Guest essay by Eric Worrall
ON the 24th December this year, Montreal was a poster child for the “new normal” – mild weather, no snow in sight. All that came to an abrupt end on the 29th, when Montreal strayed off narrative with a record breaking snowfall.
From the 24th;
Montreal’s Christmas Eve record-breaking temperature matches Los Angeles
Dec. 24 high of 16 C matches cities synonymous with sunny, warm weather at this time of year
…
The balmy temperature was the last thing Anaum and Muhammed Sajanlal were expecting when the siblings arrived in Montreal from Kuwait recently.
They had big plans for winter fun.
“I was looking forward to building a snowman because we see in the movies and cartoons that they build lots of snowmen. We can’t do that in Kuwait,” said Anaum, 11, on CBC Montreal’s Daybreak.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/montreal-green-christmas-temperatures-warm-record-1.3380104
Fast forward to December 29th;
Montreal saw a record snowfall for a Dec. 29 on Tuesday after 39.2 centimetres of snow blanketed the city and caused delays at the airport and left streets a mess for motorists and pedestrians.
Environment Canada confirmed the record, which eclipsed the 30.5 cm of snow that fell on Dec. 29 in 1954.
A few more centimetres were expected Wednesday, but no other major accumulations are in the forecast for the moment, Environment Canada told the Montreal Gazette.
City crews and contractors began the lengthy cleanup process at 7 a.m. on Wednesday, with all of the city’s boroughs getting to work by 7 p.m. to clear as much snow as possible before a pause for New Year’s Eve kicks in at 7 p.m. on Dec. 31.
Clearing operations are to resume Jan. 2 at 7 a.m.
Read more: http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/montreal-sets-new-snowfall-record-after-tuesdays-storm
No doubt all that snow was due to CO2 causing climate alarmists to make fools of themselves. Thankfully civic authorities in Montreal ignored the hype; Mayor Denis Coderre’s new snow clearing programme appears to be a resounding success.
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My wife and I just finished our morning walk around the lake re Notre Dame De ill Perrot. All the roadways are now clear.25K from downtown Montreal. Please add 5cm more that fell over night.
This is what God does to those who complain about the unusually good weather. Just be thankful!
No snow is a problem. Yes, as a Montrealer, that problem ranks right up there with too much sex, too many holidays, a Christmas bonus that is too big and an extended golf season that is too long.
“Too much sex”? Well, surely it’s not the frequency but the quality and duration that counts.
I was rather concerned with the recent discovery that Americans are rushing the job.
Hopefully in Montreal, the french influence has given people a more relaxed attitude to intimate affairs.
Anyway, it’s a great way to keep warm and exercised, when your snow-bound.
http://www.nerve.com/love-sex/which-states-have-the-longest-and-shortest-sex
Now I understand the “indefatigable” part.
Ha ha!!
I’m just a nerd who prefers to find out about the world via graphs.
That’s how I ended up here at WUWT.
And also how I figured out that women prefer a long-term low positive trend with little or no acceleration and no rapid fluctuations!!!
Having said that, occasionally things can escalate sudden – leading to catastrophic runaway phenomena!!! 🙂
http://biohacks.net/file:///C:/Users/stephan/Desktop/Biohacks.net//57865d702d7a290b2fc100b6d40afd48.jpg.
The Ice Age is coming . . .
not if, but when.
100 years, 1,000 years, or 10,000 years? from now.
I would not skip 10 years as a possibility, and 10,000 is very likely too long. Other than that, as a geologist, i say your prognostication is spot on …. and important for our species.
The iceman cometh and he only knocks once. (or was that the postman?)
I thought the postman only rings twice.:-)
BWAHAHA!!! Did ALGORE show up there between the 24th and 29th??
Matthew W http://www.climatedepot.com/2009/07/09/climate-depot-factsheet-on-the-gore-effect-phenomenon/
You know, if I were an AGW party planner I think I would have learned to hold the events in mid summer and jump hemispheres when needed. Why risk some cold weather upsetting the hotening climate narrative. I guess climate realists should be thankful for incompetence in the warmists ranks. Or maybe the warmists are simply believing their own press releases which is never a good idea.
Can’t do Summer, they’re all on their extended holidays. But even holding events in warm parts of the world doesn’t always work out 🙂
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/08/gore-effect-strikes-cancun-climate-conference-3-days-in-a-row/
Thanks Eric,
We’re actually a bit familiar with the effect; We get tales of endless woe when FL gets a cold snap during spring break. It is February after all. FL is resistant but not immune to cold weather.
I presume that Anaum and Muhammed are happy now…?
Indeed they are. As are Pierre, Jean-Paul, Andrew, Karl, Ivan, Hiro, and Ralph.
One of the pleasures of living in a modern cosmopolitan multicultural city with a great history and exciting future.
Multicultural cities are going to be especially exciting this new year.
I love Montreal – a beautiful, charming, lively city.
For two years running, ‘Muhammed’ is the most popular boys’ name here in Britain.
looking forward to building a snowman because we see in the movies and cartoons that they build lots of snowmen. We can’t do that in Kuwait,
Can build lots of sandmen, but that just puts you to sleep.
They build dreams.
Can they build sandcastles in the air?
high of 16 C matches cities synonymous with sunny, warm weather at this time of year….
I guess anything for the narrative……where I live we would be freezing our rears off at 60F which is definitely not sunny, warm for us
I would think that the Hawaiian Islands would be a great area to monitor for climate change, since the climate is quite stable there and the lack of extreme temperatures should put the global warming narrative to rest. Are extreme temperatures occurring there?
I lived in Hawaii for the previous 6 winters and 5 summers, and everything seemed to be within natural constraints. No one on the streets (or beaches!) talked of extraordinary heat. The one thing there is Mauna Kea is where the best measurement of CO2 rise on the planet is recorded … so everyone wants even more to be on the AGW narrative, and constantly harping the rise in CO2.
Eric Worrall – can I suggest that the headline “Montreal Record Busting Snow Sours the Mild Winter Climate Narrative” could alternatively have been “…snow puts the Mild Winter Climate Narrative on ice”.
Then we could reserve “sours” for headlines relating to purported “ocean acidification” – or “de-alkalinisation”. Although, I suppose that in the days of acid-rain, we can also have sour-snow.
These days anything is possible – and climate change/capitalism is definitely to blame.
He’s just bucking the scientific trend of using positive hyperbole. He likes his hyperbole negative. Eric is a rebel! 🙂
When I lived in Montreal back in the late sixties this would not have been unusual other than coming so late. We used to get first snow in November most years. And 39cm would not have been that unusual. I well remember one snowfall, 1968 I think, in November that gave us 18 inches of snow, we weren’t using centimeters back then. That may have been a record but I doubt it.
18 inches per my calculator gives a value of ~45cm so where does 30.5cm in 1954 come from as a “record”? Shoot that’s only 12 inches – a not excessive amount of snow fall for any Quebec winter storm. More Environment Canada BS!!
Anyway my sister in law from Saguenay will be happy, she loves snow. And now the below ground pipes won’t freeze one hopes.
This is from the new Ice Age Coming http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/montrealers-take-snow-in-stride-as-storm-smashes-1971-record/article6758046/
Russell,that’s a great article that no self respecting news paper or show will bring up!But the pablum they put out only goes to show show they have No Respect for themselves.Liars are have to convince they are wrong.PERIOD>
I don’t get very excited over daily rainfall or snowfalls. Most days have none and the frequency of notable storms is much lower. OTOH, every day has a low and high temperature, and there are a lot more possibilities to set records, and a lot less variance in the records compared with neighboring dates.
Chris
It is a daily record, not most ever.
well that 18 inches was in one day. The rest fell over the next couple of days for a total over 60 hours of 70cm or so.
chris, did Canada switch to metric so that you all can boast of your snowfall totals in larger numeric values?
Possibly, but the narrative back when the system was adopted in the early 70s was the coming ice age. Snow accumulation in cm always sounds like more.
Actually, Canada switched because the US said they were going to. Then the US backed out. So now we have people of my generation who switch the measurements back and forth in our heads, and our kids have no idea what “Fahrenheit” or an “ounce” is. 🙂
Not really. The rest of the world went metric – even the brits to a degree. Then the USA backed out of it. I tell you when the US did that it hit me like 1018 Kilograms of bricks.
Metric – phah!
Numbers should be base 12: the dozen, gross (12^2) and great gross (12^3)!
Volumes should be measured in firkins, or preferably in hogsheads, especially for beer or wine!
Weights in stones, or if you prefer, in fotmals.
Distances in shaftments (6.5 inches), cubits, or Scottish miles (of course)!
Conversion tables at http://hemyockcastle.co.uk/measure.htm#imperial
Allan
I’ve always thought that flow measurements should be in firkins per fortnight. Not very useful since it’s such a small amount. Maybe it could be used for groundwater flow. But it does have a certain ring to it,
Mona, I read somewhere that the USA had their 200th annual conference on metric conversion last year or the year before. I am ozzie now metric but prefer the old system. I would be more happy to have the old system from Sumer with a counting system based on 60, much easier to use big numbers. The hang over from way back then is 360 in a circle. Regards Wayne
Eric Worrall,
Let me un-mix the metaphors in you post’s title.
‘Montreal Record Busting Snow
SoursBuries the Mild Winter Climate Narrative’Happy New Years Eve!
John
Edit of above comment:
youyour post’s titleJohn
He he – I thought about that, but I was just talking about Montreal 🙂
correction – it was 1969 not 1968. 70cm of snow in 60 hours. see:
http://www.climat-quebec.qc.ca/home.php?id=p24&mpn=ev_mto_sig&lg=en
Was in Canada December 1969 when the Niagara Falls froze solid and in Quebec city there was ice floes and soft ice for the canoe portage across the St Lawrence.
Oh yes, but the North Pole is melting. It’s 50 degrees above normal. There’s nothing left for anyone else. Enjoy your Starbucks in its polluting cup, and pollution producing manufacturing process done by slave labor. DRINK IT! while driving in your mass co2 monster, down your environment destroying asphalt, while you can, you wasteful, mass consuming, selfish pig Westerner! Leave your horror carbon footprint on our beautiful Mother!
You need to be taxed more!
(hehe, yes, sarcasm)
Seriously… 40 cm a Montreal record? That’s roughly 16 inches… that’s just another winter day in the western UP. We’ve had very little snow thus far this winter, but the previous two winters our local NWS volunteer “weather watcher” had us pegged at over 340 inches for each season… 367 inches on the Lake Superior shoreline, just east of the Porcupine Mountains, was our total snowfall for last winter. And they get more snow than we do further up the Keweenaw Peninsula.
Houghton-Hancock in Winter, good times, good times … I lived in Utah for 7 years, but one of the best powder skiing experiences was at Mt.Ripley, late February, can’t recall the year, but MacInnes was still coaching at Tech and the original Library Bar was still in downtown Houghton.
I wish
peoplethe media would chill on this story. It’s a non-story around the Great Lakes, and a DAY record only where it was officially measured. Southern Ontario And Quebec regularly and consistently get snow dump days like this. And NOBODY has an adequate method to accurately assess snowfall. Snow drop is an extremely local effect, and combined with wind drift, evaporation and a host of others things makes “39cm” absolutely meaningless. Everybody who has lived in the lee of the Great Lakes knows if the wind is right, the air is cold and the water warm, you’ll need a shovel, maybe a big one. It’s why we gangplow 6 lane highways in one pass and the kids get snow days.Tech has a Mt. Ripley snow cam set up you can check out. I think if you Google Michigan Tech Alum cams you can find it. Some snow there now but not near normal yet. Much nicer in Santiago with 90 F today !
Montreal doesn’t have Great Lakes nearby. You should understand that by now.
Even in New England we see related effects. For each month of the winter Concord NH’s record snowstorm is less than those at the NWS sites of Portland ME, Boston MA, Worcester MA, Hartford CT,and Providence RI. Those are all closer to the coast. However, we generally (not always!) have more snow over the season, especially when we get some of our bigger storms. Those coastal sites generally are on the other side of the rain/snow line then.
I bet Montreal has sunnier winter weather than you do!
Lake Ontario is close enough to have this effect on Montreal if it’s not frozen, and the St. Lawrence is so wide at one point it’s called St-Pierre Lac(lake) just immediately east of Montreal . No sunnier in Montreal than in Sudbury during Nov-Feb. I lived in Nova Scotia for a few years and they can get huge dumps of snow, but they also get winters with very little snow where the rest of eastern Canada is covered in snow. My spouse if from Mtl and I’m from northern ON -been living east side of the GL’s most of my life – eastern Can doesn’t get a lot of ‘sunny winter’ days until about mid Feb….bloom of winter time as I call it. Western Can, may be a different story but I’ve never spent winters there myself.
Nonsense. A west wind down the fetch of Lake Ontario will do it to Montreal, as will a Nor’easter.
The country around the Great Lakes doesn’t get sunny weather until the lakes substantially freeze, and that’s usually some time in February.
I was there for the winter of ’79. It was fun and the wolves and moose got exit visas off Isle Royale too.
It will be a mild winter in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan as there is currently a strong El Nino. It’s normal.
Just waiting for the story that this abrupt change is just another example of extreme weather events caused by humans adding CO2 into the system…….I can almost guess which news outlets will run with it.
I wonder if it occurred to anyone here that blogging about a late December snowfall *in Montreal* speaks volumes about just how unusual the autumn weather had been up to that point.
Leo that is way we should stop all the crap with Climate Change and call it what it is WEATHER.
Russell, you seem to think that local weather change and global climate change are the same thing. They are not interchangable.
The warm fall in New England was notable for three things:
1) No one was complaining about global warming or any of its aliases.
2) The TV Mets never referred to “Indian Summer” which we define as warm weather that occurs after the first freeze. Days in the 60s, no insectss, and sometimes glorious foliage. I think some Power-That-Be decreed that the term is politically incorrect. Maybe I’ll start calling it Swedish Summer and take credit for the best weather of the year.
3) And it was pretty warm. Not enough to make forsythia bloom, which happens once in a while.
Leo…people used to celebrate the warm weather….go out enjoy it, talk about how lucky they were
What’s unusual……is now claiming that’s unusual
Of course I don’t see them all, but I haven’t seen an “Enjoying a warm start to winter” headline all I see is “unprecedented warm”. Apparently we’re not supposed to enjoy anything that warming might do.
Funny thing about unusual weather; it has always occurred, and always will. That’s unpredictable and fickle Mother Nature for ya. Praying to the carbon gods won’t help a bit.
Unusual, yes. Unheard of, no. I live about 150km S of Montreal (95 miles in American). I distinctly remember a year about 15 years ago when dandelions were blooming during the week between Christmas and New Years. This year – warm, but no dandelions.
And no, 40 cm of snow isn’t that big a deal around here. Enough to close schools for the day, not much else.
That was the Big El Nino winter. I finished building my house and it was a delightful time until the New Year when we moved rapidly in right before a blizzard hit.
And no, 40 cm of snow isn’t that big a deal around here. Enough to close schools for the day, not much else.
Here in Blighty complaining about the weather is a national pass time but 40cm of snow would close the entire place until it melted.
No one here views unusual weather in a specific location as anything more than unusual weather in that location. We don’t conflate local weather anomalies with global climate. This post is just one more lesson for people who DO conflate the two.
Leo,
Excellent!
Blogging about snowfall is evidence of global warming. Last year, it was just the snowfall that was proof of global warming.
The autumn weather hasn’t been all that unusual. In my nearly 70 years of living here, warm Decemebers are not at all uncommon. Snow at Christmas has always been iffy at best.
Global warming is the primary cause of everything whether it gets too hot or too cold.
Uh-oh, “record breaking snowfall” = “extreme weather” = “climate change”. It’s “just science”, and 99.44% of “scientists” agree. It’s pure, mostly. I’ll get off my soapbox now.
Mild winter? It has been above freezing here for almost 2 weeks.
First, 39cm may be a record for that specific date, it may be a record for the first storm of the season, but it’s far FAR from being a record snow fall… it’s actually pretty mundane as far as snow storms go.
Second, snow does not equal cold… Technically, we COULD have a record month for snow AND a record month for warm…
Specific date I think, from the second article.
Quick, let’s have the courts sue mother nature for not getting with the program!
Mother Nature was just following the lead to keep from being called ‘Racist’. See,
College Students Sign ‘Petition’ to Ban ‘White Christmas’ Because It’s Racist
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/428920/white-christmas-racist-petition-college-kids
Now that Christmas is over, she can spread the white.
Also note that Dr David Viner, a scientist at CRU has now been proven right when he said “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,”
Of course he was thinking that there would be no snow, not that the children could not distinguish that snow was white and non-racist.
Here’s one for the alarmists:
I’m dreaming of a wet Christmas
Unlike the ones we used to get
With the treetops dripping
Their points all tipping
And all CMIP models met
I’m dreaming of a wet X-Mas
With every Christmas card i get
So may all your feedbacks be net
And may all your Christmases be wet
You can’t win with warmists, though. Much like 911 Troofers, whatever logic you bring out is swatted back with a “but what about”.
I once pointed out that here in Toronto the annual rainfall amounts haven’t much changed, but was hit with a “but what about the number of EXTREEEEEEME rainfall EVENTS?” (and notice that weather has now become and “event”).
For a group that actually thinks that there can actually be an accurate average global temperature, they seem to love their specifics when it suits them.
CaligulaJones,
Yabbut … there’s been a pause in weather events according to Google ngram viewer …
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ASLMSDgeR3o/VoV5Zl1gYiI/AAAAAAAAAiM/CaukQmXcOWY/s1600/ngram%2Bweather%2Bevent%2Bvs%2BCO2.png
… dunno what the satellites have to say though.
“… dunno what the satellites have to say though. ”
Down thread, you just claimed they were wrong.
Down thread I was being serious.
What does your chart have to do with what Caligula said?
Brandon Gates has been shown to be a troll a la Slandering Sou.
Aphan: it proves that CO2 rise is the result of hyperventilating about “weather events”.
Steele: careful that you keep that ball out of your own goal.
BG said “Aphan: it proves that CO2 rise is the result of hyperventilating about “weather events”.
It does? How does it prove that?
Jim Steele-
“Brandon Gates has been shown to be a troll a la Slandering Sou.”
Has he? If the mods determine that he’s behaving in a trollish manner, I’m sure they’ll take care of it. Doesn’t really matter to me either way.
Aphan,
Because the R-squared value is 0.76, meaning the fraction of unexplained variance is 0.24.
That was a “robust” snowfall – more climate disruption.
Off topic but was there a comment on the California methane leak some where?
nope…and several people have tried to draw attention to it
Especially those living nearby.
I wish there was more information about this as well.
“winter is coming”….
I’ll raise you the growth of the Antarctic ice pack 🙂
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/31/ooops-new-nasa-study-antarctica-isnt-losing-ice-mass-after-all/
And I’ll raise you here: https://beyondtheice.rutgers.edu. Note the difference between your post, Eric and mine; my post references a link to a real university, RUTGERS, yours references a blog.
lundasoid-
FYI, Sockpuppets are prohibited on WUWT.
T Madigan-
Eric linked to a blog post that highlights and links directly to the NASA study in question. Your link leads to a website about a MOVIE done by a the very real university RUTGERS. Now, would you like to actually discuss the NASA study and/or the movie or did you just drop by to insinuate something childish like “my link is better than your link”?
Mason Gross School Of The Arts?