By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM, ICECAP
Map of US weather records for week ending 4/6/09 click image to enlarge or here for source. Map created by HAMWeather,
UPDATE: NOAA predicts the Red River Will Crest Again in Fargo-Moorhead in Late April here possibly again at records levels.
Just a week after the last major northern plains blizzard another significant snowfall occurred this weekend. Models did poorly with the location of the heaviest snow bands and generally overdid the magnitude. These models sometimes have difficult with the first 48 hours, but Susan Solomon and friends tell us you can depend on cruder models to predict the climate 100 years or even a thousand years in advance.
Several inches of snow fell in parts of Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa, southern Minnesota into southern Wisconsin. This will include parts of the Red River Basin already in flood and with deep snowcover (click here to enlarge).
The northern plains has been hit hard this year. Fargo set a record for snowfall and precipitation for March, Bismarck also in North Dakota had record snowfall in December and the second snowiest March, the first year with with two monthly totals in the top ten enlarged here.
Bismarck is on the northern edge of this storm. If they get more than 1.4 inches of snow from this (or some later) storm, they will set an all-time snow record. See the enlarged listing shown below here as of April 1 after the big blizzard. See all the watches and warnings here.
The National Weather Service said International Falls, with the reputation as the nation’s icebox, recorded 124.2 inches of snow this winter. That tops the old record of 116 inches set in 1995-1996. The nearly 9-inch dump from this week’s snowstorm pushed International Falls over the edge. The Minnesota-Ontario border area has been pummeled with snowstorms this winter.
And from KOMO News Weary Spokane residents who are sick of snow can at least now be consoled by the fact that they were a part of history.
A snow storm on Sunday has made this the snowiest winter on record in Spokane. The National Weather Service said 93.6 inches of snow has been recorded at Spokane International Airport this winter, breaking the record set in 1949-50 by a tenth of an inch. It took snowfall of 3.9 inches of Sunday, a record for the date, to break the all-time record. This is the second-consecutive heavy winter in Spokane. Last year, more than 92 inches of snow fell on the Lilac City, third most since records started in 1893.
Spokane’s Top 5 Snow Years:
RANK WINTER SNOW TOTAL
1 2008-2009 93.6
2 1949-1950 93.5
3 2007-2008 92.6
4 1974-1975 89.0
5 1992-1993 87.3
Spokane is also mired in unseasonable cold. Normal high temperatures at the of March are in the low 50s, but this month has seen highs in the 30s and 40s.
See here how an amazing 358 lowest temperature records and 409 snowfall records were broken for the week ending Apr 2, 2009.
Except that they are seeing ABOVE average precipitation! So once again, models seem to have it wrong, and/or, there is no AGW (I believe its the and..)
The prince of darkness, the most obnoxious of the “other gods”, he who was born out from the depths of the seas, after being woken up by a most rare explosion of a black star at the limits of the known universe, he who hibernated for eons and now comes again to raze humanity, has proclaimed in his profound and guttural voice that you non believers must turn into poverty, that you should suffer in order to return to the old way of living he has decided for you and that by accepting his will you will be indeed happy for ever.
Do not believe when you see what some call “snow”, it is not!, it is scorching sun!, it is global warming!
And they keep on coming!:
http://www.accuweather.com/news-story.asp?partner=rss&article=0
Flanagan (22:54:14) :
“Steven: Global warming means more snow at northern latitudes and less snow/more rain around the tropics. Please stop bringing forward half-truths like these ones”.
Flanagan,
Scientific research: NO CO2 connection arctic:
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/RS_Arctic.htm
Next week’s quote of the week candidate: “Global warming means mores more taxes” I saw in an earlier comment.
” Flanagan (22:54:14) :
Steven: Global warming means more snow at northern latitudes and less snow/more rain around the tropics. Please stop bringing forward half-truths like these ones.”
Actually there has been an increase in snow at lower levels, even as far south as Kuwait, that is on the border of the tropics, so is that evidence of global cooling then?
And as for all this warming causes more snow in northern latitudes idea, well, then that compresses to ice and yet we are told the ice is melting because of the warmer climate?
SO global warming causes melting of polar ice and less snow and ice leading to rising sea-levels leading to catastrophic levels of risk of entire cities being washed away by the rising sea, yet, at the same time, the polar ice is increasing because of global warming causing more of the ocean to condense into clouds that move north (or south) to the poles where it falls as snow and turns to ice, yet the ice is melting, leading to rising sea-levels leading to catastrophic levels of risk of entire cities being washed away by the rising sea, yet, at the same time, the polar ice is increasing because of global warming causing more of the ocean to……
Is it any wonder that increasing numbers of people (scientist and lay-person alike) are turning away from an unproven, contradictory and self destructive hypothesis that is self evidently the worst idea since Adolph Hitler thought that it might be quite a good idea to have a little dabble in politics.
AGW: the universal unifying theory that explains everything………………
………… except why their models are wrong!
DJ and Flanagan, ever see a ship break in two in rough seas because it was so heavy? There is one off the coast of Oregon, still sitting there. Ice breaks up not just because it gets warmer. It melts when it gets warmer, true, but melting looks different than cracking up into icebergs. History says that when ice bergs are out and about, we are having colder temperatures. Right now we are not under global warming conditions. So I fail to follow your conclusion that global warming caused the break.
Consider this. Floating sheets that are getting a bit too heavy might start to break under their own weight. And since ice sheets are filled with cleave/crack areas it would stand to reason that they would predictably break up at some point. Diamonds have cleave areas that cutters use to cleave them. And they don’t have to warm them up to do that. In fact, there are several substances on Earth that break up better when they are colder, not warmer. Ice has cracks in it. So do ice sheets. If things get too heavy, they will cleave along these cracks. Has the ice sheet grown in thickness? Evenly or unevenly? Why did it break near land? What is the temperature of the sea underneath?
Given the land surface temperature down there and the lack of long term records (they believe but don’t have data) for this particular very tiny ice sheet in comparison to the above normal extent of ice in summer and winter down there, I think the jury is out as to what caused it. It is my understanding that scientists are studying it. We would do well to conjecture, as I have done, until more is known. You are simply reporting what the media is reporting. Not exactly a peer reviewed source is it.
Ron de Haan. Thanks for highlighting the Arctic Review paper, it saved me doing so. This work to be propagated as it dispells many false claims by the warmists.
Possible record low temps in Austin TX tonight – temps may dip into the 20s in the outlying areas.
Pete Stroud (05:56:16) :
“Ron de Haan. Thanks for highlighting the Arctic Review paper, it saved me doing so. This work to be propagated as it dispells many false claims by the warmists”.
Pete, you’re welcome.
I am just fed up with the never ending riddle of AGW indoctrination and their victims, who obviously have shut down their brain.
On the other hand that is what happens to people who get involved in a “movement”.
They stop thinking for themselves, blabber BS (Bad Science) party guide lines and say “Wir haben es nicht gewusst” when their world ends up in ruins.
History is repeating it’s self.
We are on track to have a hard freeze in North Texas tonight. All time April low temperature records are sure to be broken in many locations. This morning it was 35 degrees at the ranch with 20 mph winds out of the North. My guess is we will see mid-20s tonight.
The climate wild card, from the same author:
http://www.intellicast.com/Community/Content.aspx?a=175
“These models sometimes have difficult with the first 48
hours, but Susan Solomon and friends tell us you can depend on cruder models to predict the
climate 100 years or even a thousand years in advance.”
The climate models do not need to predict weather, but they do need to model it accurately. For example, there may be more (or less) tropical convection in a world with more CO2. The convection may be more (or less) concentrated leading to cooling (or warming). The modelers often use parameters instead of modeling in high resolution, but those parameters are highly indeterminate mainly because they cannot be verified in today’s world. So it doesn’t matter if a climate model can predict yesterday’s snowfall or not, but it does matter that it models snowfall events in general. With that snowfall, subsequent weather will be different (not just albedo, but moisture, winds, freezes including vegetation, etc).
A climate model without these details is a circle-jerk, it just makes assumptions of what the weather will be and derives preordained conclusions.
Obvious to many but worthy of mention 29 days without a sunspot. I believe there is a relation to the climate although there are many that would say not so, but looking out the window seems to be getting cooler.
and now the weather: 3 inches of snow, give or take, in the Chicagoland area last night…
I’m pretty sure global warming will be blamed for the flooding when all this snow melts..
“Scientists have been warning of danger to the peninsula ice shelves since March 2002 when the collapse of Larsen B took away 3250 square kilometres of 220-metre thick ice in just 35 days.”
How much ice was in the Larson B? About 715x 10^9 cubic. meters but the amount of Antarctic sea ice that melts and reforms every year is about 100 x 10^12 cubic meters.
How much of the Larson B is still out there cooling the Antarctic ocean? Regardless of why the ice gets into the oceans it still cools the water, it is why we put ice in drinks.
4th IPCC: “The North American snowmobiling industry (valued at US$27 billion) (ISMA, 2006) is more vulnerable to climate change because it relies on natural snowfall. By the 2050s, a reliable snowmobile season disappears from most regions of eastern North America that currently have developed trail networks…”
In the meanwhile: Canada’s population continues to explode, passing the 100 million mark in 2040 as American’s continue their mass migration North. Winter industries continue to show unprecedented growth as demand builds for recreation in the brief but intense cold season. New snowmobile trails have been developed to provide a network encompassing most the the Canadian Archipelago while further south ATV’s have taken over the abandoned trails that were initially laid out in the previous century. Sales of new recreational vehicles for the first time exceed $3 Trillion in adjusted dollars.
According to Wikipedia, snow has the highest albedo effect. Wouldn’t the amount of reflected sunlight from these record snowfalls influence temperatures? (May already be doing so) Am curious, globally do we have record (or greater than normal) snowfalls, or just in North America?
Flanagan is correct. More snow in the northern latitudes is expected. This will expand the many glaciers and further demonstrate the climate chaos predicted by the IPCC. This may also make it necessary to relocate the polar bear population form the Arctic to the expanding glaciers.
I hope there will be room for the penguins too.
Please contribute to the WWF.
Goreacle’s Challenge: A “Duel”?
Goreacle’s “COLD FLOW” vs Global Warming, aka “Mild & Moist”.
See Goreacle’s “COLD FLOW” clobber M&M.
…-
>>> “Duel(sic) Threat Storm”
“Updated: Monday, April 06, 2009 11:17 AM”
http://www.accuweather.com/news-story.asp?partner=rss&article=0
OT, but cool to watch (no pun intended).
http://www.esa.int/esaEO/SEMWZS5DHNF_index_0.html
Spokane update – 97.7″. We’re leaving the old record in our dust (or snow powder!) We had the snowiest December (over 60″ if I remember correctly) in history as well.
I’m truly hoping for an early Spring. Last year was so cold I couldn’t grow any pumpkins – the seeds didn’t germinate and just rotted in the ground.
Here in New Hampshire, (as elsewhere) the alarmist mantra has been that the declining snowfall totals since the late 70’s due to (what else) manmade warming, is threatening the ski and snowmobile industries, forcing them to rely more and more on snowmaking, and shortening the season. More mid-season rains and freeze-thaw cycles, it is predicted will deteriorate overall skiing conditions, leading to a decline in a very important industry. Yet, last winter came within a couple of inches to breaking the all-time snowfall record held in Conord of, and this year they had another banner year, with a snowfall total about 42% above average.
So, we “skeptics” are left wondering, so which is it? Is the tremendous uptick in snowfall the past couple of years “proof” of global warming or not? Or, perhaps it’s that catch-all “climate change”, or the latest “climate chaos”? No wonder we call AGW an ideology. In the Gore-Hansian empire, all weather and climatological roads lead to AGW.
So where is the Wilkins Ice Sheet now?
Has it already melted and unleashed a wall of water to flatten coastal cities that is even now bearing down on us?
Is it barrelling off in to the South Pacific, acting as a dreadful navigational hazard and about to melt to (see above)?
Is it just sitting there, where it will eventually reattach itself as the temperatures drop?