More nasty weather in the northern hemisphere. It seems to be “piling up”. This event caught many off-guard and unprepared. (h/t to Philip_B)
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| Rescued tourists wait for government vehicles to take them back to Gangtok. Telegraph picture |
Thousands trapped in -15° snowstorm in Sikkim
27 Dec 2008, 0308 hrs IST, Amalendu Kundu, TNN
GANGTOK: A trip to the snow-laden Changu Lake turned into a nightmare for more than 3, 500 tourists including hundreds of children on Friday. They were trapped in snowstorm conditions with the temperature dipping to minus 15 degrees at a killing altitude of 13,300 feet before the army pulled them to safety.
The majority of those trapped were from Bengal. Hundreds fell ill, shivering in the icy cold as their vehicles remained stranded near Changu and Baba Mandir for hours. Clad in just jackets and scarves, the holidayers were hardly prepared, mentally or physically, to encounter a blizzard.
The army rescued them and took them to military camps, where warm soup and loads of blankets helped revive most of them. Many had to be admitted to the army medical units for treatment.
In the morning, there was little indication of what was to come. Tourists flocked to the Changu Lake by the hundreds as they do every day. With winter setting in, there was the added attraction of seeing the lake under glittering snow-covered peaks. The tourists got more than what they had asked for.
It started with a heavy shower. The temperature plummeted sharply. The skies seemed to turn clear for a moment but suddenly, heavy snowfall started near the India-China border, 35 km from Gangtok. Roads went under a couple of feet of snow in no time. Over 450 vehicles were immediately trapped.
Local guides assured them that the weather would clear up, but it only got worse. More snow fell. More vehicles got stranded in the higher reaches. What compounded the torture was wind chill. With the mercury dropping to minus 10 and continuing southward, the wind picked up, cutting into exposed skin, finding its way past windscreens, locked car doors and inside jackets.
The administration sent an SOS to the army that has several camps in the area. Unit 17 of the army’s elite mountain division swung into action. Aided by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, Border Roads Organization and local police, they rescued around 1,500 tourists from 230 vehicles. Many had to be rushed for treatment while the rest were given shelter in the army camps.
The remaining tourists were rescued late in the afternoon even though their vehicles remained stranded. Although no casualty has been reported, many are said to be seriously ill. With the weather showing no signs of letting up, Changu Lake could remain out of bounds for tourists this week.
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there’s another disturbed area on the sun…wonder if it will turn into a spot…
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_igr/1024/latest.html
Snow in this region is very common – the lake is mainly fed by snowmelt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chsungo.jpg).
Meanwhile Eurasian snow cover is running well below average with very little snow in Europe and poor snow through eastern Asia (http://moe.met.fsu.edu/snow/) and Arctic Sea ice is running at record lows (http://www.nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png).
Seems like a little bit of a stretch to include this story in the evidence that AGW is the farce that it is, given that the “meaningful” snowfall took place at an altitude of greater than 13,000 feet.
REPLY: there’s no mention or suggestion of that…just thought it was interesting that so many people were caught completely off-guard and unprepared. – Anthony
I am in the northern hemisphere (Sudbury, Ontario, Canada) and have been enjoying a record breaking day. We are at 4.5 C and the previous was 2.8 in 1974. We have also likely broken the greatest rainfall record of 0.5 mm set back in 1959. This has been a weird winter. More snow than normal, and now more rain than the norm for tha past couple of months. — John M Reynolds
Doesn’t seem to be a lot “warm” in this Global warming at the moment. 😉
uhh David. That’s extent, not amount. As NASA explains it’s ‘weather’, strong winds compacting the ice, not melting it.
Here in N E Alabama November and early Dec temps below normal and now for Christmas week and New Year near record highs. Strange weather for sure. But as they say that is the weather in Alabama. wait till next week it will be all different.
Love this site. Great work Anthony.
Bill Derryberry
Long time reader
Thanks Bill, that explains why the build up stalled for a week or so.
Rapidly picks up now. Its very rare for winter ice to go above average , siply there isnt much more room. But can you imagine if the ice wouldnt reach average this winter , how hot would those alarmists get ? And the 2007 horor melting season was caused by weather too . But one year event was enough for Al Gore to say , that in 5 years there wont be any summer ice , how naive….
Prob even more when the multiyear dirty ice is replaced by pristineone , how simple…
So true, Bill Marsh, the sea ice extent is not a measure of the total volume. Where have I heard that before?
Bill Marsh (18:49:06) :
Please do not confuse fact with fiction…LOL
“It started with a heavy shower. The temperature plummeted sharply. The skies seemed to turn clear for a moment but suddenly, heavy snowfall started”
Sound like the Day after tomorrow, anyone?
Current condition for
Varna Bulgaria
25 °F
Overcast
http://www.wunderground.com/global/stations/15552.html
Belgrade Serbia
25 °F
Mostly Cloudy
Kyiv Ukraine
16 °F
Heavy Showers Rain
http://www.wunderground.com/global/stations/33345.html?MR=1
Moscow Russia
21.6 °F
Light Snow
Riga Latvia
30 °F
Overcast
It seems cool enough for snow in Europe. That rain in the Ukraine at 16 °F doesn’t sound right. Perhaps it’s raining salt water.
David (17:35:07),
Your link didn’t work. Can you link me to the graph showing record lows please.
This is what I found:
http://www.nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
david (17:35.07)
Here is someone who disagrees with you assessment on poor snow in Europe.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/3982101/2008-was-the-year-man-made-global-warming-was-disproved.html
Some of my old haunts…
As of 12-21-08 p.m. NOAA data
Casper WY . DPTR FM NORMAL: -5.7
Tacoma WA . DPTR FM NORMAL: -3.5
LAX . DPTR FM NORMAL: -10.0 ND
The Day After or more like the 2nd Winter After.
We heard the reports of some mighty cold stuff in Australia this July/Aug.
Then we heard of the temps falling hard in Fairbanks soon after Autumn had begun.
The thing that is piling up now is the stream of stories about cold and snow taking many by surprise.
Give this bum solar cycle another year, we’ll be talking about even bigger surprises.
I don’t mean to beat up on NASA, but they are the ones who put out the ‘this is normal’ feed. What were they thinking?
My guess is sweep it under the rug, look nonchalant, and things will blow over.
Hold onto your hats, gents, January cometh.
David,
No, it DOESN’T sound like Day After Tomorrow. It sounds like WEATHER!!
Check the sea level lately?? Without the sea level rising as fast, it is highly unlikely that the oceans are storing extra heat to renew global warming after this hitch in its giddyup!!
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
Calls into question whether we are having excessive melt of Greenland and other glaciers also!!
By the way, y’all keep talking about Antarctica being on a long term warming trend. Doesn’t seem to be affecting the sea ice. (yes, I realise Antarctica can warm for 100 years without bringing its average temps above freezing, too bad Al Bore and the media don’t!!) It WOULD affect the edges of the sea ice, BUT, apparently it HASN’T!!
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg
As far as European snow, the summer of 2007 the media was talking about the European Ski Resorts taking it in the shorts this year. Yeah, it was sooo bad that some of them actually had to close down for a month THIS SUMMER for maintenance. Yeah, that is a BAD YEAR ALRIGHT!!!!
A friend of mine from Berne, Switzerland is swearing she is going to move here in San Francisco because the weather is getting so much WORSE the last couple of years and she is sick of it!!! Early snows, below freezing, lotsa rain… Yup, they are shoveling lotsa Gorebull Warming in the Alps this winter just like last.
As far as this story, it COULD be an early indication that the Himalayan region is going to start coming out of its drought, you know, similar to the Kilimanjaro region where the Glaciers are recovering!!
As Ron White would say. ‘You can’t fix stupid.’
When living in Leadville, Co, we didn’t drive anywhere without winter survival gear.
Here’s a 30-day daily animation of the Arctic.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/CT/animate.arctic.some.1.html
The areas with ‘reducing ice coverage’ would seem to be far enough north that winds repacking the ice would be my personal bet.
While at the same time, Baffin Sea, Hudson Bay, and south of Archangel are all icing over pretty darn speedily in this period – all clearly brand new ice.
david (17:35:07) : wrote:
and Arctic Sea ice is running at record lows (http://www.nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png).
————–
David,
As I asked on the other thread – please show a link that works, comparing current Arctic sea ice levels with record lows
papertiger (20:26:33) :
Current condition for
Varna Bulgaria, 25 °F, Overcast
http://www.wunderground.com/global/stations/15552.html
I’ve had a Wunderground wx sticker on my own site for years. I’ve lately noticed they jumped on the AGW bandwagon –
http://www.wunderground.com/climate/
Got their own perfesser and everything. Better late than never, maybe, but maybe embarrassingly late unless the Sun quits snoozing.
uh oh, AGW is back:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/6183077.html
This is definitely worth reading. EUReferendum.com often cites this blog and Christopher Booker too, since he is a journalist of unimpeachable integrity when it comes to reporting the business about the whole man-made global warming nonsense. As I said, very much worth the read. There is, of course, more than just an American side to this global battle for the truth. Booker, along with the good folks at EUReferendum.com are worth reading.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/3982101/2008-was-the-year-man-made-global-warming-was-disproved.html
An excerpt: “As 2009 dawns, it is time we in Britain faced up to the genuine crisis now fast approaching from the fact that – unless we get on very soon with building enough proper power stations to fill our looming “energy gap” – within a few years our lights will go out and what remains of our economy will judder to a halt. After years of infantile displacement activity, it is high time our politicians – along with those of the EU and President Obama’s US – were brought back with a mighty jolt into contact with the real world.”
These are the top 10 Australian global warming predictions that didn’t come true by Andrew Bolt.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24820442-5000117,00.html
Anna on this blog first brought my attention to a possible hot spot of volcanic activity on SSTs in the N Atlantic off Newfoundland that may be affecting Arctic Sea ice build up this December. But I cannot find anything that looks like an underwater volcano in that area or any reported seismic activity. Any Comment?
http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/sst_anom_loop.gif
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/teacher_resources/magnetism/mid_atlantic_ridge_10_inch.jpg