Roads closed, no petrol? How will Phil Jones get to work? – Anthony
Now the Army moves in to clear away snow in coldest December for 100 years as fuel runs out at petrol stations in Scotland and East Anglia
Last updated at 2:17 PM on 9th December 2010
- Overnight lows of -15C in Scotland and -13C in England
- Experts say cold snap is ‘once in a lifetime’
- Slight thaw this weekend but a return to snow predicted for next week
The Army was called in today to help clear away ice and snow as Britain headed towards its coldest December for 100 years.
As temperatures plunged to -15c (5f) David Cameron ordered the military to step in and help the UK’s beleaguered local councils.
The Prime Minister also revealed Cobra-style emergency meetings of senior officials and Ministers had been held to discuss the Government’s response to the big freeze.
Edinburgh City Council was the first local authority to ask for help. Officials have held talks with the Ministry of Defence and the Scottish government to allow soldiers to remove built up snow and ice from roads and pavements.
ARMY ON CALL TO CLEAR SNOW CHAOS
A mini avalanche slides from an office roof in Edinburgh yesterday.
Thursday December 9,2010
By Nathan Rao
THE ARMY was called in to keep Britain moving yesterday as large parts of the country struggled with freezing temperatures, compacted snow and treacherous ice.
David Cameron revealed the Government was holding crisis meetings as the prolonged cold spell crippled much of the UK.
The country is bracing itself for another cold blast after a few days of milder conditions.
Hundreds of motorists spent the night stranded in their cars in the north of England. It came after 500 motorists were stuck on the M8 between Edinburgh and Glasgow when a ferocious snowstorm struck earlier in the week.
Yesterday, there was no let-up in Scotland as temperatures continued to plunge into the double minuses and residents reported the heavy snow had compacted into thick sheets of ice.
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Related:
Home Improvements: How to keep warm this winter
The great man-made global warming debate is entering an interesting phase, as early snow blankets much of Britain. If this winter is anything like as cold and long as last year’s, my postbag will soon be bulging with cries for help.
ENERGY BILLS ‘WILL HIT £2,500 A YEAR’
HOUSEHOLD energy bills could double to £2,500 a year in an “unstoppable” rise driven by the £200 billion fight against climate change, a market expert warned yesterday.
Meanwhile, brush fires rage in Israel, and despite some claims in Monsters and Critics…
Israeli’s worst-ever fire linked to global warming, expert says
‘This fire had a a strength we’ve never seen before. We have to link it to global warming,’ Yisrael Tauber, a forest manager for the Israeli Jewish National Fund land conservation organization said.
…that this was related to global warming, the truth turned out to be a case of negligence compounded by arson.
From the Jerusalem Post
Two teenage brothers from Usfiya were under arrest on Saturday on suspicion of negligent conduct during a family outing on Thursday in the Carmel Mountains that police said was likely responsible for the Carmel inferno.
…
Meanwhile, police and firefighters had to contend with sporadic fires that erupted far from the main Carmel fire zone, leading investigators to conclude that arsonists were attempting to “hitch a ride” on the Carmel disaster.
We see the same sort of news stories in the USA every fire season. Some rent seeking nimrod from an NGO proclaims the forest/brush fire to be caused by “global warming”, but the truth turns out to be far different.
They have forests in Israel? Who knew?
Experts say cold snap is ‘once in a lifetime’ – doesn’t say who the experts are. But presumably then this is a “once in a lifetime” opportunity for the mainstream journalists to fill their pages with drivvle. (Michty, the price of porridge is going up!)
Well at 57N in Scotland we are having a thaw, traffic is flowing normally and the army is not on the streets.
BTW: It is not Winter yet….
What is extraordinary is not only is it not “once in a lifetime” because it was also in January of this year.
So two different severe winter wallops, in two different winter seasons, but in the same calendar year less than 12 months apart.
That is quite extraordinary.
My heart goes out to those who are suffering through it and not able to enjoy the winter wonderland.
You can thank the unprepared UK government for that and their soothsayers over at the Met.
Just like the Celts sacked Rome and scared the bejeezus out of ’em….its time for you Scots to get in touch with your roots and do the same to the Met offices.
Time to light the torches. 😉
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
grrr I know people who got stuck on the M8
No milk in my local shops…
Maybe it’s the butterfly affect…you know am American starts his SUV and there is a massive fall of snow in scotland and -18C temps…makes sense really
“Jay Davis says:
December 9, 2010 at 8:01 am
How are the wind turbines doing?”
If you look at the following website and scroll down somewhere near the bottom there is a table headed “Generation By Fuel Type”. As I type this (17:15 UK time) 1.4% is being produced by wind power.
http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/
Steeptown:
Never mind Doomed; lots of us are Entombed.
And most of the windmills are stopped or very slow in the light winds and calms of the last few days.
A thunderstorm (producing ground strike lighting) started a forest fire (middle of summer) near Mt Adams WA. Local news reported the cause: Global Warming.
Another example of media based science.
30 years ago, lightning starting fires in Colorado were from thunderstorms. Now it is Global Warming starting fires.
All California fires are now caused by Global Warming, not from pyromaniacs during easterly heat blasts.
So, the debate is over. (wink, wink)
Funnily enough, my wife predicted our cold UK winter back in September. No, she’s not a meteorologist, nor does she have second sight. She’s a vet. She noticed the cats here in Old Hampshire were growing thicker coats than usual – thicker even than last year, and last winter was cold. Maybe there’s a new predictive model lurking in the fur of domestic felines – CAT-astrophic climate disruption anyone?
COBRA meetings:
“Cobra is the dramatic name for the civil contingencies committee which leads responses to national crises.
The group is named after the Cabinet Office Briefing Room A in the bowels of Downing Street where it normally meets.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4663369.stm
… and we all know what emanates from bowels, don’t we?
UK household energy bills could double to £2,500 a year –
http://www.thegwpf.org/uk-news/2011-uk-government-is-asking-for-trouble.html
A YouTube link to that mini avalanche:
It’s interesting that someone had a video camera handy. 😉
Ed Scott says:
December 9, 2010 at 8:18 am
Global Warming Goes Back to Court
http://volokh.com/2010/12/06/global-warming-goes-back-to-court/
Having read the article – if I were the CEO of one of the power companies I would be tempted to at very least disconnect supplies to the plaintiffs to mitigate and reduce the pollution they claim. Mind you if I were feeling very bloody minded I might just shut down the whole power station until people came to their senses………
The cold weather in the UK is caused by blocking highs in the Atlantic, there is no evidence of an impact on the Gulf stream etc. However why we get these blocking highs is a mystery, over the last 3 years they have become a feature of our weather, but the cause is still obscure. I would imagine the current blocking high will move east towards the end of next week, but whether it rotates over Scandinavia and returns will be the big question. It may be that these highs will be a cause of cooling in Europe, but if so they will have caught us all out, both warmists and sceptics. It’s something none of us had predicted
Hmmm. The end of Warmism?
“A team of experts from NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and NOAA, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has joined the community of climate deniers[and found]….The resulting climate sensitivity attributed to the CO2 doubling from 390 ppm today to 780 ppm expected in 200 years from now (under business-as-usual) is just 1.64 °C – less than a Celsius degree per century or so. This figure is below 2 °C, the low end of the interval guessed by the IPCC. Is it really controversial to say that the warming induced by CO2 is zero for all practical purposes?”
http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/12/nasa-noaa-climate-sensitivity-is-below.html
“Incidentally just like Canada is not part of north America”
Since when ? Have we been moved somewhere, maybe South America.
While we are not now and never have been part of the USA, we do share the North American land mass with our American buddies.
Midday yesterday the BBC news stated that midday temperatures in Glasgow were around minus 10 degrees c .
BBC weather forecasters during this ‘cold snap’ have stated that temperature in urban centres are likely to be 4 or 5 degrees celcius higher than the nearby rural areas. Seems they are more aware of the UHI effect than is the Met Office in it’s climate modelling and in it’s adjustment of temperature data …….
Coldest 2 weeks Nov/Dec since 1659 at least!
Clearly the ROW must be frying because in central England (and Northern England and Scotland are having it much worse) 2010 is on track to be the coldest year since 1996 and possibly 1986.
http://www.accuweather.com/ukie/bastardi-europe-blog.asp
“The central England Temperature (CET) from the 1st-7th of December is -1.9, making this the coldest opening week of December since 1879; 1879 is the coldest opening week on CET record, so this week has been the second coldest opening week to December since CET records began in 1659.
The two-week period, last week of November and first week of December is the coldest since CET records began in 1659.”
This equates to a -7.1 anomaly for December up to 8 December – provisional.
Actually, I can see no real warming in the UK CET data since 1989.
Annual Mean Temp of the following starting at 1986
1986 8.80
1987 9.18
1988 9.83
1989 10.53
1990 10.67
1991 9.61
1992 9.88
1993 9.51
1994 10.22
1995 10.47
1996 9.17
1997 10.52
1998 10.25
1999 10.63
2000 10.29
2001 9.95
2002 10.64
2003 10.54
2004 10.53
2005 10.48
2006 10.90
2007 10.60
2008 10.07
2009 10.11
2010 9.00 – estimated using 1 as the December temp. In reality it is currently -1.9
“Experts say cold snap is ‘once in a lifetime’”
Are these the same “Experts” that predicted that snow would be a thing of the past?
Exactly what will it take to get the BBC out of the bag, and start reporting on the massive fraud that is/has taking/taken place.
A little investigative journalism would also sell papers. It is time to hold the activities of Mr. Jones and the UEA up to a bright light and find something that the authorities can prosecute. This is an opportunity for both the BBC and the UK government to not go down with the AGW ship which is obviously sinking. It is time to throw UEA and Company under the bus, stop the wind-farm madness, stop the carbon offset insanity and act like grown ups for a change instead of teenage girls at a horror fest. (Sorry any teenage girls out there, I don’t mean to insult you.)
All of the journalist of the BBC and members of the UK government need to take a long hard look in the mirror and stop neglecting your duties.
One other thing, don’t expect the U.S. to take any action any time soon.
The U.S. Government and Media are full of people who are so far left that folks in the center look like right wing nut jobs to them. I won’t even touch on how they feel about people who actually are right wingers. These folks are effectively covering up many events that are not in line with their agenda.
For example there has been record cold in the deep south here, with winter fruit and vegetable (beans, corn, citrus) crops damaged by frost. But the Media has downplayed this. Where I live (Alaska) the “official” temperature is currently 11f at the airport but just a couple miles away the temp at Elmendorf AFB is 0f. There is no place in town that is above 5 degrees right now. It has been like this for over a month. I would be willing to bet that Alaska shows up as a hot spot when the monthly temps come out but that would be a flat out lie. Our country has many areas of differing climate so the warmies can always find somewhere else where it is not cold.
The whipping the Dems took in our elections last month has actually moved the party to the left as many of the folks in moderate areas were voted out, but we still have Harry and Nancy and Barbie among others who are so far left they are almost incapacitated. Not to mention the Obamanation who is our current president. Oh please in 2012 can the Republicans field a viable candidate!
Where was I… Oh yes, don’t expect the U.S. to take the lead on this, I don’t see it happening for at least two more years. Sorry. I hope that things might be different over there…
Robert M
The UK CET will record that 2010 will be the coldest for around 25 years but thats weather I guess. Also Bastradi is wrong about the first 10 days of december being the coldest ever for CET. Mean CET for December so far is -2C . In January 1963 the mean CET for the whole month was minus 2.1C and in Januray 1795 ( the coldest month ever recorded it was minus 3.1C
-2.0c is colder than any complete December month, the coldest ever mean CET was minus 0.8C in 1890
Thank goodness it’s only weather and not climate!
We often have bad ice storms in the winter and sometimes the power is out for days. What then for the electric cars?
However… the average daily minimum CET is minus 5.1c for December so far which is equal to the coldest ever month Feb 1895 and colder than any December in total. Of course these numbers for Decemebr so far are only for 8 days and the thaw over the next few days will take the numbers up quite a bit. It is possible we will end up with the coldest December ever but unlikely even we return to cold weather in the UK. Minus 5.1c is after all more than 7C below the average for December minimum
Wait everyone knows this is a “Day after a week from next Tuesday” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0319262/ scenario. Any moment now a Glacier will cover New York.
Well a guy can hope can’t he.
I love the way the Met Office and the BBC keep referring to it a s a ‘cold snap’. My definition of a cold snap would be a couple or three days, a week at most. We are just entering week three with no respite likely this side of Christmas; time to dig out the DVD of Holiday Inn and chuck another log on the fire.