A “superbomb” storm is being predicted for Christmas Day in the Northeast United states according to WeatherBell Meteorologist Dr. Ryan Maue who has pointed out it looks to be reminiscent of the Cleveland Superbomb of 1978 aka the “Great New England Blizzard of 1978”.
This GFS forecast model for Christmas Day shows the depth of the low, poised to gather moisture from the Great Lakes and dump it into the Northeastern U.S. over the next 24-48 hours, potentially making Christmas and post-Christmas travel a nightmare, but … there is a twist.
Dr. Maue adds on his Twitter feed:
Exciting to see extreme weather forecasts with an item that requires dusting off the record books. 958 mb low
For reference, a 958 millibar low pressure system is as low as the central pressure for some tropical storms and nearly that of some hurricanes. For example Hurricane Sandy had a central pressure of 940 mbar or 27.76 inHg.
According to the Time article on the Cleveland Superbomb of 1978:
Meteorologists have a name for a storm that occurs when air pressure drops very rapidly as a jet stream brings in moisture: a weather bomb. In late January 1978, a low-pressure system moving from the Gulf Coast met with two other low-pressure systems, one from the Southwest and one from Canada, to create one of the worst snowstorms the Midwest has ever seen. With barometric pressure so low, it was more like a hurricane than a snowstorm, the so-called Cleveland Superbomb dumped 1-3 ft. (30-90 cm) of snow on several Midwestern states, including Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. Wind gusts approached 100 m.p.h. (160 km/h), causing snowdrifts to reach heights of 25 ft. (8 m) in some areas. Such snowdrifts made roadways impassable, forcing doctors and emergency personnel to ski and snowmobile their way to those in need. Indiana’s governor sent tanks down I-65 to remove stranded trucks, while in Ohio, National Guard helicopters flew some 2,700 missions to help stranded drivers. About 70 deaths are attributed to the storm.
While the Cleveland Superbomb has an intriguing name, the most well-known snowstorm of that year was known simply as the Great New England Blizzard of 1978. On Feb. 6, about two weeks after the Superbomb, a blizzard dealt Boston and other parts of the Northeast as many as 27 in. (69 cm) of snow with winds of 80-110 m.p.h. (130-180 km/h). Thousands of homes were damaged or destroyed and approximately 100 people died.
Maue adds:
https://twitter.com/RyanMaue/status/545288516591030272
https://twitter.com/RyanMaue/status/545289623228805120/photo/1
https://twitter.com/RyanMaue/status/545290397014958080
https://twitter.com/RyanMaue/status/545291816380006402
https://twitter.com/RyanMaue/status/545290824976564224
https://twitter.com/RyanMaue/status/545291107353899009
I’ll add, it also has nothing to do with that other favorite catchphrase of the media, the “polar vortex”.
1978 – wasn’t that during the time when climate scientists thought that we were perhaps entering into a new glaciation state? Naw, I have been told by climate change extremists that climate scientists all knew better, and that warming was going to be our major problem. For some reason, the mainstream media received the impression from some maverick climate scientists that glaciation was really the cause for concern. Right?
It is my understanding that it was all due to one article in time magazine…..however:
1970s: Every major climate organization endorsed the ice age scare, including NCAR, CRU, NAS, NASA, as did the CIA.
1970s: ‘Fears of a coming ice age showed up in peer-reviewed literature, at scientific conferences, by prominent scientists and throughout the media’
February, 1973: Science Digest: “the world’s climatologists are agreed” that we must “prepare for the next ice age.”
1971: NASA warned of human caused coming ‘ice age’.
Flashback 1971: Hansen’s climate model says ice age to occur by 2021
July 9, 1971: The Washington Post, Times Herald: The world could be as little as 50 or 60 years away from a disastrous new ice age, a leading atmospheric scientist predicts. Dr. S. I. Rasool of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Columbia University.
Flashback 1972: CRU Chief Hubert Lamb of U. of East Anglia said in an Associated Press article that Earth Would Definitely Cool Over The Next Two Centuries
1975: National Academy of Sciences Issued Report Warning of Coming Ice Age.
May 21, 1975, New York Times: Scientists Ask Why World Climate Is Changing; Major Cooling May Be Ahead; Scientists Ponder Why World’s Climate Is Changing; a Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable
Flashback 1975 New York Times: Climate Experts Said That Jumbo Jets Would Cool The Planet And Produce Global Famine
1964: CRU Director Hubert Lamb Predicted Little Ice Age for Britain.
1972: CRU Director Hubert Lamb of U. of East Anglia Predicted A New Ice Age: ‘We are in a definite downhill course for the next two centuries.’
1974: Office of Research and Development of the Central Intelligence Agency produced a report entitled “A Study of Climatological Research as it Pertains to Intelligence Problems”: “The western world’s leading climatologists have confirmed recent reports of a detrimental global climate change. The stability of most nations is based upon a dependable source of food, but this stability will not be possible under the new (colder) climatic era. A forecast by the University of Wisconsin projects that the earth’s climate is returning to that of the neo-boreal era (little ice age) (1600- 1850) – an era of drought, famine and political unrest in the western world.
November 22, 1974 (AAP-Reuters, London) Science Documentary: “New ice age could be in our lifetime” “The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind.” “Present international cooperation in meteorology was a hopeful sign that man might be able to alter the weather pattern in some way and meet the challenge of the ice.”
1974: Global Cooling To Kill One Billion People. ‘Dr. Reid Bryson, a U. of Wisconsin climatologist, fears that climatic changes (cooling) now in progress will eventually affect the whole human population – ‘like a billion people dying,’ he says
1975: World Meteorological Organization: Global Cooling Causes More Extreme Weather
1977 book “The Weather Conspiracy: The Coming of the New Ice Age” – CIA Feared Global Cooling – Excerpt: In the early 1970s, top CIA thinkers concluded that changing (cooling) weather was “perhaps the greatest single challenge that America will face in coming years”. As a result they ordered several studies of the world’s climate, the likely changes to come and their probably effect on America and the rest of the world. The studies conclude that the world is entering a difficult period…
August 8, 1974: New York Times: “Climate Changes Endanger World’s Food Output,” Excerpt: A recent meeting of climate experts in Bonn, West Germany, produced the UNANIMOUS conclusion that the (cooling) change in global weather patterns pose a severe threat to agriculture that could lead to major crop failures and mass starvation.
January 25, 1975: Science News National Academy of Sciences Report on Global Climate Change: “We may be approaching the end of a major interglacial cycle, with the approach of a full-blown 10,000-year ice age.”
1975: Walter Orr Roberts of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR): The Earth may have entered a new “little ice age”. There are strong signs that these recent climate disasters were not random deviations from the usual weather, but instead signals of the emergence of a new normal for world climates.
August 14, 1975: New York Times: “many signs that the Earth may be heading for another ice age.”
December 10, 1976: Science Magazine: heading “toward extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation.”
1976 Book: “The Cooling: Has the Next Ice Age Already Begun” By Lowell Ponte – Excerpt: “This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000.”
“Hansen’s climate model says ice age to occur by 2021”
What if he is correct?
Hansen didn’t have a model in 1971. He was writing papers on Venus. He was a co-author on the first GISS model paper in 1974. That said nothing about an ice age. It modelled a total of 50 days in 1972.
Leon,
It seems you’ve developed a psychosis over weather, climate change, change of climate, ice ages especially, hot ages, fudgicles, icicles blah, blah, blah. Like who really gives a spit? Weather is weather; all of us must roll with the punches and since we can’t do a damned thing about it, sit back and relax. If an ice age is approaching, those in the blanket business will do very well.
Chicken Little. Just had to say it!
For once I agree with Nick. The 1971 Washington Post article referenced clearly says that the prognostication on cooling came from a scientist who used Hansen’s program/model for Venus cloud studies to try to model the earth cloud cover impact. One presumes that Hansen was ok with that application of his tool, but it doesn’t make him the author of the prediction. Hansen has plenty of issues without flogging him with this.
Taylor
Nick that patently not true, his model was used in a paper published in 1971, that people who wrote the paper used his model to predicted and ice age by 2021, he now claim that model was not meant to be used for that, funny he had no complaint back in 1971 about the misuse. The paper was on cooling due to particulate in the air, causing light scattering, the model, modeled the light scattering, the rest of the team used the model result for the prediction. Funny over thirty years later Hanson claims the teamed misuse his model. Take it were you want but you statement is false, his name was on the paper as a contributor.
Now if you want to debate the meaning of words the claim Hanson predicted a ice age buy 2021 would be incorrect but the claim “Hansen’s climate model says ice age to occur by 2021″ is mostly correct you could argue it was not a climate model I will give you that point, it still makes you statement incorrect. A more precise statement would be Hansen’s particulate light scattering model says ice age to occur by 2021.
Live by model die by models, in the mean time the earth does what it does in spite of the models.
” A more precise statement would be Hansen’s particulate light scattering model says ice age to occur by 2021.”
R&S used Hansen’s radiative scattering model that he developed for Venus. But that was only part of their model for temperature outcome. They did their own model for CO2 etc. You need a lot more than just a scattering model to make a prediction.
But R&S did not predict an ice age by 2021. They said:
“An increase by only a factor of 4 in global aerosol background concentration may be sufficient to reduce the surface temperature by as much as 3.5 ° K. If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease over the whole globe is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age.”
And that’s likely true, then and now. But it was conditional. Aerosols didn’t increase by a factor of 4; in fact they would have been near their peak, just about the time of the Clean Air Act.
True, the statement “Flashback 1971: Hansen’s climate model says ice age to occur by 2021” is a bit loose with the connection. I wrote a note about the actual paper in question, by Rasool and Schneider. Schneider went on to become a big-time warmer and later made some unfortunate comments on deciding “what the right balance is between being effective and being honest”
http://judithcurry.com/2011/07/21/stephen-schneider-and-the-%e2%80%9cdouble-ethical-bind%e2%80%9d-of-climate-change-communication/
Meanwhile, in 1971 Hansen was publishing papers on radiative transfer in clouds and aerosols with NASA/GISS, the same outfit that Rasool was with at the time. http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/year/1971.html
Hansen himself in quoted by Joe Romm in Climate Progress (yechhhh) http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2007/09/27/201916/james-hansen-ice-age-myth/
that he wrote his first climate paper in 1976. Since that’s a verifiable remark, my first guess is that it’s true.
Deviation: the title of Romm’s article, Swift-Boating James Hansen, doesn’t do anything to enhance its credibility, I know some “Swifties” Boat fellows who served with Kerry and truly despised him and his actions, and that the Swift Boat stories and ads back in ’04 were all true. Romm’s attempt to turn their service into a perjorative is not appreciated. But back to the ice age…
So it appears Hansen did not predict an ice age, but Schneider and Rasool, while perhaps not “predicting”, but “projecting” (as in the quasi-medical term, “projectile modeling”), did. They did conclude with the statement “believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age.” I thought it was pretty good paper at the time, and still do, since their smallish assessment of climate sensitivity (0.8K for a CO2 doubling) is so much better than the more recent numbers. It also had all the basic physics spelled out, unlike more recent “black box” models.
This misunderstanding is easy to clear up. Hansen was predicting an ice age on Venus.
This is more or less correct. The only speculation of entering a new glacial period was on the order of 10k years and review of the literature will show this was a minority opinion. The scientifically illiterate media spun this to mean we should expect cold weather now.
The fears about glaciation were from the early 1970’s. By the late 1970’s, the propaganda had begun to swing. I DO recall my public schooling (pre 1975) when we were encouraged to conserve energy to avoid helping the onset of a new ice age. Plus ca change.
If you look at the papers that were published on climatolgy through the late 60s through the early 80s you’d see that the idea of a coming glaciation period was never a majority position. It was floated by a couple of researchers right around 1970 based on their concerns regarding increased solar reflection due to suspended aerosols. After review and analysis the theory failed to gain the endorsement of the majority of researchers working in the field. After significant problems were discovered in the underlying thesis the community essentially rejected the theory by the late 70s. That’s how science is supposed to work. A scientist has an idea, they work to support that idea, the idea is reviewed by the community as a whole and is either rejected, incorporated into the existing body of knowledge, or forms the foundation for a new paradigm.
Since when did a severe storm become a “weather bomb” ? Is a cloudburst a “precipitation grenade”? Or a hailstorm “glacial shrapnel”? Hyperbole before objectiity.
In the mean time I hope those affected keep warm and safe.
The term “bomb” has been used in meteorology since at least 1980, in Sanders and Gyakum (1980):
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0493%281980%29108%3C1589%3ASDCOT%3E2.0.CO%3B2
“The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” – Paul Ehrlich – The Population Bomb (1968)
“Population shrapnel” has a nice ring to it.
Weather bomb? Even the ‘cloudburst’ thing is strange. Did we break it and is it our fault? When the hyperbole flows, hold your nose.
Current in the UK since my … since 1960
We’ll get 0.5 inches of rain which will constitute the entire “Santabomb.” Santabomb sounds to me like a guy wearing a red shirt and sitting on the throne.
Does he work for The Weather Channel?
Weather not Climate.
But weather is what we actually have to deal with.
Take care out there next week.
That was a bad week, but I made my appointments in Boston, Newark, DC and St Louis, but had to come home to Vancouver, as DFW was closed due to an ice storm. Had a delightful ride in the last seat in the club car from Boston to Newark, eating sandwiches, drinking Gin and Tonic, and playing bridge, while the “regular” passenger cars were SRO like cattle. I think that train trip took 8 hours….
Thank you, Ryan, for retiring the term “superstorm”. With every little hiccup being called a super-something, they’ve desensitized anyone listening.
Cheers.
PS: I would prefer a warm and sunny forecast as opposed to cold and snowy.
Superstorm, supersized, supermodels (both climate and fashion?), supermarket, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, supercilious – yep, overused to the point of becoming superfluous. And now hyper is becoming the new super.
I’m with you Bob, and long for the good old days (1967) when the greatest snow storm in Chicago’s history was called, simply, the “Big Snow”.
And the mayor of the Toddlin’ Town, Dick Daley the First, was simply called Big…, well, never mind.
+1, sir. That was a
superfine rant.I remember back in either ’68 or ’69, it snowed like all hell on Easter Sunday. I went out to shovel and my neighbor, not knowing anything about me, blamed it on the Jews. This one I would expect is pinned on ISIS.
If you were in the midwest back then it would be 1970. Was in boot camp in north Chicago and had to shovel it.
“1978 – wasn’t that during the time when climate scientists thought that we were perhaps entering into a new glaciation state? Naw, I have been told by climate change extremists that climate scientists all knew better, and that warming was going to be our major problem. For some reason, the mainstream media received the impression from some maverick climate scientists that glaciation was really the cause for concern. Right?”
And Just think Jim S., this time (if it happens) they’ll blame it on warming and maybe, just maybe, 40 years from now they’ll say that they really didn’t believe all that warming jazz anyways.
Was there and it was cold.
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=chesapeake+bay+frozen+over
They’ll rewrite history as often as they have to.
You are so right about them re-re-rewriting history, jorgekafkazar. Just look it up.
Oh wait….
I’ll believe it when I see it … On this subject though, it has been interesting to watch the models shift the weather pattern during Christmas week, to one that should bring more winter-like weather to much of the eastern 2/3rds of the U.S.
Darn. I was planning for no snow this year.
We’ve been Gruber yet again.
I was attending Virginia Tech (Blacksburg VA) in 1978. I remember the storm very well. They closed the campus. And it was much worse farther north/west.
And I was there in ’66 when it was also shut down from humongous snows.
1978 – 1966 = 12 years. Sounds a bit like a solar cycle thingie to me!
Eustace, a fellow Hokie! I was there too. IIRC, it was the first time classes had ever been cancelled (the off-campus student population was much greater than previous times, so that’s a partial explanation). The next day opened but only half the students were present.
Not a Hokie, but my Fiance’ was at the time. I drove up to Blacksburg every weekend, ice storm or snow! If you saw some clown trying to jump start a green VW Beetle around the commons, that was me.
The colors on the map confuse me. Does red mean cold/snow/what have you? Blue always looks like snow to me.
The map is for normalized anomalies of temperature. Mean sea-level pressure is depicted by the isobars (lines of equal pressure).
Red means temperature higher than normal (6°C warmer than normal), white is normal and it goes down to blue, green and purple (6°C colder than normal).
I live in New England and I like these sorts of longer range forecasts. Even if we don’t get a large amount of snow, I can prepared nonetheless. Snow/ice removal is a major issue and is very time consuming when we get a big dump. The last storm we had was particularly annoying as it was mostly heavy, wet snow (temps around 32 – 34 deg), which is difficult for most snow blowers (including mine) to handle.
I’ve got a shovel, 4×4 suv, fridge full of beer, and a gas grill, so…..
Don’t know if anyone besides me notices, but there is frequently a powerful winter storm right about the winter solstice, give or take a few days. It happens most years out here in the Great Plains.
Yes, winter storms are associated with…winter. The Solstice comes a bit before the “dead of winter,” so the worst storms might be expected about Feb 1st, more than a few days after mid-December. Have you any data? You may be onto something, depending on the timing/pattern of winter humidities vs temperatures. I wouldn’t expect a strong correlation, though.
75 years worth of personal observations. Doesn’t happen every year, but most years. What does your data say?
And then there’s the well-known “January Thaw” around the end of Jan and/or first few days of Feb. Then there’s usually cold/snow shortly afterwards.
The Cleveland Superbomb and the New England Blizzard of 78 were 2 separate storms about 10 days apart. The former on January 26, the latter on February 6.
So the “twist” is that high winds but little cold and snow for Christmas in E and upper Midwest?
Wasn’t very clear what the “twist” was supposed to be.
Then it gets brutally cold in 4-7 days?
My guess is the twist is the expected lack of cold air, making for a mostly rain event. The cold air will be late to the party.
I was forecasting in Ft Wayne IN at WANE-TV. My opening line the day before was, “So you think you are going to work tomorrow?!” I went to work in a snowmobile! LFM and NGM were models of choice, if you could see them. It was not like today’s suite of models! My wife’s VW was a bump in the parking lot!
The White House science team is already running test market explanations on lab subjects and donor groups.
from their taxpayer funded Hawaiin recluse.
The last sentence says it has nothing to do with polar vortex. How are they different from a meteorological standpoint?
There can be a cold air mass that forms in the polar region and circulates in a counter clockwise pattern. Then it is forced out of that location by movement of other air masses (think high pressure moving from the northern Pacific O. ). When that cold polar circulation travels south it can be called a polar vortex.**
The storm now of interest is forming in the east-center of North America (forming in-place; in situ) – so not polar. As this low moves eastward the air will be replaced by cold air from north of its location. This is a typical pattern or sequence except that the pressure is quite low and the winds will be strong.
_______
**http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/what-is-a-polar-vortex/21793077
Personal observation with no climate content. The Blizzard of ’78 left Boston totally frozen. Friends built a giant Bhudda in the reflecting pool outside of the World Headquarters of the Christian Scientists when the Boston snow removal teams left a huge mound begging for sculpting. Idle hands and all that.
A friend of mine was lving in Cambridge during the Blizzard of ’78. The snow on the street was piled so high that her VW Beetle didn’t reappear for almost two months.
Dittos. I was there too. Garden Street wasn’t cleared for over a week, and in that time all we heard were snowmobiles and helicopters.
I have no idea what maud is saying.
What is the difference between a super Bomb and the retired term superstore?
What does it mean: it is just like the super bomb of 1978 except no cold and no snow. Is that like saying spring is just like winter except for the cold and ice?
Does Maue drink?
If so, then cheers.
Meanwhile I have a more accurate forecast: we will definitely have snow on Christmas…or not.
Alx,
“What is the difference between a super Bomb and the retired term superstore?”
I think your spell checker may have got the better of you . 😄
“Weather bomb”=”sometimes the weather is bad”
“Super bomb” = “sometimes the weather is super bad”
Martin
Oh, great. Guess I will be riding out a “superbomb” with relatives over Christmas.
Reblogged this on Sierra Foothill Commentary and commented:
If you are planning to visit friends and family in the Mid-West, or on the East-coast, for Christmas be prepared. The weather is not going to cooperate.
The more violent the name, the more graphic the image it conjures up.
Super Al ?
You mean Al Gore is in New England now?
Ok, there are exceptions. 😉
I think there were two blizzards called “the blizzard of 78”. The first hit the Midwest and the second hit the Northeast a week or so later. I might have that wrong. Either way, I was in west central Ohio at the time.
The Midwest
http://www.erh.noaa.gov/iln/research/Blizzard1978/blizzard78.php
The Northeast
http://www.erh.noaa.gov/box/papers/Bliz78NWS.pdf
A little historical perspective.
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/dtx/stories/blizzard1978.php
Right. For New England there were actually three storms:
1) In January a storm brought a record 24 hour snowfall to Boston and the east coast. I parked my VW Rabbit in a snow bank while I cleared the driveway and got snow on the external timing belt making it slip and the engine have zero compression. I figured out how to fix it the next day. This storm was poorly forecast by models.
2) At the end of January, the midwest storm brought a record low air pressure to Cleveland, and quite a bit of rain to New York, Boston, etc. This is called the Blizzard of ’78 or the “Great White Hurricane” in Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio and well deserves both titles.
3) Feb 6th brought another record 24 hour snowfall, winds that nearly blew my VW Rabbit off I 495, massive storm surges that destroyed hundreds of homes and killed dozens of people. It is known as the Blizzard of ’78 in New England states and well deserves that title. This storm was extremely well forecasted by the models, but between the poor job for the first storm and big problem of snow starting around 1100, everyone was at school and work, leading to massive mayhem trying to get home. While several of its records have been broken, it remains the benchmark that all other storms are compared against.
I had the most awesome, impossible to duplicate drive home that night. See http://wermenh.com/blizz78.html and its companion.
Storm started Monday, this was Wednesday: http://wermenh.com/images/bliz78_int.jpg
I was in Hoboken, NJ at college. They shut down for the first time in their 100+ year history due to weather.
I remember that winter down here. I had not been in Virginia very long, but it seemed that every weekend, we were getting an ice storm. I thought that was normal for the area. However since that winter, we have had a couple of MONSTER ice storms, but they have been very few and far between. That winter, they were as regular as the weekend.