While the squabbling continues on MSNBC (see Bill Nye here and Morano with the American Progress guy here, and by all means don’t miss this Olberman rant ) over whether the big Washington DC snow means anything, the venue of the argument is about to shift west. The argument may stop in Dallas, TX along the way west.
The Times reports: Too much snow forces Scottish resort to close
One of the low elevation Vancouver skiing venues (Cypress Mountain) is short on snow this year due to El Nino, and the Global Warming machine is soon going to saturate the news with this story. It has already started and is ramping up.
VANCOUVER, B.C. — One morning last week, environmentalist David Suzuki looked across English Bay from his Vancouver home to Cypress Mountain, usually covered in snow this time of year but now left all but bare by a warm winter.
“I’ve watched in horror as the snow has just melted away from Cypress Mountain,” Suzuki said, referring to the 2010 Olympic Games snowboarding and freestyle skiing venue. The view from Vancouver, Suzuki and others say, provides a glimpse into the future for the Winter Olympics.
Cypress Mountain (yellow insert) from NASA’s Earth Observatory
UPDATE: Image above and NASA Earth Observatory writes:
In early February 2010, organizers were putting the finishing touches on venues for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, British Columbia. Two months earlier, on December 6, 2009, the Thematic Mapper Plus on NASA’s Landsat 7 satellite captured a detailed image of the area where the games will be held.
The image on the left provides a view of the area from Vancouver northward to the Whistler skiing village. Areas outlined in yellow delineate close-up views on the right. The top close-up shows venues near the village of Whistler, where Nordic and alpine skiing events will be held. The bottom close-up shows Cypress Mountain, the planned venue for freestyle skiing and snowboarding, among other events.
Throughout the scene, snow blankets the highest peaks, and low-angled sunlight illuminates south-facing slopes while leaving north-facing slopes in shadow. Valleys and lower slopes are lush green. The venues near Whistler appear as patchworks of green forest interrupted by long, thin trails of snowy white. Just north of the city of Vancouver, Cypress Mountain also holds snowy ski trails, but overall has far less snow.
After unusually warm conditions in January 2010, snow remained scarce on Cypress Mountain. The Los Angeles Times reported that snow was being trucked to Cypress Mountain from higher elevations, and Vancouver Now reported that organizers had placed tubes filled with dry ice on courses to keep surrounding snow from breaking down. A surprise snowstorm struck on February 10, just two days before the games opened, boosting the snowpack. The snowstorm did not, however, change the short-term forecast for rain.
Never mind that most of the ski areas in the world are having excellent seasons, including other Olympic venues like Whistler – which has already received over 1,000 cm of snow this winter. Arizona Snowbowl has received 238 inches of snow this winter! You read that correctly – Arizona.
Squaw Valley, California (site of the 1960 Winter Olympics) is reporting at least 10 feet of snow on the ground. Ski conditions around Salt Lake City (site of the 2002 Olympics) are excellent. Wolf Creek, Colorado is reporting close to ten feet on the ground. European ski areas are reporting excellent snow. Pajarito Mountain, New Mexico is reporting one of their best ski seasons ever. North Carolina ski areas are reporting some of their best conditions ever. Scotland is reporting the best ski conditions in 50 years. Washington DC is shut down due to snow.
Most of the ski areas in British Columbia have excellent snow, but be assured that the press will highlight the one area which doesn’t – and will not provide a sensible explanation for the cause. They will blame it on global warming, and will intentionally ignore ski conditions in most of the globe.
The glass is 10% empty, not 90% full.
Climate change blamed for Olympic snow shortage
Winter snow season has been slowly shrinking in past 50 years, says researcher
This graphic might help some people understand the winter weather patterns in an El Nino year. Same thing happened in 1998. Note where Vancouver is: in the warm pattern.
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David Suzuki is the Al Gore of Canada and sells “quality” carbon offsets. He roped a bunch of NHL players into buying and promoting carbon offsets. He said on his site last year a bunch of players bought Gold Standard offsets, (which were from Suzuki’s company). He helped players determine their own carbon emissions. As Robert Redford said in 2003, :”We have to go to sports.”
“this thing of denying science…science has done so much to make this country what it is…to deny what scientific evidence is showing is…when I get wound up – unpatriotic.”
Forget Tim Flannery, we need this Science Guy downunder!
The mainstream media is disgusting and demented. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and saw the distinct variability from season to season, with some Winters very cold and snowy, other Winters very warm and dry, and some Winters right in the middle. What is happening right now in B.C. is “normal” and not due to anthropogenic “climate change” or “global warming.” One day all of these Green ideologues in the media and the governments will crumble under the weight of their own lies and deceptions, and that will be a great day.
As much as I am enjoying this Winter in the East, I cringe when I watch the 540 thickness oscillate above and below BC like a fire hose. Let us all pray to the Snow Gods…
OH if the Olympics were just one year earlier….or two months earlier, in December.
The event is so monumental…and like trying to turn an aircraft carrier on a dime….you just can’t do it. It is too bad they can’t plan the event around the weather and not vice versa.
Occasionally the Snow Gods come together for a magical Winter Olympics. (Anyone remember the heavy snow falling in an awards ceremony at Turin….or the storybook opening ceremonies at Lillehammer in 1994?
But I also remember Calgary 1988. Sheez. Canada, a principality that is built around snow….deserves better! 😉
Again….only if the Olympics were last year!
Regardless….beyond all the hand-wringing over the current state…everyone please enjoy the Olympics.
They are…snow or no snow…a wonderful testament to the majesty of our species. Enjoy.
And maybe next time the Olympic planners should listen to good long-range forecasters like Joe Bastardi who has been predicting this very winter for a very, very long time now.
Then he set it in stone last July….when the UK Met was still opining about a BBQ summer that wasn’t and a mild, non-eventful winter.
The persistent high height anomaly in western Canada was forecast well in advance.
Perhaps Bastardi would have recommended that the Winter Olympics for this yea… be held in Philadelphia…or Baltimore…..or DC….where there is 2 to 3 feet of snow on the ground….and no real significant sign of melting through the remainder of the month….and more snow to come.
Yikes.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Olympics – Snow finally falls on bare Cypress
Thu, Feb 11 02:41 AM
http://in.news.yahoo.com/137/20100211/375/tsp-olympics-snow-finally-falls-on-bare.html
Vancouver Olympics organisers breathed a sigh of relief on Wednesday as Mother Nature finally cooperated and snow began to fall on the barren hills of Cypress Mountain three days before moguls competition begins.
“It’s snowing quite well right now,” said Stephen Bourdeau, spokesman at the Cypress Mountain Olympic venue. “We’ve had a nice little dumping that’s covering the trees. We expect more of this in the next couple of days.”
Temperatures hovered just below freezing so the rain that was falling in Vancouver had turned to snow on Cypress, a mountain on the outskirts of the city.
“It’s just cold enough,” Bourdeau said. “We’re very happy — we’ve been waiting for this for a long time.”
Suzuki you dimwit.
The first few days of the 88 Calgary Winter Olympics were bitter cold, below -30. They had to cancel outdoor events for the cold.
Then a Chinook blew through, and I was THERE as the hill was melting on the day they tried to cram 3 days worth of events into one. That was the day Eddy the Eagle waved at my camcorder, it was almost room temperature, and it was windy.
It’s Canada, and it’s an El Nino year. Weather changes. Grow up and deal with it. How embarrassing that this twit “represents” my country.
Did he really ‘watch in horror’ some snow melting. What would he do if a large flaming meteorite was coming his way, perhaps ‘Watch in really really truly truly horror, oh the horror, the horror’?
Does the term ‘Drama Queen’ apply here? Environmentalists need there hyperbole gene turned down a notch.
Did you catch Olberman say “. . . man-made or man-influenced extreme weather”?
So, when it’s warming it’s man-made global warming; when it’s cooling it’s man-made climate change; when records more than 100 years old are being broken it’s man-made extreme weather. It is impossible to reason with these people when, no matter what’s happening, it’s all caused by the questionable behavior of greedy industrialists, soccer moms driving mini-vans, recovering Catholics, and everyone else, for that matter.
Next up, a man-made average spring. We’d need to do something about that, for sure!
Some time back the AGW proponents were able to successfully change Anthropogenic Global Warming to Climate Change. Perhaps it is now time to take the next step and call it Climate Theory of Everything or CTOE.
David Suzuki is a supposed Canadian icon, but really he is nothing more than a shrill, self-promoting CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) talking head. His popularity has always been supported by the heavy public funding of the CBC and his friendships with the CBC power brokers. But don’t dismiss his influence; he actually has the ear of a great many Canadian politicians merely due to his relative fame in Canada. It doesn’t make him right, but it has made him dangerous at times.
Same old, same old. Snow, no matter how deep and how prolonged, is weather and melting snow is global warming. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Blah, blah, blah.
How stupid do these people think we are?
Historical temperatures around Vancouver for last 160 years:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/icrutem3_hadsst2_230-243.5E_45-52.5N_na.png
Luckily, they did not organize Olympic Games in the mid of 19th century.
The only thing to learn from this story is not to host an Olympic competition on a hill near the ocean, at low altitude in an el Nino year.
Europe is enjoying a colder than normal season, with good, but not record-breaking snowfall as well. The Siberian High has been further west and the jet stream further south. As a result, alpine resorts are doing well. Scotland’s industry may be kept going for 5 years as a result of business done this year – it’s their best for 25 years. Last year was superb and the year before pretty damn good. A return of belief is the order of the day in Europe, not fear of global warming…..
This has gone far beyond proper reporting…….
whistler has a record of snowfall this year.. so..
It’s gonna keep on snowing ’til Gore freezes over.
Anthony, I’m in Vancouver if you need anyone to check on anything for these stories… or if you want photos… or a fresh video…
We had our snowmaggedon in Vancouver about a year ago. This year it’s warmer and wetter… I’ve lived here almost continuously since 1979 and it’s the usual variable winter as far as I can tell. Over this winter season I’ve heard Canadian weather forecasters on the CBC attribute the warm Vancouver and west coast weather to the Arctic cold front that descended into the mid and eastern USA. I’m not clear on all the details.
David Suzuki is sort of our Al Gore and Jim Hansen rolled into one. A friend overhear him and another gentleman talking at a trendy Vancouver cafe years ago talking about how they could make lots and lots of money presenting the “right bits” of the science to the policy makers and the public. They didn’t realize my friend was in the next booth and talked about this for over half an hour and were startled when they got up and saw that he’d been sitting there overhearing what they were saying. Too bad there wasn’t a recording. Sigh, another scientist gone to the dark side with his agenda driven non-science.
Oh, as a Canadian I must apologize to the world for Maurice Strong who is one who started this mess early on decades ago.
Please know that many Canadians really don’t believe this nonsense about man destroying our planet with CO2. Some of us actually want hard science to prevail over predetermined political agenda driven climate science.
Excess snow proves global warming and lack of snow proves global warming…..my head hurts.
Utterly O/T, but thought you should know, the company running the New Zealand Stock Exchange has just announced it’s bailed out of carbon trading and taken a $19 million loss on the sale of the carbon business, citing a lack of political will on carbon markets.
Details at The Briefing Room http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the_briefing_room/2010/02/nzx-makes-loss-as-gloss-goes-from-carbon-market.html
2010 Winter Games Climate/Weather Forecast by Environment Canada
http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/2010/index_e.html
Google News on Vancouver 2010 Weather
http://news.google.ca/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&cf=all&ned=ca&hl=en&q=vancouver+2010+weather
Not only do we have a strong el nino, there is a major north Atalantic oscillation in play as well, which is why the northern latitudes of the eastern US, the UK and most of the European ski resorts are seeing record snowfalls and low temperatures.
The el nino is driving warm air up to high latitudes on the Pacific coast, the NOA is driving the polar winds down the east coast causing the huge snowfalls in Canada and the US. This in turn is creating deep atlantic depressions picking up warm, wet air in the tropics which unwind over western europe where they run in to more polar wind and the result is snow.
The only “weather” or “climate” I studied was at school and even I can see this from the pressure charts.
When we get freezing, record breaking weather in the US / UK they say its just weather; when we get lack of snow in Vancouver they jump on the global warming bandwagon. They seem to want it both ways, “heads I win, tails you lose”.
Here are 4825 webcams in ski resorts from 45 countries.
http://www.snoweye.com/
Here are accumulated snowfall forecast for the next 3 days worldwide.
http://www.snow-forecast.com/maps/worldwide_accumulation
According to Bill Nye the “Science” guy the IPCC got a Nobel Prize in science and that proves global warming.
Since when is “peace” a scientific award?
That guy is a joke.
These people are really clutching at straws if they think weather is climate.
The fact is that most of the NH has had a very cold winter so far and the predicted CAGW isn’t happening any time soon. This furore is very damaging to their credibility and exemplifies the cargo cult science alarm-ism.
Here’s the current info from the Cypress weather centre:-
“Snow Conditions
New Snow (Over Night): 15 cm
New Snow (Last 24 hrs): 15 cm
New Snow (7 days): 20 cm – mid mountain Alpine Area
Total Snow Fall (Season) 466 cm
Alpine Snow Conditions: n/a
Snow Depth (Mid Mtn.): 273 cm”
http://cypressmountain.com/alpine-conditions
Yesterday I heard, that on Siberia the are enjoying the coldest winter in last 40 years.
Just to remind, the mother of all European winters 1941/42 (when Germans froze at the Moscow suburbs) was accompanied by extremely warm Arctic:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2009&month_last=12&sat=4&sst=0&type=anoms&mean_gen=01&year1=1942&year2=1942&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg
Had such extreme winter happened in Eurasia again, we would have been taught about unprecedented warmth in Alaska and Northern Siberia, no doubt.