Anecdotal for certain, but these keep piling up. This from the UK Snowboard Club. – Anthony
Early snowfalls in Europe hit Historic Levels
Posted Wednesday 3rd December 2008, 2:15 pm by Dunx
- 20 year record snowfall in Dolomites enough to last all season
- Some Swiss train services cancelled due to excess snow
- Still more heavy snow in the Pyrenees
- More snow for Scotland
www.Skiinfo.com is following still more heavy snowfalls across Europe over the past 48 hours, with much more snow in other parts of Europe and many areas of North America too.
The snowfall has been so great that it has closed roads, brought down power lines and even led to the cancellation of some Swiss rail services this week.
One of the greatest beneficiaries are the Italian Dolomites where 150cm (five feet) has fallen at Cortina in a 48 hour period up to Monday, with snow still falling.
Alessandro Fregni of Skiinfo.com’s Italian office commented, “In three days ski areas have seen almost as much snowfall as for the whole winter last year.”
The snow has arrived with perfect timing for the ski resorts who are seeing a boom in ticket sales at a time of economic uncertainty. Alessandro believes the snow is enough to last all season and will also mean resorts can save money by not needing to use snow making equipment.
However the snow is causing practical problems for both locals and those wanting to reach the snow with almost every pass in to the Dolomites closed on Monday and many villages without electricity. However the situation will be resolved quickly once the snow stops falling.
It was a similar if slightly less dramatic picture to the north where competitors at the annual season opening Santa Claus World Championships in Samnaun had difficulty getting to and from the event as Swiss public transport in the area struggled to cope with heavy snowfall there.
On Monday rail services were cancelled in the area of Eastern Switzerland due to the snow. “We should have used their magic sleighs.” joked a bemused competitor after missing his flight home as a result.
Most other Swiss resorts have great cover and more new snow. Skiinfo issued powder alarms in the past week for Skiinfo with 70cm (28 inches) and Davos 53cm (17 inches) of fresh snow each. Many major resorts now have snow depths of 2-3 metres (7 – 10 feet).
In Austria the snow cover is also superb with Heiligenblut the biggest recipient of the week’s latest dump, receiving a metre (40 inches) of powder in the past seven days.
Many of the open French ski areas have reported at least a foot of new snow in the past week. Several have much more including Les Arcs, with 80cm (32 inches). New openings this weekend include Les Orres, Chamrousse, L e Grand Bornand, Isola 2000 and Montgenevre. Alpe D’Huez and Courchevel will be fully open and Megève partly open.
It looks like the ski areas in the Pyrenees and elsewhere in Spain which dominated snowfall news in November with record pre-season accumulations leading top early openings of ski areas in the region will continue in to December, as the snow keeps falling.
Baqueria Beret in the Pyranees.
A new cold front has brought still more fresh powder to Spain (Formigal and Sierra Nevada have both received 70 cm/28 inches more powder in the past week) all the ski resorts in Spain will open for a three day holiday weekend. For Spanish skiers and boarders the Purísima Feast on December 8 is a must every year and represents the official opening of the winter season.
On the French side of the range Cauterets opened last weekend with 80% of runs available on opening day and up to 150cm (five feet) of snow.
Elsewhere in Europe conditions continue to be very good in Scandinavian countries too. Norway’s Hemsedal currently has 65cm (over two feet) of snow on its slopes, with Bjorli registering the greatest snow depth at present with 100 cm (40 inches). The country’s ski areas have received up to 38cm (15 inches) of new snow in the last week with Skiimnfo.com issuing a powder alarm for Trysil, the largest resort in Norway. The snowfall makes it possible for Trysil to open more slopes and lifts for the upcoming weekend, said Jan Linstad, Trysil ski area’s manager.
In Eastern Europe it’s a more mixed picture with some warm temperatures limiting cover. However Slovenian areas are open and Bansko has opened in Bulgaria with largely machine made snow.
In Scotland The Lecht re-opened last week before closing for a second time in November as the snow thawed. However more snow fell yesterday (Tuesday, December 2), temperatures remain well below freezing and heavy snow is forecast for tomorrow, Thursday (December 4), raising hopes of a weekend re-opening.
In North America the picture has improved dramatically in Colorado, just as it did this time last year before a meteoric snowfall season in which several resorts set record snowfall figures after a warm November 2007. One of the best reports is from Vail which has had 63cm (25 inches) of snow in the past week. Nearby Copper Mountain has also been able to open its Superpipe, the first on the continent this season. Conditions are generally less good on the country’s West coast however with delayed openings or limited cover at many ski areas.
Further north it’s a mixed picture in Western Canada with Mount Washington announcing it will delay its opening due, planned for this Friday, December 5, due to lack of snow.
“We have patchy snow on the ground right now after some rainfall last weekend,” explains resort spokesperson Brent Curtain. “We need to see approximately one metre of snow on the ground before we can begin slope preparations for our opening day.”
Further north still however Alyeska in Alaska has opened with a huge five metre (200 inch) base, although temperatures were reported to be as low as a seriously chilly 8F at the ski area summit on Monday.
On the other side of the region one of the early openers, Marmot Basin in Alberta, which has already seen 89cm (three feet) of snow this winter, opening another five runs.
On North America’s East Coast most resorts are open and in the case of resorts in states like Maine and Vermont reporting “The best start to the season for years.” with a foot (30cm) or more of natural snowfall at most, topped up by the extensive snowmaking systems common in the area.
Further afield Japan has had its first taste of winter too. Grand Hirafu in Niseko opened on 22nd November with things not looking promising and very little snow in the village and just a light cover of snow on the top of the resort. True to its self-proclaimed status of “powder capital of the world” however, over a metre (40 inches) of snow then fell in just three days.
Visit www.skiinfo.com to sign up for powder alarms from your favourite resorts, check current snow conditions and projected snowfalls with snow finder as well as exchange news and views in the Skier’ Lounge.
Ed Darrell (04:08:35) :
Citation, please?
While you’re looking for one, see here and here.
Thank you Ed, you proved my point that nothing disproves AGW/CC, meaning it is really more of a religion than science. You are not the slightest bit interested in the facts, preferring to view reality through your AGW alarmist lens. Sad, very sad.
A stop to warming would disprove climate change — or more specifically, a stop to climate change. My complaint on the skeptics all along has been that they aren’t looking at the whole picture, and so , as you, Bruce, you deny the obvious.
For example, for the past 30 years at least, the Department of Agriculture has had to constantly update the maps of planting zones because of warming. Now, Anthony Watts can complain that warming is an illusion caused by misplacement of weather stations, but until you convince me that pine trees, grasses and palm trees are moving north because they mistakenly trusted the weather station reports, I think it’s rather obvious that warming is an issue, it’s gone on for a long time, and it continues.
Show me the planting zone where tropical plants are NOT moving north (or south, on the other side of the equator), and you’ll make step toward convincing me that warming isn’t going on.
Or, show me the glaciers that are expanding from something other than lake effect snow. There is just a tiny handful of expanding glaciers, but worldwide, most are shrinking at dramatic rates that speak of warming. Glaciers also don’t listen to reports from misplaced weather stations, so it’s doubtful that they’ve been influenced by bad data.
Real evidence against global warming would be readily accepted. Complaints that every scientist who measures climate has got it wrong for the past 150 years just don’t make it with me.
Ed Darrell:
Since you claim you can see ‘the whole picture’, could you please provide some legit citations for your statement:
And please have that cite include the ‘at least’. As in: at least from the beginning of the Agriculture department. Because, you know, picking 30 years is like picking cherries, you only select the ones you want.
I’d like to see those Dep’t of Ag maps you have going back way more than 30 years, and showing the U.S. crop line marching inexorably northward. Be sure to include the most recent ones, too, since your claim is that global warming is continuing.
And:
A citation would be helpful here, too. Show us that there is only a ‘tiny’ number of glaciers expanding. While you’re looking for credible citations, would you please explain what makes glaciers advance and recede? [hint: it’s precipitation, not global warming or cooling].
Somehow I don’t feel confident that we’ll see your citations, Ed. I could be mistaken. But you never provided the citation requested in my 04:36:44 post above.
Ed Darrell says:
Hmmm, I am confused here. There is no way to stop climate change. It has been changing in a cyclic fashion for a very long time, and it is likely that any cyclic behavior is superimposed on a gradual rise resulting from the fact that we came out of a big ice age some time ago.
Also, you seem to be confused. A stop to warming would not disprove climate change. Please also provide a theory of climate stability.
Ed Darrell (15:24:38) :
For example, for the past 30 years at least, the Department of Agriculture has had to constantly update the maps of planting zones because of warming.
Show me these maps, please. I’ve been alive and active in farming and gardening over those years and don’t remember seeing a lot of revising going on. My “Sunset Garden Book”(s) that have finer grained planting maps that the USDA show no change… (And yes, I have them from a 30+yr span)
until you convince me that pine trees, grasses and palm trees are moving north because they mistakenly trusted the weather station reports, I think it’s rather obvious that warming is an issue, it’s gone on for a long time, and it continues.
Again, a citation please. When I was a kid Oranges had a northern limit from cold. They still have the same limit. 10 miles north of where I grew up. Nothing has changed. My maps of the “northern limit of palms” shows no change. I see no new palm forests growing north of where they were before. I can still just barely get Saint Augustine grass to grow because it’s too cold for it. So show me the evidence that what you claim is happening really is happening…
BTW, this recent blizzard is sure going to crimp your style on showing any northern progress for palms … any that were alive above the northern limit will not be now.
Show me the planting zone where tropical plants are NOT moving north (or south, on the other side of the equator), and you’ll make step toward convincing me that warming isn’t going on.
Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. You made the claim that something different is happening, you have to provide the evidence. I have no need to “prove a negative”.
But just because I’m a good sport, try Sunset Garden zones 15 & 16. I live in it. Still can’t get cotton to grow worth a damn. Still can’t get Saint Augustine to stop sulking. Still have dormant Burmuda Grass in winter. Still have limited selection of fruits I can grow. Still can’t grow a banana tree (that DOES grow just a few hundred miles south of me…) AND still grow decent cherries and peaches that MUST HAVE enough winter chill to set fruit. This set means summers have not warmed and neither have winters.
And please don’t bother trying to complain about Sunset vs USDA. The Sunset zones are far more fine grained than the USDA and would show any changes far faster than the USDA zones.
Ed, you have so far provided NO evidence or citations. If you expect folks to interact with you for long you will need to provide some evidence, not just hand waving.
testing bold on older post
Here are some plant hardiness zone maps… they don’t change often and last change belies global warming.
http://www.iceagenow.com/PlantHardinessMaps.htm
Here’s a post on two parts of the non-human measure of climate change, the changing plant zones and earlier springs, and warming in Yellowstone. With links:
http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2008/03/22/plants-refuse-to-listen-to-climate-change-skeptics/
I think this is the current USDA map, from the National Arboretum — it’s based on the 1990 USDA update:
http://www.usna.usda.gov/Hardzone/ushzmap.html
The American Horticulture Society has a grant to update the USDA maps; here’s a story on that process:
http://gardening.about.com/od/gardenprimer/a/Zone_Changes.htm
That’s three links, which probably push the spam filter limits on the blog.
Here’s a news story from the San Francisco Chronicle group, via Geology.com, which says the AHS update was scotched by USDA — it showed too much change (suppression of reports of climate change?). So the University of Oregon is working on the thing now.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/29/HO9G11TRQE.DTL
Good and bad news from melting glaciers and decreasing sea ice in and around Greenland:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1001/p01s02-wogn.html
How climate change contributes to disaster in Darfur:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0727/p01s04-woaf.html
Here’s a history of the USDA maps and their changes:
http://www.centralfloridagarden.com/topics/hardiness/history.html
Here’s a note from the University of Wyoming on shrinking glaciers worldwide:
http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap10/nzglacier.html
Sorry, Ed, but your links are a joke.
Forgive me if I don’t buy into the pronouncements of the “Society of Environmental Journalists.” A couple of selected counties in Florida do not mean anything at all with regard to planetary climate change. You can always find specific locations that vary from the mean.
And your link to “Shrinking glaciers worldwide” is also risible. The date on the link is January 1999. See here for what has transpired since.
Is that the best you can do?
Sorry, Smokey. Your absence of any other data doesn’t cut it. If you have contrary data, bring ’em on. I presented every county in the U.S. Especially, when I give you the citations clearly saying the glaciers are going, your chart which says nothing about glaciers, snowfall, nor glacier melt, don’t offer much in rebuttal. If glaciers are growing, as you claim, surely there would be at least a news story about it, if only in a political journal. You’ve got nothing at all?
The Sunset maps are good, I agree, E. M. Smith. Of course, they show warming, compared to the Ag maps. No, you wouldn’t have much change since the latest edition of the Sunset maps. But if you compare them to the 1990 USDA maps, you see the changes. There are differences between the Sunset and AHS maps, too — but nothing in the Sunset stuff suggests any problem with AHS’s conclusions that plants formerly hardy in many cities, no longer are, and that there is definite northward creep in plant zones.
Especially, nothing refutes the annual march of springtime. It’s not shown on the hardiness maps, but it’s still there.
Ed Darrell:
It is not the job of skeptics, or their duty, to prove that the climate is not well within its normal historical parameters.
It is the duty of climate alarmists who hypothesize runaway global warming and climate catastrophe, as a result of AGW, to prove their case. They have failed to do so.
I am willing to debate AGW, but you must submit something more credible than 1990 data, or an unfounded opinion from the Society of Environmental Journalists. I know you probably believe they are credible and even-handed. But they are not. They have an agenda, as we can see from the name of their organization.
If you can not provide timely peer-reviewed data that states [as you have stated] that only a “tiny” number of glaciers are advancing, then your AGW/CO2/catastrophe hypothesis fails. Doesn’t it? Because the climate alarmist contingent has the obligation, per the scientific method, to prove that we’re headed for runaway global warming as a result of an extremely small addition of CO2 to the atmosphere. Serious proof of that conjecture would be much appreciated.
Here’s a map that shows only the changes in hardiness zones, between the 1990 USDA map and 2006 data:
http://www.arborday.org/media/map_change.cfm
You reject all peer-reviewed data, Smokey. Why would you accept it now — especially considering that you’ve offered nothing in rebuttal?
Is my statement in error? Show us the data. Got no data? That’s what I thought.
ScienceDaily (Dec. 16, 2008) — Rocky Mountain ski areas face dramatic changes this century as the climate warms, including best-case scenarios of shortened ski seasons and higher snowlines and worst-case scenarios of bare base areas and winter rains, says a new Colorado study
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081215121632.htm
Here you go, Ed: click
And I don’t reject peer reviewed data. I had asked you for more timely peer reviewed data, rather than your 1990 article. You could look it up @3:52:06^
The fact is that glaciers are fed by precipitation. A 0.6 degree C change in global temps isn’t going to make glaciers melt.
Europe’s biggest glacier melting at accelerating clip, October 2008 report:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_7650000/newsid_7655900/7655928.stm
Switzerland’s glaciers are shrunken by two-thirds, and experts say almost all mountainous, non-polar glaciers are shrinking:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/geography/glaciation/glaciersrev4.shtml
Almost all European glaciers are shrinking faster than had been expected:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7299561.stm
Antarctic glaciers surge to ocean:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7261171.stm
(this one could be melting from other forces)
Chacaltaya (in Bolivia) has lost 80% of its area in last two decades:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6496429.stm
Rapid decline of Alpine glaciers observed with satellite data, Geophysical Research Letters, 2004:
http://66.102.1.104/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:5CH9G0de9H4J:folk.uio.no/kaeaeb/publications/grl04_paul.pdf+
I don’t have good access to the science journals, but from the searches I can do here, I have not found anything that suggests there is significant glacier growth on any large glacier anywhere. You guys have some different citations?
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119079325/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
OK, Ed, you win. I’m not going to spoil your glacier fun by posting on this particular thread again. You get the last word after this post.
The BBC’s opinion, however, is incredible. As in: not credible. And that link on Alpine glaciers only reports on a specific, localized area, not on global anything, which makes it a weather report. And it is from 2004 — meaning that the data was probably taken from the preceding decade, when temps were temporarily rising. Now, temperatures are falling, big time. That fact outdates your cite, no?
And Ed, you didn’t read the link I posted @09:44:28, did you? The information that glaciers advance and recede is primarily dependent on precipitation seemed to go right over your head too. That’s unfortunate, because precipitation is the cause of glaciers’ advance and retreat, not the silly, repeatedly falsified AGW hypothesis.
But that’s OK, you have your glaciers, and if their putative recession makes you happy, then I’m happy for you.
It’s got nothing to do with AGW, though.
Smokey, I posted peer reviewed studies saying glaciers are retreating across the planet, probably due to human activity-caused global warming. I posted numerous news reports from the distinguished and award-winning science reporters at BBC citing studies that specifically listed dozens of places on Earth that is so. You’ve posted not a single report contrary, not even from the National Enquirer or Newsmax.
In contrast to your failure to cite anything, BBC’s conversations with scientists strike me as quite credible. Those reports would be legal in a court of law. They’re based on good research. Your opinion is pretty low, I admit, but I have nothing to suggest your opinion is better than any reporter anywhere. I regret I don’t know your science chops, but there you have it.
Of course glaciers advance and retreat on the basis of precipitation. Seasonally, there should be both advances and retreats; in some periods, glaciers should advance or retreat for a decade or so at a time. The reports I listed indicate glacier decline is a century-long trend in most cases. You’ve offered nothing in rebuttal.
So, since this is a century-long decline, which the science reports say are not the seasonal advances you offered, is there a reason I should have accepted your note as something more than it was?
I regret your joy at glacial decline. I wish you had evidence that would offer a glimmer of rebuttal to the claim that it’s human-caused activities that is causing the decline. Maybe someone with more information than you have will offer such a report.
Interesting article. I found some more information here