While early autumn snowstorms aren’t uncommon in US weather history, they tend to be quick affairs that melt off quickly in a day or two. This however is a bit different in that we have a significant portion of the northern Midwest plains and northern Rockies are snow covered and it is not quickly dissipating, in fact it is increasing. Since October 10th the coverage has increased from 13.2% of the USA covered by snow.
This map below is from NOAA’s NOHRSC National Snow Analysis page.
Here is the accompanying table and discussion:
October 13, 2009
| Area Covered By Snow: | 19.9% |
| Area Covered Last Month: | 0.0% |
| Snow Depth | |
|---|---|
| Average: | 0.7 in |
| Minimum: | 0.0 in |
| Maximum: | 728.8 in |
| Std. Dev.: | 2.1 in |
| Snow Water Equivalent | |
| Average: | 0.1 in |
| Minimum: | 0.0 in |
| Maximum: | 403.4 in |
| Std. Dev.: | 0.4 in |
By way of comparison, here is the October 13th USA snow cover for the last few years:
2003- .7
2004- .3
2005- 1.7
2006- 3.7
2007- .3
2008-12.7
2009-19.9
What is also interesting is the 6 year trend of snow depth on this date.
2003- 38.2 in
2004-322.6 in
2005-456.9 in
2006-223.2 in
2007-458.1 in
2008-600.6 in
2009-728.8 in
You can watch the snow cover advance in the animation they provide:
Click for animation of the last 72 hours
Weather Summary
A series of potent systems moved across the coterminous U.S. this weekend, and they brought snow to the north and rain to the south. Late last week, heavy rain fell across the south, which continued to aggravate river flooding and keep soils most.
On Friday, up to 1 foot of snow fell at higher elevations in Wyoming, mainly due to upslope flow from a surface low which moved across the Plains. This same system produced up to 1 1/2 feet of snow to mainly Nebraska Friday and Saturday. Lighter amounts – up to 1/2 foot – fell across the southern Dakotas. On Monday, another system produced light snow across the Upper Midwest and western Great Lakes.
Much of the Western snowpack is cold and stable due due to unseasonably cold air temperatures in those areas. Along the southern edge of the snowpack – from southeastern Idaho to southern Wyoming and from southern Nebraska through southern Iowa, warm and melting conditions were present.
A deep, strong offshore system off the West Coast with potent onshore flow will cause widespread heavy rainfall across the northern two-thirds of California. Up to a foot of snow is possible in the high-elevation central Sierra Nevada, but it will be mixed with rain.
The energy of this West Coast system will shift northward and bring moderate rainfall – 1 to 2 inches – to the coastal Northwest and the Cascades on Wednesday and Thursday.
A midlevel trough will develop across the eastern U.S., and a stationary front across the South will be a focus for heavy rainfall through midweek, and this rain will shift to the Middle Atlantic states late this week.
As the West Coast system lifts northward, midlevel ridging will develop progress smartly across the West. Daily maximum temperatures are expected to be above freezing in much of the West by Friday. The ridge will move into the central U.S. by the weekend and bring seasonable temperatures to the Plains and Upper Midwest, causing snowmelt there.
Snow Reports
| Top Ten: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
h/t to WUWT reader Mike Bryant
4 Billion
“The only driver that has significantly changed is temperature, seems fair to expect then this is the driver of signifcant change.”
I don’t understand this. How can temperature be a driver of climate? Surely it is a response.
Can anyone tell me how varying levels of humidity in the air affects the efficiency of heat-loss from the Ocean? The TAO site is showing a significant drop (as far as air above the ocean goes) in humidity in the air above the ENSO region since late September. If it’s pulling heat out of the Ocean and thus cooling SST’s it could also have implications for Winter.
NWS State College, PA just broke the record for the earliest recorded snowfall since records began per their afternoon discussion.
Well if you look at the JAXA ice graphs; conveniently posted here, you can easily see that the arctic ocean sea ice typically has a winter max of about 14 million squ km, and a summer/fall minimum of around 5-5.5 million in recent years, and almost down to 4 million in 2007.
Well that means that at the summer melt minimum we typically have only 40% or less of the arctic sea ice remaining.
And that is something; 9 million out of 14 melting pretty routinely every year.
So how much of a transient glitch woult it take for that remaining ice to just vanish one year. after all, most of the predictions of “Climate Science” have a bult in 3:1 fudge factor; but it would only take a 55% increase in the melt one year to get rid of it all.
So it doesn’t seem to me to be a big deal at all; wow just a small soalr outburst and the whole thing could disappear; well at leasdt until sept 15th, when the regrowth would start to happen.
Also remember that those figures are for the amount of Arctic Ocean that is covered just 15% with ice; so it is already mostly open water anyhow.
Natural variability could easily result in all the ice melting next year; and then just growing back like it always does.
Thgere’s a reason why all that ice is there after all; not much sunlight to stop it.
Yeah I think that snowcover map can be extended now. Webcam from Penn State:
http://146.186.123.229/axis-cgi/jpg/image.cgi?resolution=352×240
And this from Bradford PA forecast:
A Winter Storm Warning remains in effect until 8 am EDT Saturday
A lull in the precipitation will occur during the day Friday
before likely increasing again late Friday night into Saturday.
Expect a total of 4 to 10 inches of snow to fall by Saturday
morning. Again… the heaviest snow will be on the ridge tops…
and most of the accumulations will occur tonight and Friday night…..
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Apparently, despite early snowfalls and wet summers, this dang climate change thingy is drying up Canada’s rivers. http://news.sympatico.ctv.ca/abc/home/contentposting.aspx?isfa=1&feedname=CTV-TOPSTORIES_V3&showbyline=True&date=true&newsitemid=CTVNews%2f20091015%2frivers_risk_091015
Wonder if Professor Mann is spending more time staring out his window at Penn State on days like this….wondering about hockey sticks.
Get out and enjoy the snow, bud!
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Jimmy Haigh (05:19:06) :
I know someone who has property in Thailand and has recently moved there to live.
He told me that intonation is very important as words that sound very similar can have totally different meanings with a different intonation.
DaveE.
Hey now, Gore and Obama won the offical Worthless Peace Prize, I saw it in the outhouse.
“David (01:46:24) :
(over 3 days) migrating south over 30 days early. I wonder how they knew whats up, or rather whats down, as in an temperatures and an early winter, especially since NOAA reported such warm SST ?
How did the whales know?”
Easy.
By pod-cast.
Awww…. I’ve been congratulating myself for having the good fortune and foresight to live in a place where the vagaries of climate don’t intrude…. a little like Camelot, where Winter exits March the Second on the dot…. and then it snowed today…. not much, didn’t stick…. but it was snow. Both my wife and her calamansi tree are giving me dirty looks… “naw… too early to move it inside..”
Never mind Ron (of ‘peacelegacy.com’); if you want to get your ‘news’ from Alex Jones prisonplanet website go right ahead …
Speaking of ‘links and websites – here’s an interesting into from a site called ‘Peace Legacy’ –
Associated with PETA?
.
.
Dan Lee (09:21:04) :
How inconvenient.
Excellent!
Eric (09:30:55) :
Did Watts cover how June-Sep was the warmest on record, despite a solar ebb?
No?
Didn’t think so.
REPLY: I did cover the NOAA report for Sept, see the story below this one. And if you can provide a link to the story you reference I’ll add it also. Can’t cover what I don’t know about. – Anthony
—————————-
I scrolled through all the comments, twice, Eric, and I didn’t see you provide the data for Anthony.
Will you provide the links?
Also, there is not an immediate reaction on the earth do everything the sun does. The sun has been quiet for more than 2 years and the results are showing on the earth. Would you agree?
Gene,
“Will you provide the links?”
Yeah.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
Eric (09:30:55) :
June-Sep was the warmest on record, despite a solar ebb?
—————–
This comment assumes that there is proof this happened (if indeed it did happen) despite the sun. You seem to be stating that this can’t happen when there is a quiet sun.
I deduce from you that you have read a work that shows what happened from June to Sep (if indeed it did happen) happened “despite a solar ebb”.
What is your data to prove this?
Can you provide a link to it?
I’m not trying to be sarcastic. I’m trying to be empirical.
“Back2Bat (21:24:28) :
Don’t be too hard on the Greens. Most of our problems can be traced to the unstable banking and money system. It takes counterfeit money to really wreck the environment.”
Not sure we disagree at all…so what’s your point??
I can guarandamntee you that your mantra of “bring on the cold” while many of us share your SENTIMENT….you really don’t want that.
Yeah sure it kills pests and riff raff.
But the pestilence….ugh.
As I said before….fear the cold not the warm.
That is way the AGW are so bass-ackwards and leading this world astray.
They got it all wrong.
CHRIS
(My name is Chris)
Norfolk, VA, USA
Weather Channel just had a home video of a kid in Ct. saying “This is just crazy, it’s snowing in OCTOBER. In OCTOBER! Holy Cr.. ” and more..
Looks like the folks who grew up in the last 15-20 years are having a certain amount of “reality reentry shock” 😉
Somehow I think it is going to get a lot easier to move the “young ones” from “it’s warming” to “it’s Dnmm COLD!”
Hmmm… So anyone over about 55-60 has “seen this before” what warming?
And anyone under about 25 to 30 will be “This is colder than it has ever been before!!” (in there life).
Looks to me like the “hard demographic” will be the 30-50 folks. Seen just enough cooler to say “this cold is just weather” but not enough to say “Ah, just like in the 1950’s…” and run through the indoctrination machine enough to be signed up as a “dedicated believer”. (The old folks tend to be more cynical, having seen more fads come and go; while the kids are more fickle and change with the seasons.)
It’s going to be fun watching reality set in. I predict the “old folks” will recognize it first, and the young folks will be just behind them in about 2 years. At that age, 2 years is forever… and being cold “forever” will bite.
Unfortunately, those late “boomers” and early gen-X ers and gen-ys are going to be stuck in the rut for a while.
4 billion (19:40:27) :Considering Arctic summer sea ice extent has rapidly decreased by over twenty percent over the last thirty years, it seems perfectly fair to expect this trend to continue leading to the ultimate result of nil summer ice coverage.
I just came from “the little room” where I lost 2 pounds in 2 minutes. It seems perfectly fair to expect this trend to continue to the ultimate result of nil me in about 3 hours.
The rate of decline is incredibly fast in Geological terms.
The rate of decline is incredibly fast in Dieting terms.
The problem with both these assertions is that they attempt to stretch a very “fast short term” event into a very long process, and it just is not a valid thing to do.
Look at the ice chart on the right bar. More ice forming, fast, every day. Next year will be even colder and even more ice. The PDO has flipped, and with it, the fate of the arctic.
If you would predict the arctic, you need a baseline of hundreds to thousands of years. 30 years is barely a hickup.
Bulldust (21:00:01) : Standard industry parlance I am afriad – dirty in the gas industry equates to a lot of non-hydrocarbon gas impurities (in Gorgon’s case, a lot oc CO2).
Capstone Turbine CPST makes a gas microturbine that runs directly on “dirty” gas. They make gen sets in 30 kW, 60 kw, and 200 kW IIRC and they can be “ganged” for larger capacities. Oil drillers are using their ruggedized units on drill rigs. Might consider just burning the gas and selling the electricity…
Oh, and they have a nice combined heat and power unit too. They put one in at my kids high school. The gas they were using to warm the swimming pool now provides a warm pool AND a lot of their electricity. Better solution than a cold pool or no pool… It’s been running a few years now. Air bearings don’t seem to wear much 😎
Neat picture of inside the turbine here:
http://www.capstoneturbine.com/prodsol/products/index.asp
Continuously or On-Demand
Stand alone or Grid Connect
Individually or Multi-pack
Run on a variety of fuels
Low or High Pressure Natural Gas
Biogas (landfill, wastewater treatment centers, anaerobic)
Flare gas
Diesel
Propane
Kerosene
Wish I had one… wish they made a 3 kw unit… Oh well.
Then again, if it gets cold enough…
Oh, and they have a hybrid engine package that fits in busses. Maybe I could get one in an RV 😎
hotrod (22:27:51) : The massive drop in ice recently was not due to temperature but due to changes in the prevailing winds pushing large amounts of ice out of the arctic basin. … The loss of ice was not due to melting but physical transport out of the arctic due to the wind.
Every time I hear this I wonder if running ice breakers up and down both Canada side and the Russian side contributes significantly to the breakup and flush. I’m certain that it will have an effect (destroy the anchor to land and it must let the ice drift or move easier). The part I don’t get is the magnitude.
Is it in the low single digit percents? The fractional millionths of a percent?
Is there even a way to know?
Gene,
“This comment assumes that there is proof this happened”
Yes, I provided the data.
“You seem to be stating that this can’t happen when there is a quiet sun.”
That’s not what I’m stating at all. Obviously it can happen if it did happen.
“I deduce from you that you have read a work that shows what happened from June to Sep (if indeed it did happen) happened “despite a solar ebb”.”
El Nino + GHGs.
The data, again:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
If you thinkCopenhagen is cold now, wait til Al Gore goes
there! ( Gore Effect).
Juraj V. (23:36:48) O´really?
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com 008/03changing- artic_monthly_wx_review.png
http://i680.photobucket.com/albums/vv161/Radiant_2009 /popularmechanics1957-2.jpg
here is plot for coverage since 1900
http://espanol.wunderground.com/climate/SeaIce_Fig04.asp?MR=1
Of course we have no data to say if such a decrease in coverage has occurred over such a time period previously.
Correct. We have semi-reliable satellite data since 1978.
The graph above is bunk, since if NW Passage was passable in 1944, arctic sea ice could not be much higher than in 2007, 2008 and 2009.
On further searching for historical Arctic sea ice coverage I found this Data going back to 1953
http://nsidc.org/sotc/sea_ice.html
And this study going back to 1870,
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2007GL032507.shtml
figure 8.13, found here, suggests ice coverage to be markedly lower now than any time in last 140 years
http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-2/public-review-draft/sap1-2-prd-ch8.pdf
Juraj V. (23:36:48) :
O´really?
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/changing-artic_monthly_wx_review.png
http://i680.photobucket.com/albums/vv161/Radiant_2009/popularmechanics1957-2.jpg
here is plot for coverage since 1900
http://espanol.wunderground.com/climate/SeaIce_Fig04.asp?MR=1
Of course we have no data to say if such a decrease in coverage has occurred over such a time period previously.
Correct. We have semi-reliable satellite data since 1978.
The graph above is bunk, since if NW Passage was passable in 1944, arctic sea ice could not be much higher than in 2007, 2008 and 2009.
Kinnard et al 2008 studies arctic ice extent back to 1870, finding Arctic sea ice extent to be markedly lower now than any time in the last 133 years.
figure 8.13 shows results
http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-2/public-review-draft/sap1-2-prd-ch8.pdf