Tuesday, January 06, 2009
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How’s this for cold comfort? Sask-atoon’s deep freeze is likely the longest streak of low temperatures below -25 C that has numbed this city since record-keeping began in 1892.
The 24-day streak started cruelly Dec. 13 after relatively mild temperatures and continued at least through Monday, said David Phillips, Environment Canada’s senior climatologist.
“That’s the thing that’s brutal,” Phillips said from Toronto, where he was enjoying a temperature of -4. “We can all handle a few (cold) days. It’s the long haul that wears you down.
“It’s really a shocker, the duration of the cold.”
Phillips said he couldn’t find a longer cold snap in Saskatoon’s recorded weather history during a look through the records Monday. Even during the infamous January of 1950, when temperatures hit -46 and -45 (not counting any wind chill), the cold streak of -25 or lower lasted “only” 21 days.
The first two mild weeks of December kept the month from being Saskatoon’s coldest ever. It still averaged -20.6, the sixth-coldest December on record and the most frigid since 1983.
Prince Albert was slightly colder in December, with an average temperature of -21.4, while Regina registered -18. Neither of those burgs have suffered a -25 streak approaching Saskatoon’s, Phillips said.
The normal average temperature for Saskatoon in December is -14.3.
The historic streak could end today. Environment Canada was forecasting a low of -23 for today, before another drop Wednesday.
There’s no good news on the horizon.
January is expected to be colder than its normal mean temperature of -17, said Environment Canada meteorologist Bob Cormier. The three-month period of January through March is also expected to be colder than normal, he said.
The frigid temperatures and the bad timing of the New Year’s Eve snowstorm has left city snow crews well behind schedule.
As of Monday, snowplows still hadn’t touched almost one-third of the priority streets, which range from arteries such as Circle Drive and Eighth Street to bus routes and minor collector streets. The major arteries have been cleared once, but may need a second pass, said Gaston Gourdeau, manager of the city’s public works branch.
Ninety per cent of bus routes are cleared, but many minor collector streets still haven’t seen a snowplow.
“We’re looking forward to warmer temperatures,” Gourdeau said. “It’s been tough for everybody.”
The New Year’s Eve storm was a double-whammy for snowplow operators.
Many city staff were on holidays. Hydraulic parts of heavy equipment respond more slowly, like everything else, in the cold, forcing crews to get less done than they normally would.
Gourdeau predicts snow crews will be in some neighbourhoods clearing out trouble spots by the end of the week.
He said he decided against implementing a street parking ban to speed up snow clearing for two reasons.
The city hasn’t had the staff to guarantee cleanup within 72 hours until this week.
In frigid weather, it’s also difficult to ask residents to move cars off the street to spots where plug-ins may be unavailable, he said.
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The most recent monthly climate summary for Sydney (December 08) shows:
– Close to average rainfall along coast, above average rainfall in the west;
– Wettest December in western Sydney since 1992;
– Slightly above average maximum temperatures;
– Above average minimum temperatures along coast, below average in the west;
– Close to average sunshine.
“Sydney Observatory Hill [in the midst of the heat island] recorded an average maximum of 25.9 °C, which is 0.7 °C above the historical average of 25.2 °C. However, Richmond’s average maximum of 27.1°C was 1.6°C below the historic average. Increased cloud and rain in western suburbs contributed to the lower average temperatures in the west.”
Not much to skite about in that lot Mr Flanagan.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/month/nsw/sydney.shtml
Around Australia it was much the same, with December temperatures below average in all States except Queensland.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/month/aus/summary.shtml
Lucy Skywalker @ur momisugly 14:07:15
I was having a little fun with Richard, of EUeferendunm. Well worth seeing the link.
My favorite Saskatoon weather story is when I was a going to school at the University of Saskatchewan. If I remember correctly, it was late February or March and when I went out side in the morning it was raining. A rare for Saskatoon chinook had blown in from the west and the temperature was about 5 deg. C with the roads a slushy mess. By about 5 PM when lectures were done the temperature outside was -35 deg. C. A drop of 40 degrees C in 9 hours with a cold wind from the north.
My room mate at the time had an old Honda Accord hatchback and he offered me a ride home. The locks on the doors were frozen solid from the rain and cold and we did not have any lock deicer. My room mate tried the lock on the hatch back and it work so we crawled into the car from there. Upon getting in the car the hatch closed and the doors would not open from the inside, nor would the windows roll down. Not only that, but the manual release for the hatchback was broken long before my room mate owned the car. We were trapped in the car, but luckily the car started so we sat there while the car warmed up. After about 1/2 hour the car was warm on the inside but the doors refused to budge. We then proceeded to drive down to 8th street to a mall with underground parking and parked the car under a radiant heater until the doors un-thawed. It was a wild weather day and getting trapped in a car in the middle of the city makes it memorable.
I was born in Saskatoon. I now live in Winnipeg, which I believe is the coldest city of its size in the world. Our December and January so far have been brutally cold. Right now in Winnipeg we have as much snow on the ground as we usually get in a whole winter, and we can get snowfalls right up to May. I wish we were experiencing a warming trend!
Grahame. What we actually need is a little scare to show the UK people how close we are to the lights going out. If say two stations went down because of coincidence then people might see what we’re facing. The future is a connection to Iceland for electric from their new geothermal stations – but it’s a major project, and there’s always the risk that Iceland could be partially wiped off the map by some volcanic event – leaving us light (!) yet again. The only true answer is for us to go nuclear (unfortunately) right now AND coal. But long term we need to be independent. There’s geothermal holes being drilled in Cornwall right now as testing. It’s the only safe/endless/unbroken form of easy power generation. Future voltaic cells might promise something, but not if the sun isn’t shining! Wind is unreliable and ugly. Tidal is possible, but expensive. Like I said, people need to be shown that we’re on a knife edge here. If global cooling is real then we are in trouble.
Steve Berry
As a Brit in the normally balmy South West of England I try to put over this ‘energy on a knife edge’ business in our local media, but there is hysteria from the greens when you mention Coal, nuclear and rubbish incineration. I think they genuinely believe that renewables such as wind and solar can be used as the base source of power instead of recognising it as a ‘top up’ which even then is highly dependent on the weather. Its very cold AND still in the south west today and not a watt of power would be generated. Personally I would like to see much more done with tidal/wave-the sea is a few hundred yards away and its awesome power totally eclipses other renewables (that are realstic in UK circumstances) and of course its regular as clockwork.
I suspect the lights will have to go out before people start taking notice.
TonyB
I’ve been living in Saskatoon for about 8 years now, and believe it or not, one of the things that keeps me here is that it’s warmer than my home town. For those of you who have never heard of it, here’s our general tourism shot. A little something that might be worth keeping an eye on is if the birth rate goes up come August / September, as we Saskatoonians get a bit frisky during these cold snaps ; )
Don’t forget to vote today, folks: click
[Voting page takes a little while to load.]
Steve Berry – re waking people up with a power outage.
Hope you Brits do better than we did in California a few summers ago after our blackouts. The geniuses who control such things mandated that our power shall be 20 percent renewable by 2010, and 33 percent by 2020. From their website:
“The RPS program requires electric corporations to increase procurement from eligible renewable energy resources by at least 1% of their retail sales annually, until they reach 20% by 2010.”
source: http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/puc/energy/electric/renewableenergy/
California at least has the sunshine, and some wind in certain areas, plus a bit of geothermal. We also have serious waves near the coast, but that will never fly with our enviro-whackos…
California also purchases hydroelectric power from our neighbors Washington and Nevada, nuclear power from Arizona, and natural gas from Texas.
I agree with you that wave-power and coal are the way to go for the U.K., but even wave-power is out when the ice gets thick!
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California
A little fun we’re having in the Great State. (Cook Inlet extends south from Anchorage.)
…JANUARY YEAR GROUP ANALYSIS AND OUTLOOK…
ICE EDGE LOCATIONS IN THE BERING SEA ARE 30 TO 40 PERCENT ABOVE
NORMAL. ACTUAL ICE EDGE POSITIONS THIS YEAR ARE 60 TO 100 NM SOUTH OF
THE SAME TIME LAST YEAR. ICE IN COOK INLET IS 25 TO 35 PERCENT ABOVE
NORMAL AND EVEN GREATER IN KACHEMAK BAY.
THE YEAR GROUP FOR JANUARY IS 1975 FOLLOWED BY 2000. BOTH OF THESE
YEARS WERE DURING LONG PERIODS OF LA NINA CONDITIONS IN THE PACIFIC.
THIS YEAR WE ARE ALSO IN A LA NINA THAT IS EXPECTED TO CONTINUE INTO
THE SPRING. LA NINA WINTERS ARE USUALLY COLDER THAN NORMAL IN ALASKA.
SEA ICE CONDITIONS IN JANUARY 2000 WERE SLIGHTLY MORE SEVERE THAN IN
2009 AND SLIGHTLY LESS ADVANCED IN THE BERING DURING 1975.
THE BERING SEA AND COOK INLET WILL HAVE EXTREME ICE SEASONS THIS YEAR
WITH MUCH GREATER THAN NORMAL ICE AREAS. EXPECT THE ICE EDGE TO REACH
POSITIONS NEAR AND BEYOND THE BERING SHELF SEVERAL TIMES THROUGH
FEBRUARY AND INTO EARLY MARCH. ICE WILL MOVE IN AND OUT OF SAINT PAUL
WITH PASSING WEATHER SYSTEMS. ICE WILL SURROUND SAINT GEORGE AT
TIMES FROM LATE JANUARY THROUGH FEBRUARY. ICE WILL ALSO DEVELOP AND
RETREAT THEN RE-DEVELOP ALONG THE BERING SIDE OF THE ALASKA PENINSULA
THROUGH EARLY FEBRUARY.
ICE WILL CONTINUE IN LOWER COOK INLET INTO APRIL AND UPPER COOK INLET
THROUGH APRIL. ICE THICKNESS IN COOK INLET WILL GROW UP TO 30 TO 36
INCHES FOR AREAS NORTH OF KALGIN ISLAND BY EARLY FEBRUARY.
http://pafc.arh.noaa.gov/marfcst.php?fcst=FZAK80PAFC
ehoxes,
OT, but I thought I’d brag a bit, since I was the guy responsible for the compositing work on that Saskatoon Shines promo shot you posted. 🙂
Flanagan
I particularly like seeing Saskatoon referred to as a small canadian Village. How many “Villages” in all of Australia are larger? 3? 4? Makes you sound a bit provincial. 🙂
It still looks to me like the winter pattern we see in a La Nina year in North America. Perhaps not quite as dramatic but the snow storms have tracked mighty far south across the midwest.
Is a La nina developing or not?
OT. The world appears to have had a meltdown in the last three days, NOAA just published the 1/8/09 SST. The entire Arctic and Antarctic ice caps appear to have melted since 1/5/09 along with any ice on the Great Lakes, Hudson Bay, and around Greenland.
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.1.8.2009.gif
I work near DC and, looking out the window, I don’t see 5 feet of water lapping at the doors of my building, so I’m thinking this is an error of some kind.
The UK is having it’s coldest spell in 10 years, the sea is frozen off the south coast for an offshore distance of half a mile, for the first tim e since1966.
Uh oh…there may be warming, after all.
Los Angeles’ forecast is for 70 F temperatures over the weekend. Windy, too, so we will probably get more wildfires.
Steve Berry (13:58:10) :
What are the options if the UK domestic power supply is inadequate by 2013+, – run lines from France? What happens to UK industry/economy if the power supply is intermittent?
LNG Tankers? TGP Teekay Gas Partners… nice dividend, uptrend off a low price… hmmm… Does England have LNG offloading facilities? (I think I’m going to buy some TGP…)
Jeff Alberts (12:31:57) :
tarpon (12:04:19) :
Stand aside, Canadians and polar bears will begin migrating south soon. You don’t want to run into neither, as one is hungry, the other is probably really pissed off from all the cold.
Canadians don’t get pissed off, they become comedians and game show hosts. 😉
Don’t some of them become overacting star ship captains and blast everything that doesn’t wear a too tight skirt?
But I’m not worried, how many flapjacks can a hungry Canadian eat anyway? It’s that pissed off polar bear that has me worried… have to turn on the pool heater and put out the oversized pool chairs!
Steve Berry (01:40:34) :
The only true answer is for us to go nuclear (unfortunately) right now AND coal. But long term we need to be independent. There’s geothermal holes being drilled in Cornwall right now as testing. It’s the only safe/endless/unbroken form of easy power generation.[…]Tidal is possible, but expensive.
There is also wave power. Waves are always present, are not as ugly as tidal nor as expensive, are just as ‘renewable’ as geothermal and very safe. It’s also easily distributed about an island… no single point of failure cable to Iceland. Small modular sizes for isolated towns and rocks 😉
See: http://www.oceanpowertechnologies.com/
Ticker is Nasdaq: OPTT or London AIM: OPT (a volatile start up phase company. On a fairly clear bottom and with reasonable prospects as a gamble, but very volatile… $14 to $4 in 1 year, then up to $10 and back to $6 in one month…) I’d like to buy some as a statement, but don’t know if I could live with the bouncy bouncy…
They make a ‘power buoy’ that ought to also work well for floating research systems, oil rigs, maybe even ships at sea 😉 The U.S. Navy is putting a field of these in off of Hawaii (these are not toys…) and they claim up to 100’s of megawatt fields are available / possible.
I think it’s a neat technology, but I’m not so sure as a stock. There are other similar companies, but this is the only traded one that I know of. One has a snake like floating thing and is putting a field in off of Portugal, I think, and IIRC it was also a UK company.
A field of these about 100 miles by 1 mile would supposedly power all of California. I think I saw a claim that 100 x 100 miles would power all of Great Britain. (About 150 km x 150 km) Basically, you have far more wave power available than needed and only a small part of the ocean needs to be planted with the buoys. And unlike windmills they don’t macerate birds and most of the device is below the water so unseen.
I’d rate it better than coal, nuke, wind, solar et. al. for someone with lots of ocean… though I’d sleep better with some nuke or coal base load too…
E.M.Smith (00:28:18) :
“Does England have LNG offloading facilities?”
Milford Haven (a fjord and one of the deepest natural harbours in the world as well as one of the busiest by tonnage) in Pembrokeshire (“the little England beyond Wales”) is near to completing the largest LNG terminal in Europe. The constructors, Chicago Bridge & Iron Company, are also riding the crest of the alternative wave with their recent windmill tech aquisitions.
All puns intended.
I think that’s the same as a comedian, perhaps unintentionally so.
E M Smith
I am constantly championing wave/tidal for the UK with the arguement that its predictable, limitless, doesn’t create ugly scars on our most beautiful landscapes, and no part of our country is further than 70 miles from the sea.
Unfortunately the windmill and solar power companies have got the ear of the Govt. Both sources would have been totally useless here for much of the winter what with cloudy skies and little wind at times. Does anyone here remember the Salter Duck from the seventies (obviously I’M not old enough but someone else told me about it…)
I would gladly invest in some sensible wave co but there are very few credible ones out there-astonishing when you think 70% of the planet consists of their raw material
TonyB
There’s a professor in England who’s been championing deep geothermal and made a good case for it when I read his article about three or four years ago.
Roger Knights
I understand that even ten foot down the temperature is a constant 10C. That is a great resource when the temperature is -5C but less useful when the external temperature is 12C! I have some friends in Switzerland whose village taps into a geo thermal source and his total energy bill is around 150$ Contrast that with our silly energy prices. I would love to generate my own but its not practical- far too costly for any return and doesnt provide the power when its most needed-in the winter.
TonyB
When I worked in Germany in the 1980’s I found that home heating was from hot water generated at nearby industries. This was a form of cogeneration.
The industrial source had a hot liquid that required cooling, and rather than build a cooling tower and waste the heat to the atmosphere, cooled the hot liquid against a closed loop of circulating warm water. The warm water became hotter, and was pumped into the town or city where it heated homes and businesses.
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California
Roger Sowell (12:40:51) :
Hope you Brits do better than we did in California a few summers ago after our blackouts. The geniuses who control such things mandated that our power shall be 20 percent renewable by 2010, and 33 percent by 2020.
Hmmm convert 10 percent of our power in 1 or so years. (About 10% is already hydro et. al.). It will be hard just to get the mandatory public hearings out of way in a year. Looks like power outages again. Sigh.
Many of us still have our ‘preparation’ gear from the last time the government decided to screw around with the electric system. I have 2 generators and can always make my own electricity using gasoline. (One bought before the outages, the other bought during – a little Honda my wife could start.)
Should gasoline become short, I also have a 1 Kw inverter that I bought at Costco for about $70 that can be hooked to my car battery and used to make survival power. The best low cost solution for emergency power, IMHO. My car is an old Mercedes Diesel that runs quite well on salad oil, kerosene, jet fuel, etc. unlike the newer finicky ones; so worst case is I go to the store and buy some salad oil. I don’t expect excess taxation of food.
I agree with you that wave-power and coal are the way to go for the U.K., but even wave-power is out when the ice gets thick!
Ouch! I hadn’t thought about the ocean freezing. We don’t do that in California.
For anyone facing such potential power failures, my experience has been that Honda makes the best generators. They have a dandy little 1 kW unit about the size of an overnight suitcase. Easy to start and runs forever on a liter of gasoline. (well, about 6 to 8 hours depending on demand). It’s enough for lights, electronics, fridge, and basics. (I.e. no dishwasher and HVAC) They have nice larger ones up to a few kW.
http://www.hondapowerequipment.com/products/Generators
Honda’s are Very Quiet. 56 dba for my 1kW unit IIRC. Neighbors don’t even know when it’s running. My big generator sounds like someone paving streets… it is a Briggs & Stratton engine with nearly no muffler. We mostly just use the Honda now, unless we need to wash clothes and run the central HVAC at the same time as an emergency hits 😉 If we end up needing to go that route again, I’m going to sell it to a desperate person living well away from me and buy the Honda 3 kW unit.
If power failures become common, I’m off to the car parts store to get some batteries and rig up the inverter as a UPS. When we have power I’ll charge the batteries and when we don’t we’ll still have basic lights and electronics with no action on our part. (i.e. the ‘basics’ will live off the inverter all the time with batteries float charged when we have power. A large scale UPS.) I’d started buying parts for this when we tossed out Governor Greyout Davis and the issue became moot… though maybe only for a while it seems…
I often wonder if the folks pushing all this stuff down our throats realize that it’s not a good idea to force people to make electricity with a gasoline generator and put 200 lbs of lead and acid in their garage… no, they never see their unintended consequences, only their fantasies of what “ought” to be…
You have no idea how much it galls me that I have to do this kind of stuff just to make sure I have reliable electricity. Lord save me from my government.
At any rate, a small standby generator and a medium sized UPS works wonders, add in a wood insert to the fireplace & a camp stove and you’re all set. About $2,000 all told I’d guess. Best of luck to all my relatives in the UK dealing with this in years to come.