From the “it’s weather not climate department” – I never thought I’d see this today on the header of the Houston Chronicle:
The snow is the earliest on record. Of note is the fact that in 2008, it snowed in Houston on December 10th. Place your bets for next year.
Houston braces for about 2 inches of snow
Some in Houston area may even see half a foot of the white stuff
By ERIC BERGER and PEGGY O’HARE
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Houston this morning broke a record with the earliest snowfall ever recorded in the city’s history.
Forecasters are still hedging their bets on the amount, but say the most likely scenario is 1 to 2 inches of widespread snowfall through the day. Some areas could get up to a half a foot.
Light snow already was falling downtown and in other areas before 8:30 a.m. Other forms of precipitation — such as rain, freezing, rain, sleet and hail — also have been reported. Houston’s main weather recording station at Bush Intercontinental Airport reported at trace of snow at 8 a.m., meaning Dec. 4 will go down as the new record.
But emergency management officials say snow isn’t the biggest concern — it’s icy roads. A 12-hour freeze period is expected to begin after sundown today, continuing into Saturday, which could cause hazardous driving conditions.
A freeze warning has been issued for more than 20 Texas counties, including the coastal counties of Chambers, Galveston, Brazoria, Matagorda and Jackson, extending northward through Harris, Montgomery, Fort Bend, Wharton and Liberty counties, then stretching as far northwest as the cities of Bryan and College Station and as far northeast as Trinity and Polk counties.
“Even though we can’t say for sure this weather event is going to occur, we can definitely say our confidence has increased substantially compared to three or four days ago,” said Fred Schmude, a meteorologist with ImpactWeather, a private, Houston-based forecasting service.
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In other news:
Dr. James Hansen is coming to Houston to promote his new book Storms of my Grandchilden.
Is he thinking snowstorms?
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I am beginning to wonder if we can trust any climate related records at all. If all “scientists” were looking for warming, then by golly they see warming. (even to the point I fear they all toss out data that is inconvenient)
I wish someone here could reassure me that all climate scientists are not as bad as the alarmists involved in climategate.
Just for the record – I didn’t see anybody mention that Dallas/Ft. Worth saw this kind of snow Wednesday – Press account
.
.
Bruckner,
“…an infinite number of perfect weather balloons at all points in the volumetric space between Earth and outer atmosphere, and infinite number of [measuring device(n)] …wouldn’t that “weather summation” be Climate?”
It all depends on what the albedo of a weather balloon is.
noel wrote: “Look, either global warming is occurring or it isn’t. A couple of numbskulls who seem to have been caught trying to pretty up the evidence doesn’t mean anything. Glaciers disappearing and polar bears starving do. Repeated studies of average temps do. What are you guys going to say when the arctic sea is clear? It was always like that?”
Please note that everybody agrees that there has been some warming and some glacier retreat. The climate did warm at the end of the 20th century. The dispute is about the cause of the warming.
It has warmed naturally many times before and cooled naturally many times before. CO2 continues to increase in the atmosphere but for over a decade the further warming forecast due to CO2 has not happened. What has happened is not in line with the computer models of CRU and others. Now we understand why, they are very poor scientists and have an agenda rather than a wish to ascertain the true scientific facts. There is certainly something wrong with their assumptions.
It now seems most likely that we once again had natural warming and extra CO2 has not made much or any difference. If that is so we might now be in for a period of cooling (we might not). In the CO2 warming model the current absence of further warming and current record low temperatures in places is hard to explain. It is perfectly understandable with natural warming and cooling events.
http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-364412
I like how noel manages a double decker cognative dissonance in that one post.
#1 – It’s not about weather, it’s about climate. There are polar bears dying and glaciers melting!
Translation: It’s not about weather anomolies, it’s about THESE weather anomalies….
#2 – Of the two weather anomalies stated, the polar bears is a projected crisis that is supposed to happen someday.. not right now (as mentioned earlier, polar bear numbers are on the rise, not decline), and the glacier claim is hit and miss. Some glaciers are shrinking, others are growing, and some that shrink have nothing to do with climate (read: weather)… like Mount Fuji.. it is losing it’s snow cap do to excessive deforestation… which is a LOCAL issue, not a global one.
So good job noel! That was quite a feat!
noel (11:04:06) :
“What are you guys going to say when the arctic sea is clear? It was always like that?”
Actually Noel it was, IN 1954!
See the Picture in this article.
Bastardi used this photograph of a U.S. submarine at the North Pole on March 17, 1954 to illustrate his point that Arctic ice can be highly variable.
AccuWeather’s Joe Bastardi presses case against global warming theory
http://www.climatechangefraud.com/climate-reports/5053-accuweathers-joe-bastardi-presses-case-against-global-warming-theory
I have made two comments that have either been deleted or never posted, and would like to know… WHY?
The BBC weather charts at http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather have been predicting a big freeze for almost the entire USA and even stretching down into Mexico.
I”m sure it’s happened before.
Piers Corbyn says it’s likely gonna snow a bit in Copenhagen too, just to welcome Barack.
All normal European weather.
Wanna see those climategaters riding real horses at a Houston’s rodeo.☺
And the strangest part is we’re still waiting for accumulating snow here in Wichita, yet it’s reported to be sticking in Houston O.o
Intellicast’s temp. maps show it getting crushingly cold soon in northern Canada and making it a ticking time bomb
http://www.intellicast.com/Global/Temperature/Maximum.aspx?region=namer
Same with the middle of Siberia (watch the cold air mass in Russia’s midsection build)
http://www.intellicast.com/Global/Temperature/Maximum.aspx?region=rusia
Multiple AO forecasts from NOAA is showing the index going off the bottom of the chart (in addition to a strongly negative NAO)
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao_index_ensm.shtml
John Galt (11:26:29) :
Predictions of spreading cold being temporary is definately an ‘Oh for xx’ statistic at this point.
The spread of cold continues, year on year.
Caught between a Fraud and a Cold Place.
Here’s a photo from my mate, and fellow Scottish Geologist, in Houston, Texas, this fine morning…
http://i919.photobucket.com/albums/ad34/Jimmy1960/HoustonSnow.jpg
Denbo (10:02:18) :
Sorry everyone I am skeptical (or a denier) of everything I read. I will believe it when I see it and so far I don’t see snow on the live Houston traffic cams. http://traffic.houstontranstar.org/cctv/transtar/
It might be snowing but nothing it on the ground yet according to the cams.
The Mason cam shows snow on the central reservation.
Not much though.
Snowed in Austin. Well, we had a few flurries but now the sky is clearing so the cold air will be coming. Low 20’s by tomorrow morning. Well at least I do not live in Laramie Wy anymore… Had to move back to TX, too cold there.
Looks like a chance for good sea ice in copenhagen.
God has a sense of humor.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_daily_extent_hires.png
Michael (10:33:00) :
That’s the thing about all these videos of ice melting – It’s not as much fun watching water freeze.
Paint dries. Grass grows. Ice melts.
(Off topic but I was just listening to Julie London on You Tube crying herself a river. And thereby contributing to the putative sea level rise…)
This is the first time we’ve had enough wet sticky snow to build snowmen since the 1970s. Bring on the cooling, Santa, baby!
On Wednesday, Frank Billingsley (Houston weatherman) showed a table of the last 5 snowfalls in Houston.; The earliest of the five was 1989, so that means 5 snows in 20 years or an average of once every 4 years. He also said that it had snowed in Houston just 33 times since 1885 (I think it was 1885, thereabouts at least). Assuming 1885, thats snow once every 3.75 years. However, the most recent of the last 5 was just last year, during the second week in December. The one before that was on Christmas Eve 2004. So that’s 3 snows in the last 6 years, or once every 2 years, nearly twice the 125-year average frequency.
Its 2:25 here in Katy (just west of Houston), the kids were let out early, my office closed early, and it’s still snowing. Cool.
It may look like snow, but it is really dirt-flavored Häagen-Dazs. Didn’t sell too well, so it was offered it to the Feds, and they bought it as part of the stimulus plan. Saved alot of jobs, because “heads were gonna roll”.
Now the Lear-Jet Liberals flush it down the toilet as they are crossing the “fly-over land” and earn carbon credits, that can be sold to utilities.
Its a win-win.
Dr. James Hansen is coming to Houston to promote his new book Storms of my Grandchilden.
~~~
methinks the Gore Effect is contagious.
A friend was telling me about a snow event when she lived in Houston. That was in 1985. Anybody else notice that was during a solar minimum also? Check out this sunspot plotter:
http://spaceweather.com/java/sunspot.html
It’s the sun, Noel. It’s a cycle. (Or do you have too much personal treasure tied up in AGW to consider the evidence?)
I think what we need is a massive deprogramming effort if we hope to ever straighten out the AGW culters.
Who knows how to deprogram?
Tilo Reber (10:48:53) :
We got the negative Farenheit digits in Denver last night. The only thing that was good about it was knowing that Trenberth was experiencing the same in Boulder.
———–
“but the data are surely wrong. Our observing
system is inadequate.” Heh heh heh
For those of you complaining that the Houston weather cams don’t show any accumulation of snow, realize that the ground stays WARM all winter in this climate. There has to be an incredible amount of the white stuff for any accumulation to happen before it melts away. So 6 inches in downtown Houston is *huge*.
Someone asked what the climate is usually like in Houston over the winter. I’ve never lived there, but it seems to me that nighttime temps would drop to just below freezing a couple of nights per winter. Here in San Antonio (where, ALAS!, no snow has fallen!) we might have 4-5 nights/winter where the temp drops into the 20, but usually with a daytime warm up to the 40s. It gets that cold because of clear skies, and warms up that much for the same reason later in the day.
The last time San Antonio had any appreciable snowfall was in Jan of ’85, when we got 13″ and the whole city shut down for a week. In 2007 (2006?) there was a massive ice storm that shut down Austin for a week, also in January. FWIW, I can also remember 80F days in December since I’ve lived in SA – mid-90s, I think.