You’ve probably heard the forecasts already, watch it advance on radar below:
Animate this image: >>> 
Look at all of the warnings below, the red area from Oklahoma to Lake Michigan is Blizzard Warning while the pink is Winter Storm Warning:
click map for the latest warnings
The synoptic map shows freezing rain ahead of the system, followed by heavy snow. It’s the worst sort of situation.
The NAM snow depth model output for the next 48 hours shows a wide swath of 12-24″ of snow accumulation from near Dallas to Chicago with even more near NYC and BOS.
The plan: stock up and stay home, and make sure you have a backup plan for heat if the power goes out.
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That isn’t snow. It is Trenberth’s missing heat.
The red and yellow areas on the map are approximately the area of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, where the glaciers were thickest during the last ice age.
Probably just a coincidence, though.
And this is what is bearing down on Queensland Australia where they have just suffered floods in Brisbane. Is if it wasn’t already bad enough:
http://www.goes.noaa.gov/sohemi/sohemiloops/shirgmscol.html
I’ll say it before those helpful people sent across the web to help with our climate change communication skills say it: ” It’s unprecedented!!!”
Thanks, Pat Frank !! Good one !!
Snowzilla. I like it. Now we just need a megolacane in the middle of it.
Esteemed and learned peers of the WUWT Community. I apologise for ram raiding this post, moderators feel free to guide me back to Tips and Tricks if necessary, but the day I was dreading has finally arrived.
My 8 yr old daughter in Primary 4 has returned from her UK Primary school with her latest Oxford University Press Gospel According to Warmists named “The Power of Nature” (ISBN 0-19-919884-5)
It describes the power of the Sun, and that of our own planet’s Wind and Water cycles. But and it’s a big but, contains the dreaded “climate change” invocation on Page 2 and I quote:
“We need to make the most [of these resources], and also to avoid worsening problems of pollution and climate change which we have already set in motion”
It goes on to describe, aftet the initial “hit” of climate change propaganda, various methods that are employed to generate energy, all described perfectly acceptably. Once we get to Page 20/21 we, the parent, are guided that “there are some statements that try and persuade us to be for or against wind farms. Ask your child which words are opinions rather than facts. Which side presents the best arguments”
I won’t type verbatim the three pro and con arguments but to give you all a taster, the last FOR argument goes: “Wind farms could be built in the sea too. Because there is so much sea around Britain, offshore wind power could meet twice the UK’s total energy needs”
My feet, as a classical geologist, are firmly in the “it’s natural variation, stoopid” climate camp.
My request, gentle readers, from both sides of the fence, as a balanced scientist should, is how to frame the approach for my daughter. I have already asked her to get as many of the facts as she can and make her own mind up and not to take anyone’s word for it. I plan to write to the school and indicate my displeasure in the unbalanced approach taken by the literature, but that’s going to be like (snipping) in the wind.
Your help would be appreciated. AJE
Helped out in no small manner by those very tall and long fronts.
Now, where did I hear about Meridonial Flow vs Latitudinal Flow?
Just got to my hotel in Fredrick MD. 24 degrees and freezing rain.
REPLY: Enjoy your extended stay there. ;P
Anthony
Judging from the radar the snow might be a little further west and south than predicted… If this is the case… Well, this will be a real humdinger of a storm…
On a more local note, it is snowing HARD where I live at 10:00pm. The forecast is for 2″ to 5″ by morning. There is allready 4″ of globull warming on my driveway…
Look at all of the warnings below, the red area from Oklahoma to Lake Michigan is Blozzard Warning while the pink is Winter Storm Warning:
Shouldn’t that be “Blizzard”?
ge0050 says:
January 31, 2011 at 10:09 pm
That isn’t snow. It is Trenberth’s missing heat.
—
You got it, and right now it’s hard heat tick ticking away at my windows.
Good question to ask right now, is all of that howling wind from heat or could it be simply the condensation you see in the graphics above? Maybe Anastassia will chime in. I learned much from Dr. Makarieva’s paper and discussion. I now think condensation, at least the majority of it. But it all ends up pressure from both of them in the end.
being in the bright red target zone in MA, I really regret that haven’t moved south.
We have about 24 on the ground, and another 20 coming. 🙁
Quote ‘offshore wind power could meet twice the UK’s total energy needs”’ Just how many bird processors will be required for this to be effective? This winters 60% probability of mild or average temperatures demonstrated that the UK’s energy needs could be met by French nuclear power.
I guess the Chinese would be happy though with their rare earth processing facilities, until they are dead that is.
As someone at the epicenter (central Illinois) of all this, I plan to be up all night tomorrow keeping the snow off of the driveway. Latest projections are for 12 – 18″. I keep hoping the models are wrong, but the Jan 1-3, 1999 storm was forecasted and held up very well. Wish me luck.
Jeff Masters of Weather Underground has a nice little write up on his blog about this blizzard saying it’s potentially of “historic” proportions. By the time it’s over he estimates that 100 million people may have been impacted.
Yep, it’s worse than we thought! 😉
This fantastic resource from Anthony’s new atmospheric maps page showing the power of the undulating jet streams. This is the major contributor to snowzilla.
David Ball says: January 31, 2011 at 10:44 pm
“I’ll say it before those helpful people sent across the web to help with our climate change communication skills say it: ” It’s unprecedented!!!””
That’s the difference between 1/f type noise as we have in the global temperature signal and normal noise. In normal noise, “unprecedented” means: “wow that’s really unusual”, whereas on 1/f type noise to get a “never been seen before” event is well … pretty typical!
Must have something to do with the fact it’s still winter.
Just in time for Groundhog Day. Don’t be suprised if Punxsutawney Phil gets a look at all that snow and slams the door to his burrow after telling those silly humans, “Six weeks? Fergit it — you’ve ten more weeks of winter coming and count yourselves lucky. Now let me get back to my nap, fools!!”
Good luck you lot, in Melbourne we think it’s the end of civilisation when it drops to 35°F.
AleaJactaEst says: Esteemed and learned peers of the WUWT Community…
Ok, I’ll bite. To get an idea how absurd is the idea that the [climate] science is settled, take a look at this and the link to the slides. The truth is the warmers reached their conclusion about positive feedback in 1979 before the science was done.
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/02/the-oceans-clouds-and-cosmic-rays-drive-the-climate-not-co2/
@Alea Jacta Est.
The UK State Educational System is possibly the last Stalinist construct still extant in Europe. Root and Branch reform will not happen in my lifetime, nor probably in yours either. All I can suggest is that you mortgage the rest of your life to provide your daughter with private schooling to Uni. level then send her Stateside.
“Wind farms could be built in the sea too. Because there is so much sea around Britain, offshore wind power could meet twice the UK’s total energy needs”
That’s an easy one. That is a (spurious) opinion. No amount of wind power can ever meet the UK:s total energy needs since it only works when the wind blows. You might exemplify by using graphics this site (click “Översikt” on the left):
http://www.vindstat.nu/
It shows Swedish wind power production during the last 30 days. Remember that Sweden is a great deal larger than the UK, and stretches approximately between the latitudes of Newcastle and Nuuk (the capitol of Greenland), so you would expect more variability for the UK. And, yes, we have offshore Wind Farms too.
heh,heh … he said undulating.
Well, the good news is that with Erie frozen over, some of the lake effect is going to be tamed when the cold wind comes in behind it.
AleaJactaEst says:
January 31, 2011 at 10:57 pm
Not sure I have a clear solution however I can only offer what I went through in a similar vein.
My daughter in grade 9 (Canada) was being taught that Greenland’s populations/settlements was just a push from their motherlands for the ‘sake of ‘propaganda’! Floored me for a sec. so then we had a frank discussion and luckily enough she thought it through with comparisons to what I was taught, what her father was taught, (aunts and uncles) and with what the GWarmers were pushing hard without facts, I had a bit of ammo, so she could see for herself, you’re daughter maybe too young for this I don’t know.
My daughter was surprised to find out I was taught that we were heading into a ice age during the 1970’s; some twenty years on and it’s the warming scare for her.
They didn’t ding her too hard, although she had to endure the ‘SO and SO has an alternative views’ when the class was discussing it further for that topic – but she held her own and her marks didn’t seem unduly harsh for that unit either, thankfully. She’s a healthy skeptic and realist today and handles the nonsense thrown her way in and out of classes.
For such a young student such as your daughter, I have no specific advise except that always tell her the truth in these matters – you’ll never lose her trust that way, as you’ll always be there for her as her father, her grade teachers will not.
You’ll know best how to present or frame it for her – as only you know her best. Leaving too much up for her to decide may only frustrate her, but by telling her the facts of when you were taught ‘such and such’ and it turned out to be incorrect may help with teaching your points to her without pitting her against the teacher’s mandate that must be abided by as well I assume. Bit of a tightrope balance there, but the nice thing about this age is they still believe you the parent over all others and the truth will always prevail. This propaganda push to such young ones is unsettling to put it politely. All the best with this.