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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Watts, also on Ski Apache near Ruidoso, NM is experiencing a great ski season so far, too. Currently 155 inches of snow fell and normally at the end of the ski season the average amount they get would be around 75 inches. Ski Apache is on the Lincoln National Forest in south central New Mexico starting at an elevation of 9200 feet. Arizona Snowbowl is about 150 miles further north (latitude wise) than Ski Apache which begins at 9700 ft elevation to 11300 feet next to the peak Sierra Blanca which means “White Mountain.”
http://skiapachesnowreport.com/
Professor Tim Ball explains that cooling and not warming is causing the heavy snowfall in DC.
http://live.radioamerica.org/loudwater/player.pl?upload=1746&name=wnd
To the warmers; well Duh!
Current wind warning for east Vancouver Island and we’ve already had one ‘Pineapple express’ this year. One Windstorm went over our roof like a freight train on steroids.
Yup. it’s an El Nino year. The previous two years weren’t. As one TV Weather forecaster said recently; “It’s bang on the average.” The only warming is in Suzuki’s head and bank account.
Sad to see Bill Nye so totally divorced from science. He shows absolutely no knowledge scientific method in general nor of the actual issues.
As i have been trying to tell folks, yes this warmth here is record breaking, but in actuallity, aside from Cypress Mtn. it is a good thing for the Olympics. If you have ever tried to get around Greater Vancouver or up/down the SeatoSky Highway when there is cold, snow and ice on the roads, it is a nightmare, and has been deadly! Cypress is on the North Shore of Vancouve, ever hear of the Coastal Range? Mostly it rains first, clears, freezes, then snows.
This warm period, imo, is just what the doctor ordered for a safe successful Olympics!
Has anyone considered that’s just how you make the features for these events? Halfpipes and 5′ moguls don’t fall out of the sky. They are made, by men….moving snow around. They could have ALL the snow in the world fall on them and they would STILL be moving snow because THAT’s how you make those features…
Nothing but sound and fury…
Notice they aren’t moving any snow at Whistler, where the downhill events are.
Looking at the models, Dallas is likely to get two more snow days in the next 10 days. This will then break the all time snowiest winter.
I can attest that this has been one of the worst winter flying weeks in the last few years given the snow in Dallas and the East Coast.
AT MIDNIGHT ON FEBRUARY 11TH…DFW AIRPORT HAD RECORDED 11.2 INCHES
OF SNOW. THIS BREAKS THE PREVIOUS DAILY RECORD FOR FEBRUARY 11TH OF
1.4 INCHES SET IN 1988. THIS ALSO BREAKS THE PREVIOUS 24-HOUR RECORD
FOR FEBRUARY…7.5 INCHES ON FEBRUARY 17, 1978 AND FEBRUARY 25, 1924.
AT 4 AM ON FEBRUARY 12TH…DFW AIRPORT HAD REPORTED A 24-HOUR
SNOWFALL TOTAL OF 12.5 INCHES. THIS BREAKS THE PREVIOUS ALL TIME
24-HOUR SNOWFALL TOTAL RECORD OF 12.1 INCHES SET JANUARY 15-16, 1964.
THE SNOWFALL TOTAL ON FEBRUARY 11TH IS THE GREATEST CALENDAR-DAY
SNOWFALL TOTAL ON RECORD FOR DALLAS/FORT WORTH. THE PREVIOUS RECORD
WAS 7.8 INCHES ON JANUARY 15, 1964 AND JANUARY 14, 1917.
THIS BRINGS THE SEASONAL SNOWFALL TOTAL TO 15.7 INCHES…WHICH IS
THE 2ND HIGHEST SEASONAL TOTAL ON RECORD FOR DALLAS/FORT WORTH. THIS
IS THE SNOWIEST WINTER IN 32 SEASONS (SINCE 1977-1978).
Less snow in the Cascades is the ecotopian ideal for the promotion of AGW.
El Nino is part of that-ignore the Data.Usuing data gets Professors fired or retired,-ask George Taylor of OSU…
“They have greenshirts, but their underwear is brown.”-old Oregon
libetarian hippie I once knew…
Veronica (07:16:11) :
RockyRoad
You really are dragging everybody into the conspiracy theory if you think that the Winter Olympics organising “powers that be” are all AGW activists! Could be a completely different set of people.
———
Reply:
My point exactly. Or else they failed, indeed, to “connect THEIR dots”.
“I’ve watched in horror as the snow has just melted away from Cypress Mountain,” Suzuki said, …”
Just a little hyperbole here? Hmmm?
I wonder how he would express his thoughts if he had witnessed, say, a suicide bombing in Iraq or Afghanistan?
A year ago there was record cold and snow in downtown Vancouver. There was no parking in town because they had no where to put all the snow. It’s worse than we thought—things really warmed up fast in the last year.
looks like maybe major changes at Nature. They have posted the Editors resignation not censored and puit back some very critical posts. maybe Olie and co plus maybe EIC may have to go… gone….
I can remember years when the ski hills on the north shore mountains were virtually closed all winter . This is not the first year that they lack snow. It would be interesting to find records for the number of ski days per year over the last 40 years. Does anyone know were to find such records ?
Bill Sticker (08:02:15) :Let’s don’t put inmediately a named sticker on any phenomena we watch. This is not a usual el Nino, so let’s try to dig in it and see if we can find a more thoughtful explanation. Of course not the Susuki’s or any other source of the SHOW BUSINESS.
It’s about the narrative; objective facts don’t matter. Expect NBC’s environmental correspondent, Ann Thompson, to be on the story.
OT – but Pielke Snr’s got a great one up currently!
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/henk-tennekes-resigns-from-dutch-academy/
A few excerpts, call me a cherry-picker if you will, but fruit like this shouldn’t be ignored and left for the birds.
“The system by which professional colleagues judge each other’s performance is called Peer Review. Only peers in the same discipline may pass judgment on their colleagues’ funding requests and on the quality of their papers”
“…Tennekes uses the ultimate tool he has to object to the conflicts of interest within the Academy. It is supposed to be the highest independent scientific advisory body in the country, but at the same time it runs a number of research institutes, and has to lobby for their budgets. “That conflict of interest is breaking the wings of its advisory function,” he says”
Can you believe the trash Joe Romm over at Climate Progress. Over-course he posted up snow in DC was GW and no snow in Vancouver was GW. But of course this is the guy who posted up the bridge collapse in Minneapolis was also GW. It is one thing if a site does not agree on the science. But this guy has fell over the cliff and became a ranting left-wing maniac. He does not even post up any science anymore, just political nasty one-sided drivel. I think he is just plain losing it…John…
Anthony, here is a sat image from the region, maybe you could add it to the article:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=42629&src=eorss-iotd
REPLY: Thanks! posted -A
When all weather is climate, then all climate is weather, and any change it the weather is due to a change in climate. That is what the alarmists want us to believe, but most people are to smart for this. The alarmist argument has falling so far since the CRU email where released, that this is the what they have to resort to.
Now according to Bill Nye the elementary school science guy If you don’t believe that humans cause global warming, you’re unpatriotic. The facts have to really be against you to resort to this sort of stuff.
Here are the present webcams at Whistler Mountain. I’m not sure why they didn’t put all the events there. I believe they have over 10 m of snow there and there has been some fresh snow the last few days (20-30cm, nearly a foot). Don’t just look at the weather at “Whistler, BC”. This would be Whistler village. Whistler Airport is only 658m ( that is only 2,160 feet) and they have snow forecast for the next few days. The highest mountain lift goes to 2,284 metres (7,494 feet). Its -5C presently. Complete stats and weather forecast for the mountain at http://www.whistlerblackcomb.com/weather/snowreport/index.htm
http://www.whistlerblackcomb.com/weather/cams/whistler/index.htm
John from MN (08:43:32) :
Just wait for nature’s reatliation, just in a few days, MORE SNOW COMING! (Feb.16th or 17th).
The statement by Nye that the Nobel Peace Prize given to the IPCC and Gore was a science prize is surprising and disappointing, and bolsters a common misconception. He is either ignorant, or intentionally misleading his audience. It was a political prize awarded by politicians. They believed that it provided justification to take from rich countries and give to poor, thus promoting world peace and harmony by spreading the wealth.
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2007/press.html
I used to live on the same block as Mr. Suzuki back in ’86. I was 6 doors down from his home on West 10th. and first noticed who it was after deciding to accost the unruly speeder that used to race down the alley behind our house at high speeds. I was astonished to see that it was Suzuki. At the time I held him in high regard so it came as quite a shock to find out that he is not a very nice person. He never did slow down.
“PMH (00:03:32) :
Some time back the AGW proponents were able to successfully change Anthropogenic Global Warming to Climate Change.”
I don’t think people go along with that. The MSM may try to but it’s just too ridiculous. Any ole skeptic like me can poke his stick into that and say “Cold Winter means no warming” and make the defenders of the term “climate change” look silly. Nobody wants to look silly and they usually just shut up.