From the “weather is not c..c..cl..climate” department, cold and snow hits hard. Meanwhile, Hot Weather Convinces Media of Climate Change; Cold Weather Ignored.
And it heads far south too. A hard freeze warning has been issued for the Miami and Fort Lauderdale area:
And lest somebody say that this cold event isn’t significant, I’ll let the NWS do the talking here:
Longest Stretch of Cold Weather in 15 to 25 Years Possible This Week
…Longest Stretch of Much Below Normal Temperatures in 15 to 25 Years Possible…
Temperatures are expected to remain much below normal over all of south Florida this week, with the possibility of even colder temperatures this upcoming weekend. For detailed information on expected temperatures, please follow the indicated links for our textual and graphical forecasts. For freeze/wind chill watches and warnings, please check our hazards page.
It is not unheard of to have freezing or near-freezing temperatures in south Florida each winter. In fact, inland areas south and west of Lake Okeechobee experience freezing temperatures at least once a year on average. Over the metro and coastal areas of south Florida, freezing temperatures are less frequent, but even in these areas freezing temperatures have occurred about every 5 to 10 years on average. Temperatures drop to at least 35 about every 1 to 2 years in the Naples area, and about every 2 years in the outlying areas of southeast Florida. For the urban areas of Miami/Fort Lauderdale, temperatures drop to at least 35 degrees about 2 to 3 times a decade, At West Palm Beach, the average is about every 1 to 2 years.
What is more noteworthy about the current cold snap is the duration of the event. Typical south Florida cold snaps last about 2-3 days before winds switch to an easterly direction and blow warmer Atlantic air across the region. However, our current weather pattern is what is referred to as a “blocking pattern”. This means that weather systems that typically move from west to east at fairly regular intervals are instead remaining in place for several days. A strong low pressure system over northern New England and eastern Canada is being “blocked” by a large high pressure system near Greenland. This in turn is creating a stationary high pressure system over the western U.S. and Canada. The result of this blocked flow is an uninterrupted and prolonged flow of air from the Arctic region of Canada southward over the eastern two-thirds of the country, including Florida.
Temperatures have dropped to below 50 degrees for three consecutive mornings over almost all of south Florida, with temperatures dropping to 45 or lower from Collier County east to Palm Beach County and points north. The latest forecast calls for lows to drop below 45 degrees over all of south Florida through Thursday morning. This would give 6 consecutive days of sub-50 and/or 45 degree-or-lower temperatures.
Following are the dates of the last time we had at least 6 consecutive days of low temperatures below 50 degrees in southeast Florida:
Miami and Fort Lauderdale: January 2001
Record is 13 days in Miami (January – February 1940) and 12 days in Fort Lauderdale in January 1956
West Palm Beach: January 2003
Record for West Palm Beach is 12 days set in December 2000-January 2001 and January 1956.
Following are the dates of the last time we had 6 consecutive days of low temperatures of 45 degrees or lower in Naples;
Naples: December 1989
Record for Naples is 8 days in January 1977.
Following are the dates of the last time we had 5 consecutive days of low temperatures of 40 degrees or lower in Moore Haven;
Moore Haven: January 24-28, 2001.
Record for Moore Haven is 9 days from December 31, 2000 to January 8, 2001.
Therefore, it’s been at least 7 years since we’ve had a prolonged stretch of temperatures in the 40s and 30s, with some areas going back as far as 21 years! Taking into account the daily average temperature, it’s possible that we’ll have up to 5 consecutive days of temperatures averaging at least 10-15 degrees below normal. For most of south Florida, the last time we had a stretch that cold was in 1995, with some areas going back to the mid to late 1980s.
Here’s a sampling of headlines around the world:
Temps Plunge to Record as Cold Snap Freezes North, East States
Seoul buried in heaviest snowfall in 70 years
Vermont sets ‘all-time record for one snowstorm’
Iowa temps ‘a solid 30 degrees below normal’
Power goes out at Reagan National outside DC
Seoul buried in heaviest snowfall in 70 years
Peru’s mountain people ‘face extinction because of cold conditions’…
World copes with Arctic weatherWinter Could Be Worst in 25 Years for USA
Britain braced for heaviest snowfall in 50-years
GAS SUPPLIES RUNNING OUT IN UK
Miami shivers from coldest weather in decade
Northern Sweden on the way to 50 degrees below zero
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I love this quote from the news link above titled “Peru’s mountain people face extinction because of cold conditions:
“In a world growing ever hotter, Huancavelica is an anomaly. These communities, living at the edge of what is possible, face extinction because of increasingly cold conditions in their own microclimate, which may have been altered by the rapid melting of the glaciers.”
There you have it. More evidence that global warming is so disruptive that it is even responsible for global cooling! The planet has gotten so warm that it’s now cold!
Someday in the future this will be regarded as the Era of Stupidity.
It’s simple really: it’s colder because it’s warmer; and all this cold will make it warmer which will make it colder because it’s warming. Even though it feels cold, it’s really not as cold as it feels because it’s warmer due to getting colder from the warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels. So stop driving your SUV and turn down the thermostat in your home – it’s making it colder.
If monthly and annual averages of temperature and precipitation are the base data of climate history, then weather X 30 (and X 365) *IS* climate. No need to apologize for publicizing extreme c-c-c-c-cold events.
“What is more noteworthy about the current cold snap is the duration of the event. Typical south Florida cold snaps last about 2-3 days before winds switch to an easterly direction and blow warmer Atlantic air across the region.”
——-
Shouldn’t that be “blow warmer Gulf Air across the region”?
Mr Watts
I really like your site, but I wouldn’t flag up too many UK media stories ‘predicting worst storm in 50 years’ if I were you. I’d wait until they occur.
We in the UK are used to media hype exposed as media bullshit. Particularly as most media tyros are softies from the South East of the country.
The storm right now is a significant one for SOUTHERN Britain, but fairly inconsequential compared to a real Scottish freak occurrence. There was a January storm in the mid 1980s which buried trains in rural Scotland, so much so that the hotel nearby (Bridge of Orchy hotel) still has pictures of that time on their walls.
This one is a foot or so, hardly earth shattering.
Just a reminder that at sunspot minimum in one half of the Hale cycle, we’re more likely to experience ‘continental’ weather for a few weeks……….
A few answers:
Alexander Feht: “au contraire”, this site supports exactly what I’m saying. On channel 5 (the one used for tropospheric temps by UAH) anomaly of the day is 0.82 F higher than last year. Except for 2007, it is the highest value displayed here. Moreover, december was the 5th or 6th hottest.
Tenuc: are you not wondering why Spencer suddenly switched from a 13-month running anomaly to a 25 one just before making this statement? I do not agree that I’m doing cherry-picking when stating that the actual global temps are close to the records – that is simply a fact. Cherry picking would be to choose to compare actual temperatures with those seen during the strongest el nino ever recorded in more than a century. That was, let me think, 11 years ago?
Gael Combs: wikipedia is not the devil. Moreover, Roy Spencer who’s taking care of UAH is a good scientist, and he’s even some sort of a “skeptic hero” in a way… i can’t see why we could not trust his data…
“Bryan Sweeney (05:04:35) :
A very interesting paper (peer reviwed)
http://tinyurl.com/cz8gkg
The science is “settled” – I don’t think so!
”
Oh come on, nothing against Gerlich, but could people who post a link to Gerlich’s paper please say so. I find myself waiting for a big PDF download again and again. Just write the word Gerlich above your tinyurl…
Re investment tips: go long on tourism. People will pay any price to escape the cold. My take.
Here in Preston County, WV there is three feet of snow on the ground and it’s still coming down. Forecast for snow pretty much every day through next week. I don’t remember anything like this since 1993. Global warming indeed.
The Mississippi River is clogged with ice here in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.
The real motives behind predictions of global warming by Al Gore and the UN’s IPCC remain unclear, but quite obviously they were neither correct, benevolent, nor altruistic.
How about some answers, Al?
Oliver K. Manuel
Cape Girardeau, MO
I do feel sorry for florida. But I’m in Missouri and If you look Missouri and Iowa have more than their share of Record lows. I feel so lucky.
Cattle-Fax reported last week that cattle in feedlots that received the heavy snows 10-14 day ago are gaining weight much slower. Cattle in areas like Nebraska and Kansas will be fed longer or slaughtered at lighter weights. This means the guy feeding cattle makes less money and pays less for cattle to be fed the next round so cow-calf producers like me the guy who raised calves to be sold to the fedlots makes less.
OH well I’m out the door in my thermal linned Carrharts and glad I’m not I North Dakota.
MattN (03:00:45) :
One thing I can’t quite wrap my brain around is how it there a high temp record in the middle of all the snowfall records in Idaho?
Someone obviously cranked up the BBQ grill when their power was out 🙂
Bryan Sweeney (05:04:35) :
A very interesting paper (peer reviwed)
http://tinyurl.com/cz8gkg
The science is “settled” – I don’t think so!
Very old news. Much reviewed, and often reviled, all over the blogosphere. But not “peer reviewed” in the usual sense of the term. Not commenting on the merits, myself, just pointing out that it is not new.
Dusty (05:46:11) :
“What is more noteworthy about the current cold snap is the duration of the event. Typical south Florida cold snaps last about 2-3 days before winds switch to an easterly direction and blow warmer Atlantic air across the region.”
——-
Shouldn’t that be “blow warmer Gulf Air across the region”?
No, sounds right to me. The Gulf is west of FL, so winds off the Gulf would be westerly. Maritime air is always warmer than continental air masses, especially polar ones. So whether the air came in from the east or west, if if came in off the ocean it would have a warming effect. I’m not familiar with the climate of FL, but it just sounds like that they are saying that there are normally easterly winds that moderate FL’s climate. I.e., easterly, as in “from the east,” which would mean the Atlantic, not the Gulf.
Since even the GW scientists like to drag out – more warm records than cold –
maybe this will level the field.
And just when man thinks he knows everything……kaboom! LOL
http://clarreo.larc.nasa.gov/docs/CLARREO_Data_from_Decadal_Survey.pdf
Background: Stripped to its fundamentals, the climate is first affected by the long-term balance between (1) the solar irradiance absorbed by the Earth, ocean, atmosphere system, and (2) the infrared (IR) radiation exchanged within that system and emitted to space. Thus, key observations include the solar irradiance, incident and reflected, and the spectrally resolved IR radiance emitted to space that carries the spectral signature of IR forcing of climate and the resulting response of that climate system. As a key part of the recognized imperative to develop long-term, high accuracy time series with global coverage of critical climate variables, this mission addresses the objective of establishing global, long-term climate records that are of high accuracy and tied to international standards maintained in the U.S. by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). In addition, it is essential for societal objectives that require the long-term climate record, that the accuracy of the core benchmark observations be verified against absolute standards on-orbit by fundamentally independent methods.
You will note that they allude to the low accuracy, non-traceability, and data fudging of current surface data. And since planning started a while ago I think they must have known something well before ClimateGate.
http://clarreo.larc.nasa.gov/about-mission.html
CLARREO and the Deformation, Ecosystem Structure, and Dynamics of Ice (DESDynI) are the remaining Tier 1 missions with a LRD of 2017.
LRD = Launch Readiness Date
Right now the best data we have on Earth temps comes from the ARGO buoys. And we only have about 5 years of that.
The prevailing winds across most of the east coast of Florida are out of the southeast. You could sort of think of it as Gulf air since the gulf stream squeezes up between Miami and the Bahamas and runs north along the coast.
Today the winds are out of the north and west and it’s COLD. 26degrees in Cocoa, FL this morning. When I cool the house in the summer, if it’s 90 outside and I cool it to 75 inside, that’s a 15 degree difference. This morning my poor heater was trying to get it to stay at 65. With it below 30 outside that more than a 30 degree difference. My house was not designed for that. Note to self: More insulation! I set it at 60 this morning so the cat will be cold all day 🙂
Rob Vermeulen (05:49:37) :
Here’s a graphic of the current globally warm temperature I posted earlier on another thread:
http://img691.imageshack.us/img691/6276/4jan10uahlt.png
MattN (03:00:45) :
One thing I can’t quite wrap my brain around is how it there a high temp record in the middle of all the snowfall records in Idaho?
The “record high” (it wasn’t really a record, it was a tie) in Idaho was for Pierce, Idaho. Pierce is a tiny, isolated, mountain town not far from where I live (Pullman, WA). We were under an inversion at the time, so perhaps that contributed to the temp difference? I agree that it is very strange, though.
The first two weeks in December, the National Weather Service was reporting temps for my town at twenty degrees above actual. They were reporting temps in the almost constant 42- 44F range while the snow in the street was not melting and new snow was falling. My home thermometer was reading 20-22F and the official recorded temps around us were also in the 20-25F range. I checked the NWS site yesterday and there has been no adjustment. Our official December 2009 record still incorrectly shows my town as experiencing above normal temps for the first two weeks in December.
I know that there have been records set but I know that some of them are erroneous. I live in Indiana and some of the snow fall records (Lafayette, IN 1.2″ 12/31/2009 previous 0″ 2008) are off (we had a pretty big snow fall in 2007 of 17″). Maybe some of these are new stations that haven’t had previous years of data to compare to. Look at Grand Haven WWTP in Michigan, 0.5″ Jan 03 2010, 0″ 2009. Can someone take a look at why some of these are records when we know that Michigan, especially Grand Haven gets lake effect snow quite often?
http://lotsofbarkandbiteinyourforecast.blogspot.com/2007/12/indianas-jackpot-snow-total-hits-163.html
Too bad Georgia Tech didn’t win against Iowa last night. Perhaps “THE COLDEST ORANGE BOWL ON RECORD” could have been a factor.
“Rob Vermeulen (05:49:37) :
[…]
Moreover, december was the 5th or 6th hottest.”
If that is what science says, they must all be deluded.
I won’t go into any details here. Fudge up past records any way you like, but if you prefer to believe that, dear Rob, you’re deluded as well. Just ignoring reality doesn’t make it go away.
“the urban areas of Miami/Fort Lauderdale, temperatures drop to at least 35 degrees about 2 to 3 times a decade,”
Maybe on average but I don’t think that average has held up at all over the last 10 years. It was so cold this morning here in the suburbs of Ft Lauderdale. 32 with 6mph winds. That is quite painful for south Floridians.
The forecast is for 32 again tonight and this weekend as well. WOAH! If we don’t stop this GW we’re all going to freeze to death. Al. . .Al . . . please help us!
Dusty (05:46:11) : replying to: “What is more noteworthy about the current cold snap is the duration of the event. Typical south Florida cold snaps last about 2-3 days before winds switch to an easterly direction and blow warmer Atlantic air across the region.”
says:
Shouldn’t that be “blow warmer Gulf Air across the region”?
Dusty, it works both ways and depends totally on the wind direction. Normally in winter the icy arctic blasts come out of the midwest from a NW direction allowing the warmer Gulf to keep the temperature along the west coast reasonable. Winds coming out of the E and SE pass over warmer waters and warm up the whole state because they are not arctic in nature. But when arctic air comes in directly from the N or NE, as it is now, it does not pass over warmer waters and stays cold.
it’s c..c..c..climate