I am sure that you all remember this article in the San Francisco Chronicle in October of 2006.
(10-27-2006) 04:00 PDT Norden, Nevada County — For the ski industry, both in California and rest of the nation, there is no greater truth than global warming, with its threat of a shrinking snowpack and the point that Yogi Berra once made so succinctly: “The future ain’t what it used to be.”
…
If nothing is done to curb emissions, greenhouse gas emissions could raise Sierra temperatures another 5 or 6 degrees by the end of the 21st century, according to some projections. The snowpack could be reduced by 89 percent.
It all came rushing back to be when I read this on the Alpine Meadows web site:
Current Snow Conditions: Alpine is Closed – Too much snow to safely enjoy. (Extreme Avalanche Danger and High Winds)
Right now it looks like the Alpine Meadows could use some global warming to stay in business.
===============================================================
UPDATE: It looks like the winds have subsided enough, as of 6:37AM with an update Monday morning they have removed the warning, after all, they don’t want all the heavy snow to scare customers away. Here’s the current snow depths:
And here is the current welcome message:
Source: http://www.skialpine.com/mountain/snow-report/
from: Global Warming and Alpine Closed Too Much Snow give Russ a shout out. – Anthony
Steven Goddard has been posting old news headlines, etc on his blog too.
They have been predicting the end of snow, Arctic melting…. for over a half century
Here’s one from 1947:
1947 : Greenland Melting – Sea Level Rising At A Dizzying Rate – Speedy International Intervention Needed
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/
Yup! It’s worse than we thought.
This Globul Worming brings us all too much snow.
Got to cut down with that CO2 stuff quickly.
“MyNorthwest.com staff
The North Cascades Highway is covered in so much snow that road crews expect the latest opening in 20 years.
The Washington State Department of Transportation says it probably won’t be able to start clearing the pass until early to mid-April.”
The fear game has now propagated to mega earthquakes that are now caused by global warming. Wonder what caused them in the past???
“there is no greater idiocy than sciemce writers within the MSM”
Hysteria always seems to have the quality that it is highest when it is least warranted.
I know in Wyoming, they are already beginning releases of water from reservoirs, in anticipation for a higher than average spring runoff. You can find the percent of normal snowpack for all western states here: http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/gis/snow.html
Unlike heatwaves, droughts and floods which are all clearly caused by Global Warming, this is just weather. /sarc
Even accross the pond they were predicting the death of the Scottish ski industry. Now it’s back again in March.
The last few Skii seasons in Aus have started “early”, I wonder what winter 2011 will bring. At a guess, no science involved at all a la Gore, winter this year will be colder, lots of snow where people want it early too.
I don’t know why, but Anthony’s pal Bastardi and his friend have managed to be worse (much worse in fact) than the UK Met office. They (‘WeatherBell)’) have been forecasting light rain every day here in Market Harborough (Britain’s fastest growing town, the Phoenix City of the UK). It has hardly rained at all for three weeks.
I remember when they predicted the demise of snow on the Alps. It came back in early March with a good fall of powder.
http://www.planetski.eu/news/2595
Italy has just had an “outstanding season” according to the Guardian.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2011/mar/18/skiwatch-fresh-snow-alps
All those doom and gloom predictions just sound so silly now. Oh, I forgot, all this snow IS caused by global warming. Yaaaaaawn!
Well, uh, you can’t judge long-term trends by short-term fluctuations. You just have to find a trend that happens to coincide with what you’re trying to prove, declare it to be the “baseline” and then take a ruler and draw the trend out like it’s going to continue forever.
The snow pack is uneven. http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/ftpref/support/water/westwide/snowpack/wy2011/snow1103.gif
Real warming would harm ski industries and other winter sports. That does not mean it is happenning or will happening.
Nor does that fact change the reality that almost everyone else, including all terrestrial vertebrates not just people, would be better off if it did warm all the way to the paleontological maximum of 22C (room temperature).
Warmcold strikes again!
I was just looking at the weather for this week. This cold storm is going to drop more rain and snow. For those who haven’t been keeping up with the stats on these things, California is already above the precipitation totals for the year.
With that in mind, consider this. For the last two weeks, we’ve seen the media and Californians freaking out over highly improbable possibilities of any kind of melt-down of the two nuclear reactors here in the state. “”California Has Earthquakes!”…. Oh No!
Yet there IS a good probability that this very wet season will bring a disaster that no one is mentioning. Around the Sacramento area, in the northern part of the Great San Joaquin Valley, there is a levee system that was created to provide more living and farming space in the state. The total area encompassed by the levee system is over 1,100 square miles. As the melt season approaches, there is more water in the Sierra Nevada Mountain range stored in the form of snow than there has been in a very long time. When this melts off in April through July, the old levee system is going to be taxed like it hasn’t been in a very long time, and like everything else in California, this system has been poorly maintained. I for one am very concerned that many of the citizens of this state are going to pay for that negligence.
Here is a map of the delta region, and here is the Wiki. There are no huge population centers in danger, but there are many small communities that are spread out throughout the region. So while everyone is panicking over a disaster that is unlikely to happen, the momentum for the one that IS likely and will destroy many lives goes ignored.
Plus… Think of all the Delta Smelt that will die!!!!
OK. The last think is a somewhat private joke between us Californians! 🙂
Still, this spring may be the one where we pay for the complete lack of serious leadership in the state.
PS. Yes… I blogged this.
Snowpack will increase around N MN the next couple days with potential blizzard conditions around the head of Lake Superior. Colder conditions afterwards will keep the pack around a little while longer. Skiers and snowmobilers will be happy.
But see they can still claim that the excess snow is caused by ACC. All prediction of snow cover have been made now, from too little snow to too much. Whatever the ACC predictions are, they turn out to be correct. This way the ACC theory remains infallible. When a theory becomes infallible it ceases to be a theory, it becomes a faith.
The only thing that is melting is the global consensus on catastrophic climate disruption!
Once Climategate broke, it was downhill from there….record cold & snows in the Northern Hemisphere helped it along, ask the Brits.
Thanks, Russ, I used to hear a lot of blather in my field (public health) about this, but except for the hand-wringing over recent Congressional action, the PH folks are more concerned about keeping their own gravy trains rolling. Pandemic flu, bioterrorism etc.
Someone should get a shot from the same vantage point as the picture on Gavin’s book about drought for Lake Mead (was it?) after the snow melts. Meanwhile, the AGW folks have been pretty quiet about the status of world mountain glaciers for the last year or so.
Spring keeps coming earlier each year due to global warming. Ahhhh, those were the days.
“Enough snow for 2 winters” – New England
http://tinyurl.com/65toanb
“Snow falling on first full day of spring” – Connecticut
http://tinyurl.com/6yullq3
“Northstar is reveling in snow this spring – so much so that the resort smashed a 25-year record.”
http://tinyurl.com/4hffvga
“Near-record snow depths on Metro Vancouver”
http://tinyurl.com/4lndd6s
I have been an avid skier for more than 42 years living in Colorado. I still ski the black diamonds, although more slowly at 63.
It was the campaign to convince skiers during the past 5 to 10 years that global warming was going to end all the fun that persuaded me to check into what “this global warming hoopla” was about.
I should also mention that I have worked as adjunct faculty to a small college, teaching a beginning course in research to graduate students. As a part of the course, I have always required my students to select research papers from any branch of science and to critically evaluate the basic assumptions, the designs, the stats, etc., and to present what they have found to the class.
Applying these same skills, I undertook an in-depth review of the literature on global warming “science” more than 5 years ago, and I concluded that it was essentially baseless hysteria and superstition. Yes, CO2 does trap heat in a closed, non-chaotic environment. As far as I can tell, that’s about as far as it goes.
I have been amazed, if not a little ashamed, at what the science community has allowed the “warmists” to get away with. This whole travesty has taught me that the human species hasn’t progressed as far as I had thought. Superstition and hysteria are always there, waiting to get their foot in the door and to take hold of the collective consciousness when they can. It’s very disappointing.
We have had enough winter precipitation these past few days to cancel school busses this morning, on this second day of Spring! The alarmists shouldn’t worry about us, however, as we have also had colder than normal temperatures. The month of March has been running about 10 degrees C colder than normal, thus I don’t think we can blame all this winter weather on global warming.
After eyeballing the Canadian Weather at a Glance page, it looks like much of the country is colder than average: http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/jet_stream/index_e.html
We’re somewhere near the upper corner of the massive band of snow reaching across four provinces, extending from northern Alberta, down into Utah and Colorado.
Hha… confirmation at last! I had always suspected CAGW was a snow-job.
The danger of AGW is that an early melt of snowpack will just cause floods rather than releasing water slowly over the summer irrigation season. If we have more warming, we will need to build more dams to store the irrigation water that is presently stored as snow. I second Craig’s link, it isn’t that great of an overall snowpack:
http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/ftpref/support/water/westwide/snowpack/wy2011/snow1103.gif
What you all are missing is that this is “Rotten” snow…
Heavy “consistent with CAGW model predictions, and so is robust, unequivocal proof of global warming” snowfall here today in western New Hampshire…
2006 was also the year, I think, that the IMAX movie about the demise of Lake Powell was filmed. Of course, it was global warming’s fault that the ongoing drought was not producing snow in the Powell watershed.
Today, the lake is some 57 feet higher, with several years of better-than-average snowfalls having occurred. And, the prospects of it being almost 100 feet higher this year are good, with all of that snow in the mountains.
Snow pack here in southwestern Alberta (at five high-elevation snow pillow sites) is ~ 50 percent above the long-term mean AND there is a heavy snowfall warning in place for the next two days with 50 cm predicted in SE Alberta. There is 13 meters of snow (~ 43 feet) at 1900 meters on Flattop Mountain in NW Montana!! Flush!
Will almost certainly be flooding again in many parts.
Last week a local eco group sponsored speakers telling us that the snow pack was down and we are in for droughts. Right.
17 March 2011
“Unseasonal Snow Gives Backpackers a Shock in Vietnam”
“…temperatures across the region plummeted to the lowest levels recorded in over a decade.”
http://www.argophilia.com/news/unseasonal-snow-in-vietnam/21723/
H/t Steven Goddard
Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past.
/sarc
http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cdecapp/resapp/getResGraphsMain.action
Note the California reservoir levels. Above normal all over the State. Yet the South still is engaged in rationing and the government still drones on about AGW etc. The so-called water shortage is entirely man made.
This all sucks for springtime camping. Last April we tried to camp up north, failed when nothing was opened, so we scheduled for Memorial Day just north of Bishop. Come a week before the trip they cancelled with still +6ft of snow at the camp site. We adjusted and camped in the Southern Sierra, but half the sites were still closed.
How are we supposed to enjoy Spring and Summer camping with all this “global warming” sitting on the ground near year-round?
What? It’s already the end of the 21st century?
With all the cold we have been seeing, we could use some Global Warming.
No no no no, global warming CAUSES snow! Sometimes it prevents it too!
Soft mushy snow that melts as soon as it hits 3400 feet above sea level and below. Sticky above that level. Yep. It’s CO2 enhanced rotten snow. Entirely odd for the second day of Spring. We should be having green CO2 enhanced rain instead of CO2 enhanced rotten snow.
All that heavy snow and rain….
…puts pressure on the faultlines.
We are now seeing quakes in California over the last 24hours
possibly from all the rain and warm snow overweighting the land….
but rest assured increasing earthquakes are predicted from the global warming as we all know… moist air, excess precipitation, temperature extremes, earth flexing, diaper rash, other surprises, etc…’cause that’s what the “qualified” experts have told us…
Check out all the “blue square” quakes (earthquakes over the last 24hours):
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqscanv/
I think the end of the world coming soon…. /sarc.
On second thought, I think I’ll just go skiing instead !!!! Whoopie !!!!
I heard the night skiing is really great now from the self illuminating effect compliments of fallout from Fukushima, but that’s just a rumor… happy skiing !!
Sonicfrog: OK. The last think is a somewhat private joke between us Californians! 🙂
T’aint funny, McGee….
John in Azusa
If the Sierra snowpack were really in decline, and snow was truly going to be a thing of the past…..Then WHY would Vail buy Northstar????
http://www.skirebel.com/magazine/archives/14392
Why would Homewood be expanding???
Here in Reno, it’s the day after the first day of spring, 2011. I’ve been told over, and over that spring is coming earlier and earlier every year. There’s 2 ” of snow in my yard, and there’s car wrecks scattered all over the northwest. I hear the south end of town was equally bad. Ice everywhere.
Las Vegas is even cold.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/mar/21/first-day-spring-wet-breezy-las-vegas/
I-80 was closed most of yesterday.
http://www.theunion.com/article/20110320/BREAKINGNEWS/110329994/1097
But back to the Sierra………. The ski resorts are spending big bucks to expand and enhance the skiing attraction. If they were really worried, they wouldn’t be risking the investment, unless of course, they don’t care if they lose because they’ll just shift the costs onto the taxpayers thru bankruptcy or bailouts.
NEWSFLASH!
“Tropical Storm Activity Hits A 40-Year Low – Possibly “Unprecedented”!”
http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/
http://notrickszone.com/2011/03/21/tropical-storm-activity-hits-a-40-year-low-possibly-unprecedented/
H/t Notrickszone
OOPS… I forgot…
California gets Earthquakes EVERYDAY !
Scratch the global warming cause for quakes.
attn TFN
As always, I am responsible for what I write which is on my blog. The automated forecasts you see on the site, or other sites, are automated and so blaming me for things I did not say is a simple distortion.
I guess I assumed Anthony’s readers ( you are correct about that, I am a friend and fan of Anthony) knew better.
My duties are long range and trend forecasting, and hitting extremes. The winter forecast I issued there, which called for the cold December but the turn around was on. The chill across the south now and the coming cold in eastern Europe were on. I was not perfect, but making cracks about day to day computed generated ideas, which is what you are looking at then blaming me is like me blaming you for anything that may happen to go wrong in your town, just cause you live there.
Both Joe D Aleo an I are blogging on our site, and as per most sites that are free, the free stuff is worth what it costs. The blogs will become premium down the road, with much more euro based posts than I have done before, but things you see for free unless signed by us, are not ours. But please, I am more than willing to take the hits for where I am wrong, but blame me for what I write, not what I dont
blessings
JB
Here’s a link to the current (I think practically updated daily with a few days lag) Snow Water Content of the Sierra Nevada. As can be seen, the average peak of April 1st is almost upon us, and we are not yet to to the level of 1982-1983, although it looks like this latest storm is not yet included. I was in CA in 1983, and the state came through just fine. The waterfalls in Yosemite Valley were spectacular that spring, and in June, the air was yellow with pine pollen which coated everything.
However, of course, it depends on whether the snowpack is melted all at once, or slowly. I read a commenter at the time saying, 100 more winters like this, and the glaciers in Yosemite will be once again on the move.
Watch this graph every few days to see what happens.
I can remember skiing Sugar Bowl in 1968 when two of three lifts were closed due to snow depths greater than the tower heights, riding the operable chair up the mountain with skis riding on the snow. They had dug out the snow to get the lift operating, with sheer snowbanks on either side. We descended a long flight of snow steps to get down to the lodge entrance with only the peak of the roof line visible above the snow. The more things change the more they stay the same.
March 21, 2011 at 7:34 am
…Mark Twain? … He would have been a terrific skeptic/realist… “The rumours of the snowpack’s death are greatly exagerrated…”
So now climate change is a ‘truth.’ Do they mean ‘truth’ in the sense that beauty and love are ‘truths’ or is it more in the sense like the law of gravity is a truth?
If the first case, perhaps we can expect some great works of poetry on this new found ‘truth’.
i guess you morons missed the part where it said “by the end of the 21st century”…
REPLY: and I guessed you missed the sarcasm while you were busy insulting people…grow up – Anthony
And if I remember correctly, the winter of 1982-1983 in California was the first time people were blaming”El Niño”. Yet this winter was La Niña. WUWT? Obviously, El Niño/La Niña only have a statistical correlation to weather, and sometimes other things dominate.
I have a lot in common with Jay Curtis above on becoming a skeptic. I’m also a Ph.D scientist and an avid Colorado skier and have enjoyed the “unrotten” snow this 2010-11 season.
Unlike Robb876 above, I don’t like fallacies or ad hominem attacks; I prefer to argue facts and reason and not ideological belief, although I’m prone to using a little sarcasm on occassion.
The anthropogenic greenhouse gas effect behaves like a bi-state insulator once the tipping point has been reached. It will sometimes trap the heat in, creating droughts, snowless winters, crop burnings, and BBQ summers. Other times it will trap the cold in, creating devastating floods, record winter snows, crop freezings, and ice box summers. That’s why it’s called the tipping point. It tips back and fourth. The evidence is all around us and can no longer be ignored. It’s worse than the models predicted – much worse than we could have imagined, scientists say. /sarc
Now I know what I want to do with my life… become a global warming journalist.
You are not using the proper term!!! It is Climate Change People, sheesh… That way it can mean whatever you want whenever you want it to… more snow ( Climate Change ) less snow ( Climate Change )…
Seriously how ignorant are you!!!
I’m not sure if I am just misinterpreting the chart Craig Moore and Bob Maginnis reference or what. The title on the image states “Mountain Snowpack as of March 1, 2011”. However, the data actually seems to be some kind of 29 year aggregation. The title of the color range is “Percent 1971 to 2000 Period”. Does this mean percent of the 29 year maximums versus the current values or the 29 year averages versus the current values or are the colors only for the 29 years of data from 11 years ago?
Bob Maginnis says:
March 21, 2011 at 8:59 am
The danger of AGW is that an early melt of snowpack will just cause floods rather than releasing water slowly over the summer irrigation season. If we have more warming, we will need to build more dams to store the irrigation water that is presently stored as snow.
So then, the more warming, the more snow, and the more snow/warming, the more rapid snowmelt and flooding. Whereas before, the warming was going to cause just the opposite – less snow, and droughts, not floods. Got it.
The goalpost moving by the Warmist ideologues is enough to make ones’ head spin.
308″ base on the Upper Mountain! That’s nearly 26 ft sitting on the ground – big even by Sierra standards.
Colorado has been great this winter – lots of powder days for us powder hounds!
Here’s the SNOTEL stats for the western US plus Alaska:
http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/cgi-bin/sno_narr3_pl
Obviously, some states are doing great while others aren’t, but that’s typical of each year. Check out this site for a visual measure of the variability in snowpack from month to month, year to year.
http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/cgibin/westsnow.pl
Holy smoke, the Kyoto Protocol WORKED! And I was silly enough to doubt all those wise politicians, climate scientologists, and celebrities!
/sarc
In 2006 Oregon State University researchers predicted lighter future snows.
http://oregonstate.edu/dept/ncs/newsarch/2006/Mar06/snow.htm
They need not have worried. Central Oregon’s Mt. Bachelor has had 500″ of snowfall so far this season, while an average year is 387″ for the entire season.
http://www.mtbachelor.com/winter/mountain/snow_report
At Oregon State University a professor has been forced out by telling the truth that snowfall has not been in a long term decline, according to this:
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11875
Here is the analysis of the winter 2011 snow coverage.
http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/2011/03/snow-coverage-update-winter-of-2011/
Jeff Carlson says:
March 21, 2011 at 7:34 am
“there is no greater idiocy than sciemce writers within the MSM”
Oh I dunno, I think they’re neck and neck with financial reporters in the MSM.
All the reservoirs in California are full or near full. Insufficient runoff margins in lake levels. Beginning to dump now, what with the unexpected series of rain/snow storms. No, that is not unusual(extended rainy season), it’s the way the weather used to be before the warming after the 70’s. Rain all the way into May some years. The problem now is that the operators of the reservoirs are in the dark as to the past history. How’d that happen?
OMG! Stormy conditions today at a US ski resort – that clearly PROVES humans have no impact on climate whatsoever …….. !!!!!
Burlington, Vermont snowfall total for the season 125.7 in (normal is about 80). And the season isn’t over. The winter wasn’t especially cold. At the moment it is the third snowiest on record behind 1886-7=132 in and 1970-1=145.4 in. The weather? It’s snowing.
Andy Mayhew says:
March 21, 2011 at 12:38 pm
And so it goes that those that bandy sarcasm about with little or no consideration for the facts or the context will be laughed at and ridiculed at length. It saves many of us from having to buy booze, books on failed political campaigns, and old reruns of Laurel and Hardy (or the Three Stooges–take your pick).
Mammoth Mountain is at about 150% of normal for the season already and more snow in the forecast. Even San Diego is about 130% of normal for the season – and that’s really unusual for a La Niña year.
But then this hasn’t been a typical La Niña winter for the US.
I read the 2006 SF Chronicle article. The Ski Industry seems to be investing heavily in alternative energy. One could argue that based on the ‘consensus’ of the early 2000’s, this was a prudent business decision. Private industry tends not to hang onto failed ideas like governments do. Watch for reluctance from the Ski Industry next time their contracts to purchase ‘green energy’, at a premium, renews.
Patrick Davis says:
March 21, 2011 at 8:01 am
The last few Skii seasons in Aus have started “early”, I wonder what winter 2011 will bring. At a guess, no science involved at all a la Gore, winter this year will be colder, lots of snow where people want it early too.
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They may have started early with some late April/early May dumps Patrick, but they went nowhere fairly quickly.
Look here : http://users.tpg.com.au/users/mpaine/snow.html
Thank God for man made snow.
I skied on that 308″ at Alpine Meadows today. Awesome. This has been the best ski season ever in California. Bring me more of that global warming.
When do you think Gov. Brown will declare an end to the drought?
All I know is we just are finishing off a good old fashioned cold winter with a warm spell in January so that the deep snow is capped with a nice crust. Predator party and Ungulate die off. I don’t think there is a yearling left around my place and they are working their way up in the size of the catch.
It appears we are gradually winning the propaganda war, but we cant underestimate these vile propagandists, they are waiting for any opportunity to re-assert their false message. Its almost surreal the way they persist no matter how much contrary evidence is presented. They must be seething with intense hatred to persist this way.
Mt. Washington (Vancouver Island) on track for record snow season
http://www.snowseekers.ca/britishcolumbia/mtwashington/ontrackforrecordsnowfall
Canadian Pacific says weather to hit earnings
“The company said “multiple severe weather events” disrupted train operations across its network in Canada and the northern United States, including avalanches on its mainline tracks in British Columbia.”
http://m.sympatico.ca/news_detail.php;jsessionid=gF-nJslODVHeOM-53YzfOQ**?type=business&lang=en-CA&rssItemId=TRE72K7DQ
I doubt that my B.C. minister of forestry will be telling the B.C. public that the snow pack is such and such percent below “normal” this year. On average he tells us this every other year.
The louder the fact speak, the louder the Warmists shriek. Funny how that works…
Mods: “facts speak” not “fact”.
Here is a good website dealing with California’s water situation.
“California Reservoir Watch”
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=116296859249755018234.000479b4b505b3da2340b&ll=38.848264,-121.047363&spn=3.422325,5.361328&z=7&source=embed
There will be epic floods during this spring in multiple places in the NH. Pack on top of saturated ground.
“When the levee breaks … “