CDOT closed Loveland Pass west of Denver for a couple hours to plow.
It seems a bit cool all over the USA for a Sunday afternoon in August.
US HOURLY TEMPERATURES AT 19:39 GMT/UTC Sunday
Click for larger image
In Denver, particularly so. Not one, but two new low maximum temp records have been set in Denver on two consecutive days. See the NWS record reports:
SXUS75 KBOU 170200 RRB
RERBOU
RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DENVER CO
800 PM MDT SAT AUG 16 2008
…RECORD LOW MAXIMUM TEMPERATURE SET IN DENVER FOR AUGUST 16TH…
THE HIGH TEMPERATURE AT DENVER INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TODAY WAS 58
DEGREES.
THIS 58 DEGREE READING WILL REPLACE THE PREVIOUS LOW MAXIMUM
TEMPERATURE RECORD FOR AUGUST 16TH WHICH WAS 63 DEGREES SET 118
YEARS AGO IN 1890.
KTF
SXUS75 KBOU 160100 RRB
RERBOU
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.
KTF
Of course just a few days ago, they were talking about consecutive 90 degree days, and the possibility of a even longer new record, but it looks like the cold wet snap prevented that from happening:
SXUS75 KBOU 052159
RERBOU
COZ030>051-052300-
PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DENVER CO
336 PM MDT TUE AUG 05 2008
AT 243 THIS AFTERNOON THE TEMPERATURE AT DENVER INTERNATIONAL
AIRPORT REACHED 91 DEGREES. THIS EXTENDS OUR CONSECUTIVE 90 DEGREE
DAY STREAK TO 24. SO FAR IN 2008 41 NINETY DEGREE DAYS HAVE BEEN
TALLIED. 2008 IS JUST 9 DAYS AWAY FROM THE 10TH TOP SEASONAL TOTAL
OF FIFTY 90 DEGREE DAYS SET IN BOTH 1960 AND 1964.
I guess it’s a case of:
“Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.” – Robert A. Heinlein
As someone who grew up in Colorado, I vouch for the volatility of the weather there. We often told our out of stated guests, “Don’t worry about the weather… it’ll change in half an hour.”
In Seattle today we will be only in the mid-60s after several days in the 90s. But the bigger news is due Tuesday night when an “unusual for this time of year” cold front blows through bringing snow levels in the Cascade Mountains down to 7000 feet or lower. Usually this would be a mid to late September event….
The cold front may head for Colorado later in the week…so watch out down there.
Oh how I love to see Denver the center of attention on all these fronts.
I think there might be a couple of Denver natives still around; I’m one.
Any and everything can happen with the weather around here. I’ve seen everything happen on a single day. I kid you not.
Denver in a lot of ways is still a big cow town. That means a fascination with the weather. When it gets real cold, the local TV stations will display the temperature in the lower right hand corner of the screen all through the broadcast. My wife and I get a real kick out of that.
Does that happen anywhere else?
We’ve fired at least one mayor for the results of a snowstorm and our current mayor got in some hot (cold?) water because of heavy snowstorms last year.
It is an outrage that UHI effects are not filtered due to the moves of the ‘official’ weather stations. DIA area has always been hotter. Aurora, out east from Denver, has always been hotter. And, for heavens sake, DIA is surrounded by thousands of acres of runways, taxi areas, etc. This doesn’t even include all the heat generated by hundreds of jet engines blazing away.
The plains are always warmer than Denver. Even the short drive out to Cherry Creek Reservoir has always carried memories of heat.
There is a very real possibility the Obama speech could be punctuated with thunderstorms and snow. Most likely, it will be a nice late summer day.
Anthony: I appologise for the tone of my post, which in hindsight was not appropriate. I was not calling anyone a crackpot, least of all you, but it is undeniable that there are crackpots out there on both sides of the debate. The “obsessed” was out of order though.
However, I do frequently see arguments supporting (often unduly confident) climate predictions based on short term often local extrema, and I have a concern that discussing weather extrema and climate on the same site, without clear caveats, is perhaps encouraging this. Of course this shouldn’t be neccessary, but in a debate with a high degree of unfortunate polarisation, perhaps it would be pragmatic.
The fact that this is a problem is illustrated by the article on “Heat Wave in Portland: Watch for “AGW did it” stories”.
REPLY: Thank you.
Another OT: Pamela, will that solar activity still be going on next month? I’ll be in Alaska, and would love the see the borealis.
@ur momisugly Patrick Henry: Six years ago, I was camping in the high country above Denver, and there was snow down to about 9,500′. Not as much as this recent storm, but it did last til late afternoon. Made the hike interesting, as did a Labor day snowstorm while I was on top of Elbert. 😀
The MRF has things warming up the latter part of August across CONUS and backs off from the Fall signal it has had the last week.
But all this snow in the mountains and then the wet weather in Texas has yet to have its impact on things AND the models get flippy in late August anyway.
my hero writer Heinlein
I am a huge OLD Heinlein fan. (Almost) anything up to and including Stranger.
OT:
Anyone see this article from USA Today?
Disturbing, if you ask me. Sorry if this is a duplicate. I originally found it .
OT:
Anyone see this article from USA Today?
Disturbing, if you ask me. Sorry if this is a duplicate. I originally found it .
OK, I can’t get links to work. Here they are without the linkage:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/environment/2008-08-13-green-psychology_N.htm
Kind of scary to me. Here’s where I got it from:
http://www.climatechangefraud.com/content/view/2008/218/
Just to throw my 2 cent in this summer in Ireland has been extremely wet with August on course to be the wettest in living memory. I never realised it could get so cold in the mid US, I always thought it was hot, hot hot! Learne soimething new everyday!
Your map is wrong. It was over 100 deg in the foothills outside Yosemite yesterday, 8/17.
REPLY: At the time the snapshot was taken, it was accurate, this is not a daily hi/lo map, but an hourly map.
MIke Sander: Not to worry. I have sunblock (SPF 500) and snowblower ready at all times. On a recent trip back east (to Charleston, SC) I noticed a few places that seemed to have some fall color change. Absurd! Can’t happen in August.
I would love to see snow at the conventions. Particularly during al-Gore’s speech. In at least one of the parties, a different kind of ‘snow’ may appear…
(OK, that’s mean. We do seem to get a ‘snow job’ from a lot of candidates.)
According to the weather underground, the earliest snow in Denver occurred on the 27th or 28th of August. So it’s possible, just not likely, even with the Gore affect.
Here in Iowa, the corn harvest is weeks behind schedule. Farmer’s are worried that an early frost could kill the crop.
Your map is not accurate. It was 101 degrees F in Spokane yesterday.
REPLY: At the time the snapshot was taken, it was accurate, this is not a daily hi/lo map, but an hourly map.
Before the Earth can cool off, its got to dump a lot of moisture from the air to force the average temp down – especially the minimums
Most of the energy in the air is water vapor and most of the energy flux from the sun or the oeans goes into water vapor creation.
One would expect to see heavy rains everywhere as the water vapor cycle accelerates due to a greater flux of heat from the Earth.
Large sulfur dioxide cloud from Kasatochi volcano heading toward the Arctic.
http://satepsanone.nesdis.noaa.gov/pub/OMI/OMISO2/aleutian.html
More at,
http://eruptions.wordpress.com/
Earliest snow in Denver…9/3/1961
Latest snow in Denver…6/12/1947
Never snowed in Denver in July or August, but that’s an entirely different story as you go up in altitude west of town (master of the obvious). At 9000′ where I live, it snowed Saturday morning.
Where there are record lows, there are record highs.
Today:
Spokane, WA – 103 F
It seems extreme cold and extreme heat don’t contradict each other completely.
Extremes come from anomalies in pressure/temperature.
But what causes extremes in pressure/temperature?
L o t s
of
Things…
None the less, this story is interesting.
Steve,
If I find out that someone is using Psychological “tools” to change my thinking that amounts to mind bending and is akin to denial of freedom of speach in that they try to influence your thought patterns before the facts are presented. That works right along with the debate is over and the consensus is.
I think that there will be great backlash against the Ivy League liberals if that occurs and they get caught at it.
Snip if you want to Anthony or Charles but this type of proposal by the Ivy League elite really steams me.
Bill Derryberry
Reply: You didn’t push any of my buttons, although I disagree with your conclusion about a backlash, since I believe that most of the media reporting or not reporting the story feel the same way and are already guilty of the same tactics.~charles the moderator
No insult intended to those that are making true contributions to the science but to try to mind bend is out of bounds as far as I am concerned.
Bill Derryberry
At the link above, SO2 emissions from Kasatochi estmated at 1.5 teragrams (1.5 million tons).
Which coincidentally is almost the same amount the geo-engineering crowd estimate we need to pump into the atmosphere to counteract AGW.
http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/16-07/ff_geoengineering?currentPage=2
Please forgive me. My blog does not go into the details of Climate Change because there is so much BS out there. Now don’t go getting mad at me, I am not saying your blog is like that.
Straight forward info without too much technical jargon is the way to go. What bothers me is not the Alarmists that argue that it’s happening and it’s all our fault, it’s the Ecofascists that think we should live as they say we should live. This is the silly stuff that I point out at http://giovanniworld.wordpress.com/
Sure, the earths temp has risen a tiny bit over many years, but I do NOT believe it’s because of humans. Carbon is a tiny fraction of our atmosphere so let’s keep some perspective on the subject.
Thanks for listening.
g: I think that’s most of us around here believe.
I’ll go so far as to say a small bit is probably due to human influence. A tiny forcing from CO2. A shot of dirty snow (probably temporary as the UDCs develop).
But overall, just a small bit.