A storm of “historic proportions”: Roads closed, 6300 airline flights cancelled, people snowbound. Snowzilla indeed. From the article:
Dubbed the “Blizzard of Oz” in Kansas, the storm coursed its way through the Midwest and Plains states — collapsing roofs, forcing highway and school closures, leaving tens of thousands without power and breaking snowfall and low-temperature records.
Airlines canceled about 6,300 flights Wednesday, according to the flight tracking service FlightAware.com. About a third of the canceled flights were out of Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, one of the nation’s busiest hubs. Eighty-four flights were canceled at Los Angeles International Airport.
At least two deaths were blamed on the weather. On Long Island in New York, a homeless man set himself on fire trying to stay warm, and in Oklahoma a 20-year-old woman was killed while being pulled on a sled by a pickup that crashed into a pole.
Full story here
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While I often lament California’s nutty government, it is 61F and sunny as I write this. – Apologies.
Now we really get to see how well the politicians have spent our billions and billions of tax dollars in preparation of such inevitable weather events, lulled asleep by AGW “scientists” harping that such events were only of the past. Now they lie and say they knew it all along.
It don’t look pretty. Vote the guilty out of office and ask your new representatives to defund them all. Now!
LA Times Video blurb: “Drivers were left stranded for more than 10 hours waiting for help.”
During the Chicago storm of 1967, I lived in Chicago and worked in a suburb. The office having closed early, I bought some galoshes. I drove over the expressway leading into the city and noted stuck cars. So I drove to a commuter train station, parked the car and rode the train into the city. Put on the galoshes, walked to a bus stop and got on a bus. A couple miles from home, the bus got stuck. Left the bus, walked to a street going my way. Got hungry, ordered a hamburger in a restaurant. When the hamburger was served, the plate glass window blew in on it. Paid for the burger and walked home. All told, three hours.
The point of the story? Be informed, be prepared, use your head, and don’t rely on others to be available to help. To me, the best part of the story is this: about a half mile from home I met my wife walking toward me, looking for me. We still look to each other every day. 🙂
Pooh, you are a lucky man. Kiss her tonight!
April E. Coggins says:
February 2, 2011 at 8:07 pm
According to Piers Corbyn, the fair weather in the PNW and the foul weather in the rest of the country is due to the Jet Streams freezing in place (locked in), very similar to what happened in Russia/Pakistan last summer. It will end when there’s a fortuitous Solar/Lunar driven event that dislodges the locked Jets. When that will be I cannot say.
Note the La Nina years that followed the strong El Nino years coincide with 1967, 1999&2011, 2 years after the El Nino’s 1965, 1997&2009.
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Re: Baa Humbug says: February 2, 2011 at 7:39 pm
I know, yes I agree, but what I usually see is someone dead other than the stupid one that caused the accident. The last 7 months have been the deadliest I believe I’ve ever witnessed. People running over each other, racing to make up for lost cash because of the recession, I suspect. Or trying to do the work of two or three because of hiring freeze. Whatever, its like deja vu the last one, but noticeably worse this time.
it is good news for all those ice crean lovers we dont need refrigerators any more also half of the wind farms are either burnt out or have been struck by lightning
Chicago politics is the slimmy-est worstest in the nation and now that half the heard is in DC it’s gone national (it’s a Union kind’a thing, only half can be away at any one time;-) Should’a known this would happen. Dang it!!!! Guess we miscalculated something. Hummmmm… Oh! Aaaaaaa.. who owns the LAT now? Hummmmm… you know that simulating national politics on a supercomputer is about as hard as predicting the future global climate next week? You do don’t ya? Now, let’s see…. punch.. punch.. click… click.. ding.. ding… boing.. OK that should do it!!!!!! We’re going to run another simulation with a little more snow and ice and see what we get for a headline. See ya in a bit.
Warmer air holds more water? What about volcanoes that blast steam and ash into the air for a few weeks? I still havent found any mention of the effects on climate of that.
Given all the hoopla about the arctic’s way above average temperatures, it is refreshing to see the headlines about arctic chill rushing south. Real warmth and real cold are quite different from media headlines.
Looks bad. No mention of this on the BBC. They are consumed by reports of the non-event that was the Australian typhoon. I suppose typhoons play to the AGW agenda so much better than snow.
The Kalamazoo Gazette set up a camera to take a series of time lapse photos during the blizzard which can be seen here.
http://bcove.me/bt33wv33
Original Article if it doesn’t show up.
http://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2011/02/time_lapse_video_of_downtown_k.html
How are those deaths blamed on the weather? Looks to me more like normal human stupidity. The homeless are definitely going to light fires to stay warm in the winter, and they’re not always going to be aware of safety concerns. And young people are going to try to find something to do besides sit inside all day and it’s not always going to be smart.
Carl Chapman says:
February 2, 2011 at 6:08 pm
Cyclones and hurricanes need warm water plus a temperature difference. Warming increases the temperature at the poles, causing less variation from tropics to poles.
Now that the temperature is falling we can expect more cyclones and hurricanes.
My prediction for the next few years: cold + windy (storms, cyclones, hurricanes). The exact opposite of what Global Warming predicts.
Look around the world now: A huge cyclone in Qld that fizzes out due to lack of warm water
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fizzer?
wiped out a lot of houses, and managed to travel over 1,000km inland, follow up rains causing fllods inland and in states some 1,000km away today. and thats not counting the cane, fruit and livestock killed or maimed..280km winds.
This morning I had to clear our birdbath with an icepick. It had a 1/4 inch (.6 cm)crust of ice. I live in northern San Diego, 4.5 miles (7.25 km) from the beach at an altitude of 87 feet (26 meters). It might have been wind combined with the cold that caused the freeze. There as crusting last night too, but only 1/8 of an inch. I’ve lived in Southern California for over half a century, and I’ve never seen this here or even heard of it.
call me evil and cold-hearted, but i find both those deaths to be comical. Thats the way id wanna go, sledding behind a truck into a pole…
If this storm had gone a few hundred miles further north most folks would never know it existed. It could have stretched through the Dakotas into northern Minnesota and then Canada like many have done in the past. It’s more about the where than the what.
@Theo Goodwin February 2, 2011 at 5:46 pm:
“Sorry, but I have seen worse on many occasions. The endless nightmare was ’76 through ’79.”
Amen.
’76-’77 was -10F to -20F several days in the Chicago area with wind chills in the -75F range. I moved at the end of JAN (-25F, 40mph winds, gusts to who knows how bad), and my destination small town was socked in by 20-foot drifts on both ends of town. I saw so many really big drifts and whiteouts I lost count. Dangerous cold and wind, drifts over cars, snow filling up engine compartments – you name it. The wind blew snow till the snow found a hole or culvert or cut-through road to fall into. I joked that most of the snow on the ground had originally fallen in Minnesota. If not for snow fences (where are they anymore?), far more roads would have been impassable. I have many tales to tell of that winter.
The New Year’s Eve snow of ’78-’79 was the worst snow I’ve seen, though it officially broke no records at met stations. It took 2 days to get our complex’s parking lot cleared – all of us pitching in by hand: the plows were busy elsewhere.
PLEASE, let us not lose global warming! Warmer is GOOD.