From the Houston Chronicle
Melissa Phillip Chronicle
Excerpts:
Jose Umana builds a snow ball as he plays with his brother and father in the snow fall at Affordable Cars & Trucks on I-45, where his dad, Mario Hernandez, Sr. works.
Falling snowflakes glimmered in streetlights, so wide that they billowed to the ground like parachutes, and so tantalizing that even awestruck adults reached out their hands or stuck out their tongues to catch one.
By Wednesday evening, the flakes were big enough to hold their shape for a moment on the street before melting into the pavement, and a dusting had collected on parked cars in some parts of town.
The flurries tied a record for Houston’s earliest snowfall ever and warmed the hearts of winter weather lovers who have pined for snow since it last made an appearance on Christmas Eve 2004.
“I’ve got a pot roast in the Crock-Pot, and I’m going to go home, change into my warmest pajamas and eat pot roast and enjoy what may be the only real winter day we have all year,” said Tina Arnold, an Illinois native who took advantage of the wintry backdrop to pick up Christmas presents Wednesday at The Woodlands Mall.
Since 1895, records indicate, snow has fallen this early just once — on Dec. 10, 1944.
Late Wednesday, there were no reports of school or business closings Thursday morning in the Houston area.
Patrick Trahan, a spokesman for the city, said the icy weather was expected to taper off overnight and was not expected to disrupt morning traffic. He added that if conditions did not improve, the Public Works Department would clear the roads this morning.
Forecasters at the Houston/Galveston office of the National Weather Service said clouds and precipitation should give way today to sunshine and temperatures in the upper 50s.
Overnight lows for all areas but those north and west of Harris County were expected to stay above freezing tonight, said the weather service’s Paul Lewis.
Snowfall in the metro Houston area Wednesday caught forecasters somewhat by surprise. A significant chance for snowfall didn’t show up in computer models until about 9 p.m. Tuesday.
“The midnight crew adjusted the forecast at that time,” Lewis said.
Read the entire article and watch video here
Ed Scott reported someone saying:
I think that is unlikely, since the growing season actually in creased during the warmening. It seems more likely to shrink during what looks like the coming coldening. Which does not bode well for many of the extra mouths we added during the good times.
I talked to a long-time (over 50 years) Galveston (20 miles south of Houston) resident today. Except for our snowfalls in December of 04 and 08, the only other time he recalled it snowing was three times in the 60s. He said those snowfalls were in Jan/Feb (not December like this century). Nothing in between these two time periods… Wikipedia said the 2004 snowfall was the most significant since 1895. I haven’t found any other data on snow in Houston but this isn’t something I’ve reasearched before. If anyone can point me to some data, I would appreciate it. Thanks!
1989 was the last really cold winter in Texas and the last McFarland event. This event saw the cold air go all the way down to the Darien Gap in Central America and into the Eastern Pacific.
McFarland events will kill succulents and determine the line between tropical species in Texas and other Southern states.
Because the National Weather Service has issued a blizzard watch — the Pray for Snow party scheduled for Saturday at the mountain has been canceled.
From Mt Bachelor Oregon
Ed Scott (various)
Some great stuff there Ed. Thanks. Some of us have limited time to scour the sphere and find stuff. Thanks to Anthony for allowing (at the very least) OT commentary and enriching my life (I am sure I am not alone in this).
I must ask a favour. It’s no real biggie, but I saw a documentary a couple of years ago, before I realised that politicians were actually going to “act” against the evil gas CO2, and I cannot track it down anywhere – partly because I cannot recall the channel it was broadcast on here in the UK and partly because I don’t have enough free time. It may have been part of a series.
The program was in two parts, both focussing on extreme weather in Canada.
The first half informed us of the dust bowl in the ’30ies that bankrupt thousands of farmers, just as Canada became the major wheat producer in the world, and stripped off an incomprehensible amount of topsoil.
The second half is what I need to see again. It covered the ice-storm of ’98 in which a lot of people died as a result of falling tees, starting fires in previously unused fireplaces and from exposure, falls and cold-related illnesses. There was a mind-boggling section shot from the back of a truck driving down an endless street and the sound of falling branches laden with ice was astonishing to this watcher.
Anyway, the end of the program was an interview with a Canadian insurance company investigator(I think it was) explaining that the insurance companies had now banded together and paid for weather control, via aerial spraying, to ensure no repeat of the storm that had been extremely expensive for all of them. There was footage of the planes and the extra equipment fitted to them.
Any help gratefully appreciated.
I’m in Oak Harbor on Whidbey Island. We get even less rain than Seattle (about 26″ annually, Seattle gets about 36″), and the weather is a bit more temperate. I lived in Everett for a year and a half and it would be snowing there, and raining in Oak Harbor.
peter:
this morning’s paper had a typo, claiming a .08 rise per decade in the northeast–in the body of the article it says 0.8 degrees F
Given the propensity for hype, alarmism, and generally astounding lack of knowledge, I would be more inclined to think “typo” is being generous. They can’t be bothered with facts, so what’s a little decimal point? What else did they get wrong? And what about the monitoring stations themselves? How accurate are their figures?
As for Walden Pond 150 years ago, well that would have been just barely past the LIA, and of course it was colder then. So what?
Nothing but climate alarmist drivel, written by ignoramuses written for the human species Bimbolopithicus Climatensis.
“Hello Houston!”…”I think we have a problem here”….”looks like some little white fluffy thinks dancing around outside the capsule”…..”just got a report, that some chap had a heart attack, while shovelling two feet of ” partly cloudy” off his sidewalk !”…
…”I think I’ll log into Google earth and see if they have any better pictures than what we can get up here…”
…”we will continue to monitor for further information…”
…”the new dunney is working just fine now”…..”best tasting water we’ve had in a couple weeks…”
Larkin Lowrey (08:47:26) :
I figured Al Gore would get me sooner or later but I’m a little surprised to have been bit so soon.
He was on national news with Obama when the Messiah endorsed The Gore Agenda. We all ought to have a blizzard by the weekend 😉
Sid (09:09:36) :
ughh – not even a hat tip for reporting this in the last thread…. On the other hand, my daughter saw her first snowfall last night, so there’s not much wrong with the world today 🙂
But I saw it! H/T SID !!! (I can do that, can’t i?)
Richard Sharpe (14:52:22) :
It seems more likely to shrink during what looks like the coming coldening. Which does not bode well for many of the extra mouths we added during the good times.
Essentially correct, but simplified. Over a few seasons, farmers adjust the crop they grow (wheat fails at the margin, next year plant more barley). In some regions, the cold also means drought (i.e. California – there goes the salad…) but since we grow lots of cotton in Kern county (for no good reason – water intensive semitropical plant best grown in the south…) we could do some crop substitutions as well.
The first inflection is sometimes the worst. Getting through that first crop failure or two has typically been challenging, since folks are slow to change their ways. This cycle will be worse. We don’t store 2+years of grain anymore. Its more like 2 months… Grain is shipped between hemispheres rather than stored for the whole year. We can’t take a single crop season failure on a global basis.
But the end game is in fact a “pessimum” where there is less total food. Some land that was marginal for cold crops goes out of production. Some that double cropped has to drop to single crop. Etc. In the end, people die.
There is a reason economics is called “the dismal science”…
The good news is that the places with the most excess grain will do fine (that’s the U.S.A., Australia, Canada, Argentina, Ukraine and a couple of other smaller places.) Most tropical places ought to be fine too (Brazil, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, etc. so rice exports ought to be OK.) The bad news is that the E.U. will be in a bind along with Russia and China. Not good. And I don’t want to talk about sub Saharan Africa…
Expect to get better at making couscous, pilaf, and corn bread and have much less beef, pork, and chicken on a global basis. You will also see a rise in the growing of sorghum, millet, amaranth, lentils, field peas, buckwheat and other crops that grow better under challenging conditions or have short growth cycles so can be grown as a ‘catch crop’ after a main crop failure.
What makes this all the more stupid is that we can grow all the food the world needs in greenhouses with nuclear power and desalinization. It’s just a matter of doing it. But we, as a world, have chosen to maximize short term gain and done nothing to mitigate long term risks.
Del Hunt:
Yeah, I’m aware I should be careful what I wish for but there seems no other way to counter the insanity of the AGW proponents. Nothing like a real world occurrence to crush their virtual world predictions.
Average snow fall for Houston is zero, as seen on the chart referenced
http://www.wunderground.com/NORMS/DisplayNORMS.asp?AirportCode=KHOU&SafeCityName=Houston&StateCode=TX&Units=none&IATA=IAH
Speaking of the Arctic sea ice, check out:
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
This year’s area of ice has almost equaled the average area for the period 1979-2007, and even the ice extent is well within a standard deviation for the same period. All that really remains is to see if the maximum extent, usually reached in March, will hit fifteen million km² or more. And then next year’s melt should really be interesting as so much of the “fragile” one year ice survived this year and will still be there next year during the melt — and older ice is slower to melt than first year ice.
If skeptics wanted to make a point the way the greenies do, we’d be off walking from Alaska to Russia on the ice that’s already formed.
If it gets any warmer…..
Our local meteorologist has said that the snow level may be as low as the valley floor Saturday night. I will look forward to seeing a sprinkling of snow on the lawn Sunday morning. It would be the third time since I moved up here in 1992.
Snowing in the deep South, arctic ice growing, these are all signs of Al Gore using his Peace Prize as outhouse material.
What’s this about climate change not being an imminent concern anymore? What the %$^*(^#@ur momisugly^( have we been saying over the last, what, two $^&()_^%#@ur momisugly$& years! It is getting COLDER! WAY BLEEPIN COLDER! And that, my friends at the IPCC, IS AN IMMINENT danger! Unless you don’t friggin care about the little old lady freezing in her house because she can’t light the bleepin fire place!
Pamela…. move to Texas quick before you freeze!!!! I’ll help you get settled in.
The U.N.’s Global Warming Muzzle
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=313892396478678
Climate Change: When the United Nations insists that man-made global warming is now proved beyond doubt, it’s practicing one of the few things it has proved itself good at: censorship of dissenting viewpoints.
The wasteful, corrupt, dictatorship-dominated U.N. may not be successful in fulfilling very many of its supposed objectives — world peace, the end of poverty, mutual understanding, etc. — but when it comes to suppressing contrarian points of view that interfere with official U.N. stances, the organization ranks with the best.
Now the U.N. is telling the world that only nuts on the fringe question dismantling the global economy to fight global warming. The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year stated that warming was “unequivocal” and “caused by human activity.”
It increasingly seems that ideology and a wish to see the industrialized free West reduced in economic status is what motivates U.N. climate policy, not science. But these hundreds of competent scientists dedicated to the truth are not about to let their mouths be covered — even by a United Nations olive branch.
I love Calgary weather !! All 4 seasons in one day, what’s not to like?? -Maximum distance from the sun, 94,537,000 miles -Minimum distance from the sun, 91,377,000 miles -Mean distance from the sun, 92,957,200 miles -Orbital eccentricity 0.017 -Obliquity of the ecliptic 23’27” 8.26 seconds -Length of the tropical year (equinox to equinox) 365.24 days -Length of the sidereal year (fixed star to fixed star) 365.26 days -Length of the mean solar day 24 hours 3 min. 56.555 seconds in mean solar time -Length of the mean sidereal day 23 hours 56 min. 4.091 seconds in mean solar time -Mass 6,600 million million million tons -Equatorial diameter 7,927 miles -Polar diameter 7,900 miles -Obliqueness 1/298th -Density 5.41 -Mean surface acceleration 32.174 feet per second/ per second -Escape velocity 7 miles per second – Albedo 0.39 You gotta love the universe and our little place in the suburbs of the Milky Way. Humbling, isn’t it?
Tamino is at it again. He put up a bunch of propaganda about how we are going to reach a tipping point. All we have to do is put a massive carbon tax in place, a moratorium on coal power, double fuel efficiency, invest billions in solar and wind and everything will be fine.
As I continue to learn about AGW I keep finding less and less to support it. I started questioning GISS, moved on to temp reconstructions and now I am working with Ice extent data. I really have been going at it with an open mind starting more than a year ago but now I am realizing how little there is to support it. I keep thinking there will be more, but not yet.. nothing really.
Here’s my response to tamino.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2008/12/12/taminos-imagination/
Sorry this is off topic, but it’s important. We all know that Obama and his crew of pirates don’t care about truth. They are going to press ahead in spite of it. And to make that easier the Democrats are well on the way to being able to undo the Constitution.
http://doctorbulldog.wordpress.com/2008/12/11/urgent-urgent-constitutional-convention-secretly-being-railroaded-through/
If they succeed at that, then all our efforts won’t amount to anything, especially since open discussion like this will no longer be allowed.
Hi folks,
OK, tinfoil-hat conspiracy alert.
Well, this may seem conspiratorial but it’s their words not mine.
The Club of Budapest (sibling of the famous Club of Rome) has recently declared a State of Global Emergency.
http://www.worldshiftnetwork.org/declaration/index.html
“Time-estimates of when the “point of no return” will be reached for the global system of humanity have shrunk from the end of the century to mid-century, then to the next twenty years, and recently to the next five to twenty years. For example, it was predicted that the Earth’s average temperarure will increase by about 3° Celsius by the year 2100, then it was said that this level of increase will come about by the middle of the century, and lately that it could possibly occur within a decade.
The figure for overall warming has been increased from 3° C to 6° C or higher. Global warming of 3° C would cause serious disruptions to human activity, while a 6° C rise would be a ‘global breakdown’ making most of the planet unsuitable for human life.
The acceleration of critical trends and cross-impacts among them indicates that the ‘window of opportunity’ for pulling out of the present global crisis and breaking through to a more peaceful and sustainable world is likely to be no more than four to five years from the end of 2008.”
So, we only have four to five years left!!
Fortunately they have a plan to save us:
“If humanity is not to perish, as other species have that failed to respond to changing conditions, we must face and cope with the unintended consequences of the narrow short-term thinking that has led to today’s unsustainable global situation. No ‘quick fix’ or ‘miracle technology’ will save us from the consequences of the erroneous values and actions of the past. Only by engaging the human spirit in all its creativity and potential wisdom can we give birth to the necessary new thinking and actions. The currently dominant mode of thinking cannot be maintained any longer.
We must overcome the societal inertia generated by the powerful self-destructive remnants of bygone eras in order to prepare in each community, region and nation for systemic disruptions and possible collapses. We must radically reconsider our view of the world and re-structure its principal operative systems: energy, economics, governance, transportation, food, resource use and distribution, among others. We must act to extend the time available to us before it becomes too late to avoid breakdown on a global scale.
WE HEREBY ISSUE AN URGENT CALL to all the People and Peoples of the World to declare their awareness of the state of global emergency and their firm commitment to join together to carry out real and meaningful change in all sectors of society (education, governance, economy, media, culture, technology) and at all levels (local, national, and global) for the common good of all people and all societies, and all life on Earth.”
I have analysed some of their proposed ‘solution’ here:
http://www.green-agenda.com/greatshift.html
More anecdotal evidence
Saas Fee, Switzerland is reporting they have had about 1.5m of snow so far, last winter they had about 1.5m in total.