand that. When the trains are stopped by snow the official excuse is that it’s the “wrong sort of snow”)
It was a little bit disappointing down here in west London over the weekend. I was hoping for a nice crisp blanket like you see in the Xmas cards, but all we had was a brief dusting of snow from about 7.30 am on Sunday, which didn’t settle, and turned into drizzle an hour later. Still, rather out of the ordinary for recent years, although “brought to a standstill” is a slight exaggeration. Now turning somewhat milder but maybe we will have another cold snap between now and the end of the year.
However… The real fun tends to start after Xmas and the New Year – looking at some of the harsher winters of the 20th century, the notable periods of prolonged cold which wrought a bit of havoc and did bring things to a standstill, seemed to have been from the end of December and through January and February (when in recent years we normally have had one or two cold snaps anyway, after a relatively mild pre-Xmas period.) The prolonged cold spells happened when we got a persistent “blocking high” over Scandinavia and Russia. Could this happen in early 2009? No way of telling, but it will be interesting to find out, and a good test of our ageing power supply infrastructure, if it does.
Jean Meeus (23:08:56) : Ric’s comment relates to the next sentence:
14 centimetres (5.5ins) of snow fell between Saturday and Sunday. Norfolk and Lincolnshire were the most affected places in England, with up to five centimetres (2.4 ins) falling in just one hour.
Five centimeters is about 2 inches, not 2.4.
1 inch = 2.54 cm, whence 5 cm = 5/2.54 = 1.97 inches.
Hmm. Apart from the conversion error, the -6C temperature report seems implausible. I live four miles from RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire where they recorded the lowest temperatures in the cold spell of 1981, and the temperature at my house emphatically did not go below 0C all weekend. The lowest I noticed was +2.5C. Does anyone know exactly where it is supposed to have got to -6C? It is not a very big county over which to get ~8.5C temperature difference.
Brought to a standstill? Not at all surprising. I was in southern California some years back, driving across interstate 8 near the Mexico border, after a very unusual snowfall. Dry roads, snow on either side. Several folks in front of me panicked and ran off the road. For no reason whatsoever, other than perhaps never having seen snow before. In Chicago it took 20 inches to shut things down. In Colorado, we just go skiing. (“sorry, boss, couldn’t make in in today”)
The difference between
-6C = +21F and
-6C = -21F
is a mere 42 degrees Fahrenheit.
You can’t expect reporters and editors to catch every little unimportant detail in a story.
John M (05:43:09) :
“Mary” (03:58:39)
You said:
“I wouldn’t deny that winters have been getting milder in the British Isles if I was you…”
Maybe things are just getting back to “normal”. After all, this is what Newsweek told us in 1975.
In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually.
That seems reasonable, according to Defra the average growing season in the 50s was the longest for ~200 years and appears to have dropped by about 2 weeks by ’74, since then it has increased by ~30 days.
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/statistics/globatmos/gakf19.htm
On the cloud effect and temperatures. I find in Australia the first cloud cover after clear days raises the average by raising the minimum and suppressing the maximum. If the cloud cover persists however, the average T starts trending down with a narrowed gap between min and max.
Nice picture from Oxford.
Very Dickensian!!
Just like Christmas!!
And to think NASA/GISS will not have recorded these cold temperatures.
Tiree, Stornoway, Glasgow Airport and Easkdale Muir as warm as toast.
My part of West Scotland had an 80% chance of snow.
Not a flake! The kids are as mad as hell!
This will be the HOTTEST November on record.
Falling on from the warmest October on record.
RE: “Politically Correct Language”, then “Proper Weather Terms”…
Snow = WARMING
RE: “Downright Dick(i)nsonian”
I’m pretty sure Steve alludes to Emily Dickinson. Those New England winters were a b*tch!
Like brooms of steel (1252)
by Emily Dickinson
Like brooms of steel
The Snow and Wind
Had swept the Winter Street,
The House was hooked,
The Sun sent out
Faint Deputies of heat—
The Apple in the cellar snug
Where rode the Bird
The Silence tied
His ample, plodding Steed,
Was all the one that played.
In fact, for poetry of the cold, I’ll put a 19th-century New England winter up against the worst (best) the U.K. has to offer from any century. Ya got nothin’
Good grief… more bad news about the surface stations. At least the joke will be on Hansen. All the rotten data he and his GISS friends gathered and massaged to scare us into believing run away global warming will come back to bite them in the butt. When the climate swings to the cold phase because of the PDO turning negative Hansen and his buddies will have some explaining to do. The gods help us if because the sun is spotless we are visited by another Dalton or Maunder Minimum.
I’m sure Steve means Charles Dickens, as in Oliver Twist or A Christmas Carol.
Phil. (11:23:00) :
Thanks. Interesting data.
Also interesting to note that we are within 1 sigma of the 1772-2005 average, both in the smoothed trend and for 2004-2006.
And it’s amazing the beneficial effect 0.3-0.4 deg/century can have.
http://www.climateaudit.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=565
“…Steve means Charles Dickens…” I know.
D’oh!, my apologies.
I should use those little emoticons. (Sorry, Steve. Meant no offense.)
Nevertheless, WRT snow poetry, New England has a pile of it.
Don’t know if it was just 19th century.
Here’s the UK Hadley CET back to 1660 with the IPCC human emissions overlaid, plus the PPM.
http://cadenzapress.co.uk/download/mencken.xls
It can be just as warm at 280ppm as at 380ppm.
Take those figures further back to the MWP and Roman warm period and it can be WARMER at 280ppm than at 380ppm.
An inconvenient truth and why DR Mann said ‘the medieval warm period was an outdated concept’ when constructing his hockey sticks.
TonyB
A pickup line I often use in bars: “Did you know that -40 degrees Celsius is also -40 degrees Fahrenheit?”
While this information is highly arousing to other genders, they inevitably spot my pocket protector and all is lost.
More from the South
Southern Ocean more resilient than first thought
jeez (13:19:38) :
One night in Ashland NH my parents and I were at a restaurant and Dad ordered drinks for us, including the usual martinis for Mom and Dad. I think Mom usually had the martini with the lemon, and Dad liked his very dry with an olive. When the waitress came back with the drinks, she asked “Twist or olive?” I managed to wait until she left before commenting she should have asked “Oliver Twist?”
Bill P (13:04:50) :
RE: “Downright Dick(i)nsonian”
I’m pretty sure Steve alludes to Emily Dickinson. Those New England winters were a b*tch!
Isn’t the Dickinsonian Museum the place that preserves and displays all the bad weather? They wanted to build it in New England, but New England wasn’t big enough to hold all the weather worth displaying.
Just goes to show you should never take any notice of what you read in the Newspapers.
Temperatures of -6c in England in November are far from unusual – for example the temp dropped to -7c at Benson on the 21st Nov 2005 and after the famously cold summer of 2003 it fell to -9c at Carlisle during November. Benson is a well known frost hollow, often the coldest place in Southern England and frequently much colder than surrounding areas. My own mininum – I live about 30 miles away – was -1.9c
But nice to see some more normal Nov weather for a change after the last 2 years which have given us such usually warm months.
Bah …. humbug!
Mike Bryant ‘Okay, I am wondering why everyone is calling this “snow”.’
Some recent unseasonal snow in Eastern Australia had the Bureau of Meterology calling it “soft hail”
There will be claim of the ’10th warmest November in the south east since records began’, come the first week in December.
Newman (Seinfeld): When you control the mail, you control…. information!
Ric Werme (23:21:40) : “Isn’t the Dickinsonian Museum the place that preserves and displays all the bad weather? They wanted to build it in New England, but New England wasn’t big enough to hold all the weather worth displaying.”
A climate museum – that would definitely be worth a visit. With walk-through dioramas showing conditions as they might have been during the MWP (with a complimentary glass of English wine) and then the LIA (remember to wrap up warm!) One gallery could exhibit a collection of climate models, some still spinning merrily away, others broken (falsified.) Another gallery could house the museum’s extensive hockey stick collection – some smashed and in pieces, newer ones held together with sticky tape. Check out the award-winning restaurant too – try the succulent “Pachauri special” beefburger and for dessert enjoy a slice of pie “a la Lynas”, with the carbonated beverage of your choice.
Good online service for Celsius to Fahrenheit conversion, can help someone
http://www.convertcenter.com/convertunit.aspx/Temperature/Celsius/Fahrenheit/1/2/1
@alexjc38 (05:30:12) :
Please include generous helpings of Humble Pie, and Crow.
Here in the Netherlands we had some snow, in some parts even a few centimeters, but temperatures are above freezing! November was a mild month, one degree above average (1961-1990).
Moscow, Russia had it warmest December 3rd. No snow there, that is very exceptional!
“MOSCOW, December 3 (RIA Novosti) – The temperature in Moscow climbed to 6.6 degrees Celsius (44 degrees Fahrenheit) on Wednesday, breaking a 47-year-old record, the Russian meteorological website http://www.hmn.ru reported.
At 15:00 Moscow time (noon GMT), the air temperature climbed to 6.6 degrees Celsius in northern Moscow, breaking the 1961 record and setting a new one for December 3,” the report says.
On December 3, 1961, the temperature in the capital reached 6.2 degrees Celsius (43.2 degrees Fahrenheit). The average high and low temperatures in December in Moscow are -4 and -8 degrees Celsius (24.8 and 17.6 degrees Fahrenheit), respectively.
The day was also the warmest for the surrounding region, where the temperature reached 6.1 degrees Celsius (43 degrees Fahrenheit), surpassing a 0.5 degrees Celsius reading set in 1979.
The Russian capital has seen a spell of unusually warm weather in recent months. On November 12, the temperature in Moscow reached 8.9 degrees Celsius (48 degrees Fahrenheit), setting a new record.
This October was the warmest on record in Moscow, with an average temperature of over 9 degrees Celsius (48.2 degree Fahrenheit). “
REALLY THERE IS NO SNOW IN MOSCOW RUSSIA.AS MET DEPT. IS SAYING THERE IS HARDLY ANY CHANCE OF SNOW IN BEFORE CHIRSTMAS