UPDATE: The East coast snowstorm seen from space
The Mid-Atlantic states were completely white on Sunday, December 20, 2009, in the wake of a record-breaking snow storm. The storm deposited between 12 and 30 inches of snow in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. on December 19, according to the National Weather Service. For many locations, the snowfall totals broke records for the most snow to fall in a single December day.
The storm shut down the federal government in Washington DC, stranded travelers, left hundreds of thousands without power and sharply cut holiday sales the weekend before Christmas.
From the “weather is not climate” department here’s interesting news from the National Operational Hyrdologic Remote Sensing Center. While certainly not unprecedented or unusual, it is interesting, especially when comparing years past:
Indeed, it looks like a white Christmas for much of the USA. Here’s the data:
December 21, 2009
| Area Covered By Snow: | 51.7% |
| Area Covered Last Month: | 8.0% |
| Snow Depth | |
|---|---|
| Average: | 3.8 in |
| Minimum: | 0.0 in |
| Maximum: | 887.0 in |
| Std. Dev.: | 6.4 in |
| Snow Water Equivalent | |
| Average: | 0.7 in |
| Minimum: | 0.0 in |
| Maximum: | 435.0 in |
| Std. Dev.: | 1.4 in |
Their weather summary indicates more snow on the way:
One to 3 feet of snow fell in the western Plains yesterday, while up to 1/2 inch of freezing rain fell in the central Plains. The precipitation was in response to a potent upper low in the Southern Plains and an associated surface low, which caused upslope flow conditions. The heaviest snowfall amounts were observed in the Colorado Front Range and in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of New Mexico. Strong surface winds in these areas caused much blowing and drifting snow.
Most of the snowpack across the West and western Plains is cool, with cold conditions at the lower elevations of the Great Basin. In the central Plains, where rain and snow fell yesterday, the snowpack there is warm, but snowmelt occurred along the southeastern edge of the central U.S. snowpack. Very warm conditions exist on the windward side of the Cascades where warm onshore flow occurred yesterday; slow snowmelt occurred there. Strong surface winds caused high blowing snow sublimation in the Western Plains from southeastern Wyoming and the Nebraska panhandle southward to northeastern New Mexico.
The upper low, currently over the Central Plains, will move slowly northeastward during the next three days, passing through the Great Lakes region by Sunday. A surface low will accompany the system. Little additional deepening of the system is expected since it appears that dry air is wrapping around the system. But on the cold side of the low, about 1/2 foot of snowfall is expected today in northeastern Colorado through southwestern Minnesota today. Heavier amounts are expected in orographically-favored areas of the Western Plains and northern Front Range. Snowfall is expected in the eastern part of the Upper Midwest and south of western Lake Superior. Up to 1/2 foot of snowfall is possible in this band with higher amounts snowfall likely in northwestern Wisconsin and the Michigan Upper Peninsula.
A deep surface low just off the central British Columbia coast has a cold front extending southward through the Northwest. Onshore flow behind the cold front and midlevel dynamics associated with the front will bring up to a foot of snowfall to the Cascades, Intermountains, Northern Rockies, and northern Sierra Nevada today and from northwestern Wyoming through southern Utah tomorrow. Another front will bring 4 to 8 inches of snow to the Cascades on Saturday.
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The heaviest snowfall amounts were observed in the Colorado Front Range…
Something’s wrong here, no snow for days now in Denver.
887 inches! I’d say that’s a bust.
And this is only the beginning of Winter….
@Chuck L (14:22:43) :
“Joe Romm has a posting blaming the big weekend snowstorm on global warming. I know that global cooling is a far more serious matter than global warming but I am praying for a “little ice age” to shut up all of these AGW alarmists, especially Romm and his ilk.”
Ask not the gods for what you want, lest, be they in malevolent mood, they give it to you.
Personally I’d prefer a pleasant warm period, though not perhaps as warm as the medieval one. 🙂
Global Warming is a living, breathing entity in and of itself. It is smart and demonic, seeing how it causes more precipitation in the form of deadly and harmful snow and less precipitation in the form of needed and healthy rain. Deaths from the evil-doer are horrendous and to be reported on every news outlet, while life forms ceasing to exist due to natural over-heating is part of the normal cycle of life and should forever remain silent, in respect to the passing of said being. Cue the Japanese film makers to bring to life the on the big screen the Global Warming vs ManBearPig epic film to see if humanity can be saved from this evil!
hundreds, not dozens.
and it’s not limited to homeless people.
on Saturday night, Latvian poet Andris Bergmanis (1945-2009) froze to death on his way home. (story [poorly] translated by Google)
in a sad irony, his 1970 début book was “Bestow Me Clean Snow”.
During a glacial epoch, the earth doesn’t cool down overall, it has accentuated temperature gradients–the equatorial regions get hotter while the poles get colder. As you can imagine, such a temperature regime is going to set up some very wild weather across the globe. And rather than having a massive block of ice move slowly down from the north, I think it’s more likely that the winter’s snows simply fail to melt one spring because of insufficient irradiance, and the next winter’s snows pile up on top of that, and in just a few years there’s no hope of growing crops or raising cattle, or even living there–the next Glacial Epoch has arrived.
In the meantime, green snow enthusiasts will laud it as the greatest demonstration of global warming the earth has ever witnessed and a direct confirmation that their work to contain CO2 is successful.
I’m just wondering what they will find to eat at that point.
As you get north, lack of snow tends to be a sign of cold (very cold air doesn’t hold much water). In Manitoba atm there is certainly snow, but we only have had one blizzard, so probably less than a foot on the ground (it was a while ago, so its settled). We had a very cold early December, but now it is about seasonal~warm (high – 10, low -20 ish). (local weatherman reported we have a 99.8% chance of a white Christmas here each year : ).
You often see reports equating snow with cold, but really ‘snow line’ would probably be more relevant (so the bottom of that map for sure). Above that, its all about temperature : ).
“Here’s the data.”
Yes, but is it peer-reviewed?
The links associated with “snow fell” and later “snowfall” are clearly from 2006, not 2009.
Albedo mio!
Winter outlook till spring (then tornado season starts)
One of the problems with the current models is the reference time frame is very narrow for initial conditions, and changes with in the past three days, a lot of times, will introduce presistance of inertia, to the medial flows, for several days, consistent with the actual flows, as the Lunar declinational atmospheric tides, make their runs across the equator from one poleward culmination to another.
Then as the tide turns and we have the severe weather bursts at declinational culmination, they get confused, or surprised, as the initial inertial effects reverse for about four days before the sweep to the other pole, that brings back the smooth flows, the models understand.
So that when the Lunar declination went to Maximum North on December 3rd, turbulence and shear introduced into the atmosphere, from the turning tide, (the models do not know about), surprised them with the usual couple of tornadoes.
Now (12-21-09) that we are just past the Southern extent culmination, producing a secondary tidal bulge in the Northern Hemisphere, bringing us to the mid point of a 27.32 day declinational cycle (one of the four routine patterns that cycle on an 109.3 day period). This particular one (#1) that started back on Dec 3rd, has incursions of polar air masses that come down from Western Canada, through Montana and the Dakotas, to make up the Northern part of the atmospheric tidal bulge.
So by 12-30-09 I would expect to see a large invasion of cold dry air sweep almost all the way to the Gulf coast again, then the produced frontal boundary with the interesting weather, that includes change state intense precipitation. Freezing rain, where the warm over runs cold, and snow where the cold undercuts the more sluggish warm air, still moving North East by inertia alone, severe weather to form in that trailing edge of the warm moist mass, that gets over taken from behind by the polar air mass that tries to follow the tidal bulge back to the equator, which for the next 4 of 5 days powers up the cyclonic patterns generated by carolis forces, and finishes out as the Moon approaches the equator again.
Expect the same type of interaction again for a primary bulge production by the passage back North, culminating on 12-30-09, pumping in a solid polar air mass very consistent with the pattern we had on 12-03-09, (the North “lunar declination culmination”)[LDC], then (#2) the next Rossby wave / jet stream regime pattern, comes back into play with much more zonal flow, and air masses invading from the Pacific, (of the two sub types of) phase with lesser amounts of Gulf moisture entrainment in this one, more in the other #4.
The (#3) third 27.32 day pattern with polar air masses invading in from the Minnesota / Great Lakes area and sweeping out through the Eastern sea board, and mostly zonal flow out west, from 01-27-10 till 02-23-10, comes next.
The fourth 27.32 day cycle, that looks very similar to #2 but with much more moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, usually has more hail and tornadoes associated with it than Pattern #4, and typically flows up Eastern side of tornado alley. Will be in effect from 02-23-10 through 03-22-10, and should produce the first big surge of severe tornado production, from about March 20th 2010, until about March 26 or later as the Next polar air mass cycle is coming out of western Canada, and should make for steep temperature gradients, and ion content differences.
Richard Holle
http://www.aerology.com/national.aspx
John Egan,
Try this. It changes daily, but corroborates Anthony’s map for today.
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims_gif/ARCHIVE/USA/2009/ims2009354_usa.gif
Ice age ended by cavemen lighting campfires. This has been scientifically proven
and all other theories debunked by Al Gore a.k.a. Bullwinkle
Cavemen start Global Warming!
I Igor produce Obama Birth Certificate at http://www.igormaro.org
Compare Obama Care vs Igor Care at Obama Care vs Igor Care
To prevent potential problems in the future when this month will be reported as the hottest in 1000 years, I would suggest that the title ” Its only weather department ” is expanded as ” Its only weather and raw data department”. What we are seeing here is only the weather and the raw data in the northern hemisphere. Except for the a few days this month, the southern hemisphere spring has been cooler than usual based on raw data.
jmt (14:19:21) : Wrote
“Why is there virtually no coverage of the dozens of people that have frozen to death in eastern Europe?”
The price of freedom always has to be paid in blood. The body count will be high on both sides.
jmt (14:19:21) :
Why is there virtually no coverage of the dozens of people that have frozen to death in eastern Europe?
REPLY:
Because only deaths caused by heat count and are newsworthy. TPTB do not want to spook the chicken littles.
Folks, John is correct about the links embedded in the text they are pointing to 2006 pics not 2009.
For example:
http://www.nohrsc.noaa.gov/snow_model/images/full/National/nsm_blowing_snow_sub_24hr/200612/nsm_blowing_snow_sub_24hr_2006122105_National.jpg
instead of:
http://www.nohrsc.noaa.gov/snow_model/images/full/National/nsm_blowing_snow_sub_24hr/200912/nsm_blowing_snow_sub_24hr_2009122105_National.jpg
Hello ???
I know what I am talking about.
There’s no snow in Burlington, Colorado or throughout most of the High Plains.
Here’s a Colorado DOT webcam image from this afternoon.
Not a bit of snow.
http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j270/JohnnyGunn/BurlingtonWebcam20091221.jpg
The linked map is titled –
“Scaled Snow Precipitation
24-Hour Total Ending 2006-12-21” with an 06 following
It’s 2006.
Here’s the correct image – –
http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j270/JohnnyGunn/Snow_precip_24hr_2009122105_Nationa.jpg
And if you look at the initial map –
You will also see that the High Plains are snow free.
<<>>
I live out here. I know.
It was cold last week – but generally dry.
It’s been quite warm this week.
That is characteristic of the High Plains.
In fact – the Western Plains are generally warmer than the Eastern Plains.
And there is often a snow-free zone just east of the Rockies.
It’s no major issue –
Just a mistake.
Here is another picture of snow covered USA http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims_gif/DATA/cursnow_usa.gif
The snow covered Northern Hemisphere
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims_gif/DATA/cursnow.gif
And snow covered Europe
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims_gif/DATA/cursnow_asiaeurope.gif
American Polar Bears are breathing a sigh of relief.
Galen Haugh (15:12:23) :
During a glacial epoch, the earth doesn’t cool down overall, it has accentuated temperature gradients–the equatorial regions get hotter while the poles get colder. As you can imagine, such a temperature regime is going to set up some very wild weather across the globe. And rather than having a massive block of ice move slowly down from the north, I think it’s more likely that the winter’s snows simply fail to melt one spring because of insufficient irradiance, …..”
Part of the problem is a much WETTER winter causing more snow and an increase in the snow pack that accumulates year to year as well as shorter cooler summers…… It has been a very wet winter here in NC. I am ankle deep in mud and ice and can not leave the porch without boots. I left NH/MA to get away from shoveling snow so instead I am stuck shoveling 8 tons of gravel in to the driveway potholes to get the vehicles out …
All that snow and travel woes. But look on the bright side — “The storm shut down the federal government in Washington DC.”
Report on the Weather Channel; over 80 people froze to death in Europe. That’s what happens when you don’t prepare for global cooling.