AP’s Seth Borenstein is running a story titled “49 states dusted with snow; Hawaii’s the holdout“. As shown in the map below, every state in the Continental US has snow someplace. As pointed out in the article, this is a rare occurrence:
The idea of 50 states with snow is so strange that the federal office that collects weather statistics doesn’t keep track of that number and can’t say whether it has ever happened. The office can’t even say whether 49 out of 50 has ever taken place before.
It’s been a very busy week for snow and also for lowest max temperature, thanks to our El Nino induced weather patterns, while the Pacific Northwest is seeing warmer conditions, the southeast and eastern US gets lots of snow thanks to the pattern.
Record Events for Sat Feb 6, 2010 through Fri Feb 12, 2010
Total Records: 2182
Rainfall: 662
Snowfall: 1180
High Temperatures: 9
Low Temperatures: 31
Lowest Max Temperatures: 220
Highest Min Temperatures: 80
Continuing the pattern of top ten Northern Hemisphere snow extent rankings from October, December and January, it looks like February may also be headed for the record books.
North America, Europe and Asia are all showing large positive anomalies in snow cover.
Daily Departure – February 11, 2010
Source: Rutgers University Global Snow Lab
The record February snow extent occurred in 1978 with an anomaly of more than 5 million square miles. That may be tough to beat, but from the map above it may have already happened. February will definitely be ranked in the top two.
Source: Rutgers University Global Snow Lab
WUWT reader Marcia pointed to this interesting link
NORMAN, Oklahoma — A University of Oklahoma student is taking an extra interest in this week’s snow storms in the south and northeast and is working to document the events in a very unique way. Patrick Marsh said it’s likely by the end of the week snow will be on the ground in all 50 states
Ten years ago we were told that “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past” Alarmists are now attempting to rewrite history and claim that they predicted record snow and cold all along – but it simply isn’t true. Everyone from Hansen on down was predicting the demise of snow in the temperate zones, until they realized they were wrong.
“People should know when they are conquered.” – Quintus from the movie Gladiator.
h/t to Steve Goddard for the story idea and several content links.
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The winter of 1780 in the US saw massive snow cover and it was also an El Nino year. The following hurricane season wiped out the international fleets in the West Indies.
Shouldn’t someone be raising a ‘concern flag’?
TanGeng (20:26:35)
Want to see if there is any snow on Hawaii’s volcanoes today?
Check out the webcam links on this skimountaineer website:
Cascade Volcano WebCams, plus other North America Volcano WebCams
Hawaii is towards the bottom of the page.
You can confirm when there’s daylight in Hawaii with this World Sunlight Map
Surely there’s some snow atop Mauna Loa?
Robert (16:17:10) :
You can certainly falsify AGW, just not with weather events entirely consistent with the predictions of the theory.
First, that’s a straw man, as no one claims these types of weather events in themselves falsify AGW, although they certainly do call it into question, especially since these cold-weather events have been increasing both in number and severity in recent years. With warming, one would certainly expect the opposite.
Secondly, your claim that these events are “entirely consistent with the predictions of the theory” proves my point. If AGW theory “predicts” any and all manner of weather events, including wet, dry, hot or cold it turns it into a type of quasi-religion. The fact remains that AGW/CC theory is non-falsifiable. It is ideology dressed up as science.
How’s East Asia doing?
Your statement does not include the possibility that the latent heat of fusion is promptly radiated away to space at the cloud tops. Convective lift of moisture and freeze outs significantly warms the cloud tops compared to the dry air temperatures at the same altitude. This is a mechanical process that effectively bypasses the tropospheric heat transport by radiation which would be effected by CO2, and instead pumps heat to high altitudes mechanically. It is a natural heat pump that moves enormous amounts of heat using water vapor, liquid and crystal ice as the working fluid. By comparison CO2’s effect on IR radiation at those altitudes is totally irrelevant, its effect is totally swamped by the latent heat of condensation, and latent heat of fusion energy release as the water vapor is lifted above the local condensation level and the local freezing level. At each change in state more heat is released changing latent heat to sensible heat that can be radiated away at the tropopause/cloud tops.
Larry
hotrod ( Larry L ) (09:29:28) :
…Convective lift of moisture and freeze outs significantly warms the cloud tops compared to the dry air temperatures at the same altitude. This is a mechanical process that effectively bypasses the tropospheric heat transport by radiation which would be effected by CO2, and instead pumps heat to high altitudes mechanically. It is a natural heat pump that moves enormous amounts of heat using water vapor, liquid and crystal ice as the working fluid. By comparison CO2’s effect on IR radiation at those altitudes is totally irrelevant, its effect is totally swamped by the latent heat of condensation, and latent heat of fusion energy release as the water vapor is lifted above the local condensation level and the local freezing level. At each change in state more heat is released changing latent heat to sensible heat that can be radiated away at the tropopause/cloud tops.
Thanks for this excellent explanation of how the hydrological cycle operates. Th
I feel pretty certain that reasonable people who rely on logic rather than politics and main stream journalism, would avoid recognizing any single weather event, or season, as proving or disproving global warming.
I don’t care which side of the debate you’re on, As soon as this hypothesis became infected with politicians and political talk shows, logic, reason, and science began to atrophy. I also feel that it’s become a very Northern Hemisphere centered topic.
On that other planet, the one not called EuroAsiaAmerica, the one with South America, Africa, and all the other continents South of the Equator, the one we only hear about in war, famine, and history, that planet, called the Southern Hemisphere, is having record high temperatures while the US is having record snow fall and a cold winter in many states. Unfortunately most people seem fixated on what’s happening where they live.
It’s well known, basic climate science that when the jet stream drops we get cold weather in the US (it’s also pretty easy to understand that those drops would naturally bring Arctic air South). We know, based on observations, that the ice is melting off of Greenland (contrary to what Rush L. stated, Greenland has been ice covered since the Vikings named it that to distract people from the very green and lush Iceland). It’s also common knowledge that lake and ocean water turn over, bottom to top, throughout the year, bringing the cold water to the surface. Most of us also know that salt water is denser than cold water.
It looks like we have a layer of fresh water growing in the Northern Atlantic, which means the much colder, bottom water never reaches the surface, instead it stays at the salt/fresh barrier, making the ocean surface temperatures warmer.
Guess what that does to the jet stream? I makes it drop. Look at where it is when it’s cold in the mid to lower states.
People are sooooo easily manipulated by political garbage that they rarely do real research, it’s much, much too difficult for their oversized brains.
It seems to me that Western culture has become more about TV sets and popularity contests than thinking and intellecutalism. Our journalists fail us by the minute and are not much different than a coked up super model who can’t stop talking even when they’re not saying anything worth listening to.
If you haven’t noticed, our political system has failed us while acting as if they’re protecting us. If you believe in the Democrats or Republicans, I have to assume you just don’t see a better option and have been cornered into supporting the lesser of two very malicious evils. Our “represenatives” are more concerned with their next term than doing their job in the present, and will follow the oil, or global warming money that supports their cushy lifestyle.
Journalists are much too concerned with ratings and sales to report on what really matters, to report what’s true, and to report to thinkers rather than followers, which is exactly what our government and advertisers want, and what they’re turning us into.
I think we’re on the verge of something special, mass disillusionment, but if we cling to our politics like we do our favorite sports teams and athletes we’ll just be just like little puppies waiting for our masters to tell us what’s true and logical.
“Think for yourself, question authority” (T.L.), heck, question everything I wrote, I like it. Or, become another wasted incarnation of humanity. As humans, the choice is ours.
Record snow falls in February 2010.
Record snow falls and low temperatures in November 2009.
Severest winter in 100 years: 2009/2010.
Record low temps in summer 2009.
Severe winter in 2008/2009.
Missing summer in 2008.
Severe winter 2007/2008.
Missing summer in 2007.
When does weather become climate?
First heavy snowfalls in Rome for 24 years.
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/29645/
Mostly gone by today, so no delays for England v Italy. (Rugby 6 Nations, it’s like what you Yanks call football, but played by real men, without loads of padding!)
So the data shows more global warming now then at anytime in the last 2,000 years. But for the only period of time where the tree-ring data can be checked against high quality instruments the two do not agree at all. In fact, they diverge so strong that it’s necessary “to hide the decline” so as not to confuse people. With data like that we are ready to change the basis of industrial civilization right now.
Follow the European debate about climate changes:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511701.stm
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7026317.ece
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html?ITO=1490
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1250813/MAIL-ON-SUNDAY-COMMENT-The-professors-amazing-climate-change-retreat.html
May be we’ve all been fooled?
‘gabe’,
that record heat is what is causing the record cold that is killing Peruvian natives who have lived in the Andes for thousands of years – in their summer? Or the unusual summer snowfalls in Australia?
Funny how those Norse built their farmsteds underneath the ice sheets a thousand years ago, so that only now are they melting out from under the ice (until the planet started getting cooler 15 years ago, according to the Warmists like Jones) I wonder how they did that, and why they did that? Was under-ice farming something they brought from the Old Country?
You write “People are sooooo easily manipulated by political garbage that they rarely do real research, it’s much, much too difficult for their oversized brains.” And you are the poster child for your statement, aren’t you?
hotrod ( Larry L ) (09:29:28) :
Thanks for pointing that out. Another blogger pointed out on another thread that the most latent heat is likely released on the very surface of clouds, which would make it more likely the latent heat was lost into space.
However I think there might be enough latent heat left over to cause an upward blip in troposphere temperatures. Plenty to go around.
The question in my mind is what would be the total, in terms of the world’s energy budget. I think there is an upward peak in troposphere temperatures most winters, which then vanishes after the snow melts in the spring. Perhaps this peak or blip would be larger during winters when the snow cover is especially large.
I am just playing around with thoughts, tossing them out there to see how others react. I don’t mind if they are shot full of holes and go down in flames. That’s how I learn.
gabe (11:30:27) :
“….We know, based on observations, that the ice is melting off of Greenland (contrary to what Rush L. stated, Greenland has been ice covered since the Vikings named it that to distract people from the very green and lush Iceland)….”
Please consider the following:
The vast central ice-cap of Greenland has been there for hundreds of thousands of years, since before the Neanderthal, but the fringes have in fact been green as recently as the MWP. This is shown by:
A.) Greenland’s Viking church-yards have hand-dug graves. That soil is now permafrost you’d need a jackhammer of flamethrower to penetrate.
B.) Greenland’s Viking fields once were plowed, and grew a variety of crops. They too are now iron-hard permafrost.
C.) Other Viking fields grew enough hay to feed livestock. There may even have a brief period at the start when the Greenland colony supported cattle, but soon they shifted to sheep and goats, which they were able to raise for hundred of years (as long as the United States has lasted.) Only at the very end were they reduced to hunting seal, walrus and caribou.
D.) The Viking colonies were in the west of Greenland. The east of Greenland is far colder, and grew so cold in the Little Ice Age that even the Dorset Inuet abandoned their settlements. (Interestingly, in those ruins are found a few Norse items, which we don’t know how the Inuet came to possess.) However this same area, in the MWP, was a green coast. This was shown by the recent retreat of a east coast glacier. As the ice retreated it exposed the crushed brush and stumps of birch and other scrub that follows a retreating glacier. It radio-carbon dated from the MWP.
In conclusion, the coast of Greenland may have appeared, from a boat at sea, far greener than the coast of Iceland. In the year 1000 the coast of Iceland displayed many cultivated fields, which most of the year would have had a golden color, less green than forests of conifer and birch.
This may not be, as you say, “well known, basic climate science,” but it is well known, basic Archeological Science.
The idea that Greenland was named “green” as a ruse to attract settlers first appeared in the 1500’s, when the Greenland Vikings were long gone. There is no Viking saga that mentions such a sales-ploy, that I know of. I find it very interesting that the very Climate Scientists who seem guilty of sales-ploys of their own suspect the Viking of sales-ploys, and sieze upon a history written in the 1500’s as proof. Projection?
Lastly, you seem very concerned that “It looks like we have a layer of fresh water growing in the Northern Atlantic, which means the much colder, bottom water never reaches the surface, instead it stays at the salt/fresh barrier, making the ocean surface temperatures warmer.”
You will likely be reassured to know that our planet’s thermohaline circulation largely is fueled by the melting and refreezing of arctic sea ice, and this melting and refreezing still is occurring. Vast amounts of water continue to sink from sight off the northeast coast of Greenland, to flow very slowly in the deeps, taking hundred of years before it reappears as upwelling along distant coasts as far away as the area north of Japan.
It is in fact this vast amount of water leaving the arctic which draws warm surface water into the arctic. In fact the warm phase of the AMO may indicate the thermohaline circulation is more vigorous than usual, and more water departing increases the amount of warm water drawn in.
There is no sign that warm climate optimums ever came close to halting this flow, or brought the Gulf Stream to a screeching halt. And if it didn’t happen then, you shouldn’t worry about it happening now.
The one time the dire consequences you mention may (in theory) have happened involved a huge freshwater lake, filling the entire Hudson Bay area and covering much land north of the Great Lakes, breaking an ice dam and draining into the ocean in a matter of months or even weeks. You shouldn’t worry about this reoccurring, as no such vast area of fresh water currently exists anywhere on earth.
Regarding your worries about nit wits in Washington: I tend to agree with you, but don’t want to touch the subject with a ten foot pole. Rather than Meteorology, that subject seems to involve psychology.
“thanks to our El Nino induced weather patterns, while the Pacific Northwest is seeing warmer conditions, the southeast and eastern US gets lots of snow thanks to the pattern.”
Typical stuff from the 1920s statistical school, accompanied by an enigmatic chart showing an arrow from the Pacific towards central US. How cold air manages to get across the Rockies is something left for the reader to imagine…
Funny thing is, it is also at this site that one can find regular info on the Arctic Oscillation.
Local news here in KCMO tonight stated with photos – all 50 states have snow on the ground. They did not give any – ‘last time this happened was’ – statements. I found this to be a Hmmmm for the TV station.