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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Janice says:
February 1, 2011 at 9:43 am
I thought a firkin was a barrel of beer measured in pints. I can’t remember if it was 72 pints or not. Seems I drank a few firkins of Adnams ale. Its the one thing I miss living in france. The beers so bad here that the youngsters in our village drink it with syrup (flavoured at that)
michel says:
February 1, 2011 at 4:00 am
OK, if the claim is that we could generate double our consumption, how many turbines would that take? 100 times as many as we have now, if we will settle for a 1% threshold? That would be 300,000. Now ask, where are they going to go? You put them offshore, how are you going to service them? You put them on every hilltop, there is still not enough space for them.
The most serious problem with wind turbines is infrasonic pollution. This problem is not recognized by industry and infrasounds being inaudible, their environmental levels are not regulated either.
Typical noise spectrum of a wind turbine has an incredibly steep (for a mechanical system, that is) 9 dB/octave slope (1/f^3 noise). Levels just keep increasing toward ever lower frequencies with no low frequency cutoff in sight even at 1 Hz. Below this frequency you can’t measure noise levels with microphones (not even with high quality lab microphones). In this frequency range you’d need a microbarometer.
Sounds below about 20 Hz are “inaudible” in the sense they do not create an auditory sensation (they are not identified by the auditory system as “sound”). However, it does not mean they’re imperceptible.
In the Cochlea (inner ear) there are two types of hair cells. The so called inner hair cells do the auditory transduction. They convert mechanical vibration into corresponding electric potential fluctuations at their cell membrane (so called microphone potential), which is picked up by special neurons attached to them and is converted to action potential spike trains to be transmitted by the auditory nerve to the brain. These cells are not sensitive to infrasound.
But there is another set of cells in the organ of Corti called outer hair cells. They are about three times more numerous than their cousins specialized in transduction. Their role is to provide active tuning, that is, they can selectively amplify the mechanical signal at the basilar membrane in pretty narrow frequency bands (using chemical energy of course). For example ear ringing (tinnitus) is not just an imaginary process, the actual sound can be picked up by a tiny electret microphone inserted into the ear canal. In this case outer hair cells simply go to overdrive for some reason. It can even happen without the person whose ear is ringing being able to hear it (if the inner hair cells responsible for that specific frequency range are damaged).
Now, these cells are sensitive to frequencies much lower than the lower bound of hearing, that is, they’re influenced by infrasounds. The selective amplification they provide under normal circumstances being essential to proper hearing, this function is seriously disturbed by infrasonic pollution. The net result is some incredibly inconvenient feeling, similar to one has after a deafening explosion, but it just keeps going on and on and on. It can really drive people nuts, especially if they are unaware of what is being done to them.
An additional problem is there’s no any practical way to attenuate such low frequencies. Wavelenght of this “sound” is so large (at 1 Hz it is 340 m – more than a thousand feet), that no structure can stop it. Waves pretty much ignore obstacles substantially smaller than their wavelength. An airtight and perfectly rigid box can keep them out, but houses are just not like that (and if they were, people would suffocate inside). Also, with a temperature inversion, which can happen even with winds blowing at higher altitudes (where these new monster windmills operate), sound energy tends to get concentrated at ground level, which means there is less attenuation with distance.
Therefore a single measurement is not enough to identify the source of residential annoyance, one needs monitoring for an extended period, under ever changing meteorological conditions.
michel says:
February 1, 2011 at 4:00 am
Try working out how many windmills you would need if you not only supply current maximum consumption (~60GW for the UK in a cool winter) but also all your transportation also uses electric power (1US gallon of gas = 34kW). My back of the envelope calculation for the UK is that you would never be more than a mile from a large windmill (3MW) anywhere on the the land surface of the UK.
It soon becomes evident that ‘renewables’ and electric cars are going nowhere together.
Snowzilla from Space
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/01/midwest-snowstorm-weather-_n_817070.html
My first northern winter in 35 years and it is probably the worst one in 35 years. I’ve always been lucky that way.
On the other hand for the next 3 days it’s almost as cold in Austin, TX as it is here in western New York. The front hit back in Texas too and brought 60mph winds with it.
Good thing I drove the 1500 miles last week instead of this week.
E.M.Smith says:
February 1, 2011 at 2:16 am
RE: SI and Imperial Units and American versions of both …
And now for a little “Canadiana”: The official metric book put out by the Canadian Government when we got metricized (soft c and soft z) was that “metre” was a unit of length and a “meter” is something you used to measure flow like a gas “meter” or a water “meter” or electrical “meter”.
So we work in all units as well since we are officially “metric” but we still make 4×8 sheets of plywood and 2×4’s for the American market. And our football fields are still 110 yards long (I know yours are 100 yards). I suppose a hundred years ago we must have made a metric conversion and made our 100 metre long fields into 110 yards. But I still love Firkins and Hogsheads. 😉
And I love it when I work on an “American” car and I have to use my metric socket set …
Re: S.I. vs “English” units:
I still remember being amused when living in Spain in the 70’s that oil was sold in quart containers (with “.946 L” on the container, and car tire sizes were mixed – both metric and inches (i.e. 145R70/10 for a 145 mm wide tire for my 10″ Mini wheel…)
hotrod ( Larry L ) says:
February 1, 2011 at 8:46 am
Here locally many of the school districts closed down for the day because it was going to be too cold to let the little kiddies out in the weather. In the 1960′s we had low temps well into the -20′s and they never closed the schools for cold and many of us walked over a mile to school every day.
Our society is getting so risk averse it is getting silly.
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I keep wondering if we don’t spend so much time sequestered away from the raw elements these days that we have lost the ability to use our own senses and logic to figure out things for ourselves.
I , too, remember a mid-60s blizzard that my sister and I had to walk home from school in. I was in 6th grade. My sister was in 3rd grade. The wind was so strong and cold, we had to walk backwards and stop behind every house to stand it. I guess it took us 20-30 minutes to walk about a block. I always wondered why my stay-at-home mom didn’t come to pick us up from school that day!
If I remember correctly, that snow lasted 6 weeks. It was probably between 6 and 12 inches. Oklahoma doesn’t usually get monster snowstorms. Some winters, we get no snow at all. It gets plenty cold and all, but it doesn’t always snow. I talked to my brother last night. He said he does not remember ever having experienced the kind of snowstorm he got this week. (He was only 4 when my sister and I walked home in the blizzard.) He said he spent all day shoveling out around his car. Their street was impassable, though!
Well I left North Central Kansas at 2pm local time on the 1st of February, after the most of the snow was on the ground in the direct path to Phoenix AZ. Temperature was 6.2 degrees F, with about 1/2″ of snow with skiff of ice underneath, wind about 30/40mph gusts, viability about 1/4 to 1/2 mile, by the time I got to Oklahoma City the temperature had gone to 11.2 degrees on the dash thermometer, they had 4″ to 6″ of snow on the ground the Interstate had a small amount of hard packed snow in the fast (left) lane, slow (right) lane clear most of the way.
Headed west on I40 to Amarillo Texas, wind speed and visibility about the same all the way to Tucomcari, (visibility 1/4 to 1/2 mile at best) temperatures slowly dropped to -4.3 degrees by 1am local time, coming into New Mexico, where the wind increased and visibility dropped to 200 yards at best, slow going at around 35 to 50 mph, until more fresh falling snow brought white out conditions at Clevies Corners (just East of Albuquerque) -6.4 degrees F, where I stopped for 3 hours till the snow stopped and wind died down.
Got back on the road @ur momisugly4am local time and drove on into Flagstaff, local time ~11am on the 2nd temps around 8 (around the meteor crater ) to 11 degrees, snow on the road cleared just west of Santa Rosa @ur momisugly the ~continental divide, down I17 into Mesa Az. by 1am local time temps 48 degrees F, roads clear and dry, 2′ snow drifts and 7 or 8 dead Elk still on the road shoulders. 1390 miles ~22 hours of almost non stop fun.
If you look at the national maps on my site for today the 2nd, and shift back and forth between, the precipitation map and the snow forecast map you will see the past three cycles had about the same pattern of total precipitation, but due to the past three cycles occurring in active solar cycles, and this solar cycle is slower, the freeze line runs about 200/300 miles South and East of the past cycles. (Which it has been doing consistently for about one & 1/2 years now.;<)
http://www.aerology.com/national.aspx
So as far as "unprecedented" the only change is the solar cycle weakness.
I still do not see a CAGW signal that stands alone.