It’s not looking good for the coming Halloween. Button up those trick or treaters. Fall, we hardly knew ya. Here’s a roundup of interesting cold weather events in the last week. Check out the forecast graphic at the bottom of this story.
From Bill Steffen, WOOD-TV.
October 22nd. A weather station in Berchtesgaden National Park in Bavaria has recorded the coldest temperature ever in Germany during the month of October. The thermometer dipped to -24.3C or -11.7F. Clear skies, calm winds and fresh snow was the perfect combination for the record chill. The city of Augsburg, Germany has been 9.3 degrees colder than average during the past week. Prague in the Czech Republic is supposed to be in the mid 50s at this time of year. They had 3 days with temperatures stuck in the 30s and even picked up some snow flurries.
…
October Cold Snap Sets 82-Year Record
High On Tuesday Was Only 47 Degrees
October in Chicago is usually equal parts balmy T-shirt weather and nippy light jacket temperatures, but if it’s felt more like winter coat weather this year, it’s not your imagination. Chicago has spent the last 17 days with below-average temperatures, and a high of a mere 47 degrees made Tuesday the coldest Oct. 13 in 82 years, CBS 2’s Mary Kay Kleist says.
Comparing temperatures for the first 14 days of October 2008 to this year seems like comparing the tropics to the tundra.
…
From Bill Steffen, WOOD-TV. October 14th. The biggest snowstorm in 25 years hit central Europe with amounts up to five feet atop Zugspitze, the highest peak in Germany. In Austria, two day snowfalls of 2-3 feet caused some ski areas to have their earliest-ever opening day. The Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland were hit hard. Up to 20″ of snow fell in the mountains of the Czech Republic. Trees and power lines were toppled, with up to 700,000 customers without power during the unusual cold wave. In southern Poland three people froze to death.
Huge waves destroyed a pier at Sopot in northern Poland. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians were without power after the storm. A major rail line from Switzerland to Austria was blocked by trees felled from the weight of the snow. The Polish government mobilized troops to assist the clean-up.
Temperatures dropped to 11 above zero in southern Poland, extremely cold for this time of year. Back in the U.S., check out the snow on top of Mt. Washington in New Hampshire. Mt. Washington hasn’t been above freezing in nine days. They had over a foot of snowfall in the first two weeks of October and temperatures for the month are more than 7 degrees cooler than average.
…
Record-breaking cold this morning, widespread frost
Termperatures are rebounding after what was record-breaking cold morning in Charlotte.
Temperatures fell below the freezing mark for the first time since last winter in Charlotte, and frost was reported across the metro region. A number of National Weather Service official reporting stations had sub-freezing lows.
This morning’s unofficial low at Charlotte/Douglas International Airport was 30 degrees. That is the coldest since March 5, when the low was 29. This morning’s reading broke the old record for the date, 31 degrees, set in 1948.
A low of 28 degrees was record in Albemarle, North Wilkesboro and Rutherfordton. The morning low was 30 degrees in Salisbury and Statesville. It dropped to 32 degrees in Gastonia, Hickory, Monroe and Rock Hill.
…
From NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center:
Looks like Winter draws on for the US. So time to load up the stove and watch the fun on the run up to a cold Copenhagen :-))
Wow ! All the storms & snow . . . I didn’t think Al Gore could visit so many places in one month.
The jet stream is loopy. There is a US wide break allowing Arctic air to flow into the continent. The wind is cooperating as well as it is blowing directly South right at Canada and us. It returns to a northern breeze along Europe which would explain Ireland’s warmish wave.
I have been studying that Jet stream recently and it has been a mixed bag of El Nino tracks and La Nina tracks, as if it can’t make up its mind which track to stay in.
Aubs (09:22:51) :
> FYI, Link to Mt. Washington snows is redirecting to Accuweather Premium or Professional, not the image. Delete this comment.
The Mt Washington web site is http://www.mountwashington.org/
It hasn’t been remarkably cold in NH this month. It’s 60F at home right now, Mt Washington is a 100 + miles NNE and is 26F. Normally there’s about a 30F difference between the two sites in the afternoon.
They take interesting weather in stride (an look forward to it), though they weren’t ready for the 4 foot snow drifts on Oct 14, see the shift change account at http://www.mountwashington.org/weather/comments/ about driving to the other side of the mountain and taking the cog railway up.
Weather vs. climate—
It may not be good science, but in the end, weather events will shape much of the public’s view on AWG. It seems everyone on the street thinks they can detect climate change without accurate measurements, so events such as these are important.
Roger Sowell (10:02:07) :
The recent cold wave killed the sugar beet crop in parts of the USA.
http://www.commodityonline.com/news/Cold-wave-hits-sugar-beets-in-Park-County-22319-3-1.html
Meanwhile, the eco-nuts want to replace gasoline with bio-fuels. Good luck with that when growing seasons are shorter and colder.
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/mandatory-bio-fuels-very-bad-idea.html
Thanks for the links Roger.
You are right.
It’s difficult enough that we still depend on seasonal crops for our food security.
Just imagine if we would be out of energy as well.
These ecopods want us dead.
Last year Dr Walter Williams gave his wife a new snow shovel for Christmas, and he couldn’t understand why she was complaining.
I’ll bet she isn’t complaining now. 🙂
Here on the south coast of England weather is normal for the time of year. A few days where we need the heat on for a while but not what anybody could call cold. But at least we haven’t had any gales (with global warming we’ll have a lot more gales) or floods (with global warming we’ll have a lot more floods) or droughts (with global warming…. We often do get gales this time of year but this year nothing to report.
I recall that summer temperatures/heat are reported to be the main drivers of receding or advancing glaciers. We have now had three successive crap summers and it seems that much of Europe is now getting early snowfall and early winter. I wonder if we are going to get advancing glaciers before much longer? And if we do I wonder if anybody will report it.
The more I am thinking about it, it seems to me Mother Nature interferes into human doings. Remember that Napoleon in Russia – went in and got extreme cold winter 1812. Russian offensive against Finland 1939/40 – extreme cold which killed more Soviets than Finnish bullets. Germans at Moscow 1941/42 or at Stalingrad 1942/43 – ditto. Copenhagen and C&T legislative closing in – guess what? Cold!
The winter of 2009-10 killed AGW for everyone on planet earth except Al Gore. And Al Gore is still trying to keep hope alive, trying not to be sued.
Terryskinner:
You’re right about early snowfall last winter – it was also very extensive across the Alps and was much deeper than normal into late April.
Then actually they had a warmer than average summer (not hot, hot, just warmer than average) and all the snow build up melted, including all that on the glaciers.
So no, this summer probably no glacier advance.
You need a snowy winter, but most importantly, cool summers for glaciers to advance.
It WAS reported that glaciers near Juneau, Alaska advanced for the first time in decades in 2008, however….
Time will tell…..
Temperatures in Scandinavia are below or well below the 1961-1990 normal for October so far as well. My own location in Oslo has an average of 3.6C this month compared to the 1961-1990 average of 5.7C and the forecast suggests 2-3 C below for the rest of the month also. The average daily high has been 6.8C, so it hasn’t exactly been t-shirt weather lately.
Svalbard, however, has temperatures well above the normal so far.
As Obama told MIT last Friday: What’s up with that?
http://amps-web.mit.edu/public/amps/webcast/2009/obama-2009oct23/ondemand.html (at 8:20 in the speech)
Ecotretas
[B]fhreid (10:05:49) :
Is this the Drudge Report?
I believe in AGW but often visit here to get a dissenting opinion. Citing regional variations in WEATHER patterns does nothing to promote your views and does nothing to assuage my opinion.[/B]
Oh, please. When every hurricane, every melted cubic foot of ice in the Arctic, when every tornado, and every high temperature record get tagged by the media as being caused by “global warming” I’d say, “lighten up.”
I captured this, Oct-Nov-Dec, forecast from NOAA on 10/9/09, looks like we’re in for a mild winter here in the west and the northern tier of states, http://i36.tinypic.com/29zplxl.jpg
The three subsequent forecasts only get anomalously warmer throughout the winter, ending in Jan-Feb-Mar 2010, http://i38.tinypic.com/359jy2v.jpg
Julie L (10:29:16) :
It’s rough for all of us.
“doug (10:53:49) :Weather vs. climate—
It may not be good science, but in the end, weather events will shape much of the public’s view on AWG. It seems everyone on the street thinks they can detect climate change without accurate measurements, so events such as these are important.”
So, can you tell me who is detecting climate change WITH accurate measurements? Hmmm?
Weather may not be climate, but it was an odd shift to colder conditions, over several months of the winter before last, that led me to begin investigating this issue. If those such as David Archibald are right, we’ll end up ~2 degrees colder before this phase is over. It will be a collection of events such as this one reported here that will make it so.
fhreid (10:05:49) :
Is this the Drudge Report?
______________________________________
LOL, not everything Anthony posts is intended to be disproof/proof of AGW and, as he points ut, the news media is replete with lack of reporting of cold weather ‘events’. Compare them to the number of ‘hot weather’ events they cover.
He can’t help that posters will draw conclusions about AGW from this stuff. The scientists who post and read do not. It is interesting information related to the weather, it doesn’t have a ‘deeper’ meaning.
This demostrates the level at which climate change is happening and we’ve reached the tipping point.
Or perhaps just a good old fashion cold snap!
I reckon the weather is dropping back to the cold of the 60s and early 70s.
In the UK in the 60s once october came it was B cold
Natural variability in this big ole heap of rock hurtling through space and orbiting a huge thermonuclear reactor
Move over, King Tut, the Curse of Copenhagen is the new bad boy in town.
The weather isn’t the only thing that is jinxed, the reporting is likewise burning up with fever.
Here in central Ohio, weather for Trick or Treating has typically been dry and mild in recent years. I’ve never needed more than a light jacket while escorting the kids around the neighborhood. But the early extended forecast for this year’s beggars is calling for temps in the 40s. This reminds me of trick-or-treating as a child in the 1970s. We often had to wear jackets or thick shirts under our costumes to stay warm!
Robert Wykoff (10:15:42) :
$10 says we have a +0.6 anomaly for October
You mean UP from 0.4 in Septermber?
Woke up to six fresh inches of snow this morning in Breckenridge, CO. It’s very cold and wintry up in Summit County! Our local paper usually links every single weather event around here to “global warming/climate change,” but I haven’t seen the usual alarmist stories for weeks since we’ve had below average temperatures and above average snowfall all “Autumn” starting with the first snowstorm of the season back on Sept. 21. Looks like another snowstorm will roll through Tuesday through Thursday.
2:45 PM Sunday afternoon in Denver. 31 deg & snow at the house in the SW foothills.
That’s 32 degrees below our normal afternoon high for this time of year
3rd snow event of the month. Looks like 3-5″ from this storm (in the SW foothills)
6″ earlier this week.
Very significant storm looks to be on tap for Tues night into Wed or Thurs (depending on which model you like)
Another storm for Halloween into Sunday on tap
Denver set a record for coldest earliest, earlier in Oct (17 deg – never had been that cold that early in the year.) That day, the high temp was 26, which was only 1 deg above the old record low of 25.
This is the coldest I have seen here in the 13 years we have lived here.
It has been a truly extraordinary start to the winter season here.
FWIW, I have an analog model for predicting Front Range seasonal snowfall & my algorithm is suggesting we should be getting around 150% of normal – we are off to a good start to meeting that forecast.