I mentioned earlier today that my friend Jan Null, former lead forecaster for the NWS in San Francisco and now operator of Golden Gate Weather Service pointed out that a number of cold records were set overnight. Looks like we are in for a second night, and it looks even colder for some areas. Napa’s wine valley may hit 26-27 tonight. 2011 may not be a good year for wine then. We’ll see. Other grape growing areas in coastal valleys will also be affected:
Here’s the official record reports:
SXUS76 KMTR 270037 CCA
RERMTR
RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA
430 PM PST SAT FEB 26 2011
THE FOLLOWING SITES SET A NEW RECORD LOW TEMPERATURE FOR THIS DATE
LOW PREVIOUS YEAR OF
SITE TEMPERATURE RECORD PREVIOUS RECORD
NAPA 28 30 1945 CORRECTED
OAKLAND 34 38 1987
OAKLAND INTL ARPT 32 34 1962
SFO INTL ARPT 35 36 1971
SAN RAFAEL 28 32 1996
THE FOLLOWING SITES TIED PREVIOUS RECORD LOW TEMPERATURES
LOW YEAR OF
SITE TEMPERATURE PREVIOUS RECORD
SAN FRANCISCO 37 1962
MOUNTAIN VIEW 34 1962
SAN JOSE 33 1897
Here’s the forecast for Saint Helena in the center of the Napa Valley tonight, they call for 26 degrees.
Growing areas near Salinas will also get a frost.
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@ur momisugly tokyoboy
Where is that chart you put up a while back of Japan Tide gauges, kudasai?
I’ve forgotten – what year was the “Long Winter” that Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about? Any correlations with other places in USA?
Nothing bites quite like a cold snap, especially after a false spring.
Someone should tell the people of San Francisco “Don’t Eat Yellow Snow!”
And were the ell is the aitch in ‘neigboring’?
>:L
I have an irregular column I write called The Oenologist’s Corner and in which I espouse the virtues of cheap assed wine (SEC!). A definition is in order: A cheap assed wine is red, under $10.00 USD, not from California, and cannot be an embarrassment to the host. So go ahead and freeze, CA – couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch of greenies, and you were never in the race for excellence anyway.
BTW, there are a good many CAW’s out there!
It’s snowing in Las Vegas right now (12:30 PM EST).
Er, um, that would be 12:30 am.
Tokyoboy
You ask ‘where on earth is hell’ Well, excluding a few places where nobody would ever want to revisit, the Hell I’ve been to is a small village near an airbase in Norway east of Tronheim. ( unfortunately, I cannot find my return ticket but I’ll keep looking and post a photo when it turns up)
Snow in SF in 1999.
Don’t worry
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/a-little-different/more-wine-questions/8231365/What-is-Eiswein.html
“Eiswein or, if it comes from outside Germany or Austria, ice wine, is white wine made from grapes that have frozen on the vine prior to picking, leading to an intense sweetness in the finished wine”
Snow, sort of, in SF in 2008. This time with scientists making observations and hypothesizing about climate.
Snow, sort of, in SF in 2006. Party time.
More 2006 snowish time in SF.
Regarding my comment:
“Please have a look at the graph on page one on the link below –
then, presuming this garph is bona fide, can anyone tell me what was happening between 1950 – 1960?
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Measuring-Earths-energy-imbalance.html”
the answers so far from http://www.hot-topic.co.nz
1/ If readings were available for earlier periods it would show that the world was in a much better energy balance. It was only in about 1960 that the world began to recover form the second world war and started to burn coal and oil in serious quantities.
2/ Tom, perhaps you asked the wrong question.
The real question would have been: What happened between 1960 and 1975. And the answer is that during this time due to a large increase in industrial smog (SO2 had a lot to do with it) we actually industrially counteracted the AGW CO2 forcing effects. Then in the late 70ies clean air act laws came into place which bettered the situation in that sense and returned Earth to the state of imbalance it already had in the 60ies.
In fact some of the geo-engineering ideas being circulated to fight GW are to simulate the smog of the 60ties by injecting stratospheric SO2 to counterbalance GW forcing.
Does this make any more sense to you all than it does to me?
Thanks
More 2006 snow/hail time in SF.
Clearly home videos make an excellent way to document weather events in some regards revealing quite a bit of info about the weather at the time. No temperature, pressure, or such readings interesting observational data. It would be really fantastic if each weather station also included a panoramic camera so that visual records would provide the missing information that temperature numbers alone can’t.
This is the type of camera that the google uses on their street view cars. One of these babies at each weather stations would be awesome, 9 x 5 megapixels cameras (for 36 megapixels per frame total) with one pointing upwards to see the sky! Lots of data but at least you’d see the truck parked next to the temperature station and know that that time set of readings was, ah how to put this politely, bogus. Brem, brem.
http://elphel.com/eyesis
A couple of beautiful panoramas stitched together showing the sky 360 application. Imagine this is a weather station monitoring site: http://blog.elphel.com/2010/07/360-fisheye. Also imagine full second by second automated weather data collection from each station (in real time where possible) to a LIVE data collection PUBLIC web site along with multiple redundant LIVE data collection backup archive sites for keeping them honest about the data!
Oops, that should say “No temperature, pressure, or such readings interesting [but] observational data [none-the-less].” [:)]
One interesting piece of data that a panoramic + sky camera unit can provide is the position and location of the sun relative to the station’s camera and the cloud cover for that station (during the day). It would also show signs of visible air pollution which is cities would be important. As the technology advances night time cameras might be possible. Also using a weather radar unit at each would provide a lot more data for study.
Going forward we need more context for the temperature observations to know what they are all about, video and weather radar can help a lot with that.
What are all the parameters being captured by the most advanced weather stations today?
As a professional systems analyst it is clear we need the best observational systems at each weather station so that all the scientific questions we are interested in asking can have half a chance of being addressed with some quantifiable accuracy and quantifiable confidence range.
Rhyl Dearden said on February 26, 2011 at 10:32 pm:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Winter_(novel)
This is interesting:
Check with muskrats at the end of summer to find out how bad winter will be. Check with groundhogs near the end of winter to find out how the rest of the season will NOT be. Got it.
no big deal… the best California wines come from the Central Coast, not Napa.
California ice wine. Who’d have thunk it? 🙂 — John M Reynolds
crosspatch says:
February 26, 2011 at 7:46 pm
California isn’t the only place. North Korea is also apparently seeing record cold:
http://www.nkeconwatch.com/2011/02/21/dprk-experiencing-record-low-temperatures/
– – – – – – – – – –
This makes me angry: “Pyongyang has reportedly stepped up its calls for aid from the international community….” Sigh. People are suffering. Whattaya gonna do?
“Ryu Ki-yeol, the North Korean scientist cited by the Chosun Sinbo, cited a difference in pressure at the highest latitudes known as the Ar[c]tic Oscillation as the cause of the prolonged cold spell.”
A suitable response to North Korea’s plea for food aid due to the extreme temperatures there and massive crop failures……
“Let them eat nuclear weapons.”
AJB says: Feb 26, 2011 at 7.54pm
‘Looking like the UK may have another cold blast’
Reminds me of MET office long range forecast that there were ‘some indications of an increased risk of a mild end to the winter season.’ I wonder what piece of seaweed they were using to give an indication like that?
This may be the worst climate (okay, weather) news I’ve heard.