From NTD Television
Snow Covers Sichuan State Highway 318 in Summer
While people in other regions of China, are enduring the hot summer, a bizarre scene of drifting snow covered the Zheduo Mountain section of the Sichuan State Highway 318 on Wednesday.
The snowfall measured more than 12 inches deep. The temperature was less than 32 degrees Fahrenheit.
Heavy snow and fog almost paralyzed traffic on the state highway—as vehicles moved bumper to bumper on the snow-covered road.
While the snowfall was creating a traffic jam, some people enjoyed the unusual sight, and got out of their cars to take pictures.
[Tourist]:
“I came from Nanjing City of Jiangsu Province. I’ve come to Sichuan for a tour. I never saw snow in July. It is indeed rare. Even in winter, I rarely saw snow in Nanjing.”
Meteorologists offer two reasons for the sudden snowfall in summer. The first is the altitude of Zheduo Mountain, which is more than 13,000 feet high. The second reason is the continuous rain with low temperatures in the region.
hat-tip to reader Sonya and Ice Age Now
Global warming makes snow in China in July? Ok, got it.
/sacr
Ice Age now link is not working correctly.
They must be burning a huge amount of coal in that region.
interesting….btw i keep hearing on the radio news (ABC, CNN) about hot weather in the eastern U.S. but of course i hear nothing about mild weather we’re having in California the last few weeks – highs in the low 80’s max….i stepped outside about 11 PM a few nights ago and i could see my breath…must have been in the 40’s for a low…crazy weather….
I remember (1996 iirc), when I lived near Canberra (Australia) I was driving to work on November 22nd ( that’s very much into summer down here) and it was snowing !!
A true Kodak moment, pity I didn’t have a camera.
Amino Acids in Meteorites says on July 16, 2011 at 4:15 pm
OK, clearly you are an unreconstructed anthropogenic climate disruption supporter.
Surely you must have realized that the climate scientists’ consensus is that anthropogenic climate disruption is real and will doom us all if those evil humans do not stop disrupting climate, and this case only proves it!
Can’t be snow. Everyone knows that snow is caused by Warming, and everyone knows that China is officially exempt from Warming. That’s why they’re exempt from the requirements to destroy their economy to eliminate the Warming.
Must be cornflakes or something.
I don’t believe you that that the temperature was less than 32°F. Don’t you know by know that global warming has increased the freezing point of water. That is how global warming causes more snow.
I do hope they haven’t lost their chilli crop…
it’s at 13,000 feet!
snow is common at 13,000 feet all over the world, no matter how late into summer it is.
http://sichuanchef.com
http://bamboogardendining.com/History.aspx
keeperofthederp says:
July 16, 2011 at 5:37 pm
Why are the people who live there saying it’s unusual then?
我们是注定
(Wǒmen shì zhùdìng)
Yet even more weather is not climate news…
In BC — the southwest coast of Canada that is — we have had the coldest, wettest, spring/summer ever(?). You wouldn’t know it from the press though. Ask any “ordinary” person and they will tell you it has been very, very cold. Environmental Canada on the other hand — the official source of all things weather, says it is reallllllllllly waaaaaaaaaaay hotter than ever before. My sources in EC tell me they know that it is colder than anything seen for 100 years, but they have to tow the line. I am told that the “normal” temps put up each day on the website are being set by looking at the current real temp and inputting something a few degrees warmer, but not too much. It has to be something close. Definitely not the real historical normal, which is around 28. Yesterday, they claimed normal was 20 degrees! Ya right. I just returned from a trip up the valley, and the creeks and rivers are all very swollen. No beach at all at the lake. The run-off is excessive.
There is a heavy snow-pack above 5000 feet, and it is dreary and cold all around. I understand that LA is suffering much the same fate. Cool and wet. As the west coast goes, so does the nation. But the focus is on the heat in the south of the US. I wonder if they are separating the humidex from real temps any more?
‘..continuous rain with low temperatures..’
and it’s not the Rockies we are talking about.
Brilliant!
I’m sure if NOAA could get their models involved, they could make it all go away.
I like this quote from NOAA regarding their models…..
=========================================================================
SNODAS Model Adjustments:
A model adjustment was done on July 5 across much of the West. With the exception of the Northern Rockies and the Yellowstone region, water was conservatively removed from the snowpack to account for rapid melt. Because much of the remaining snowpack is in heavily forested regions (Sierra Nevada, Cascades, etc.) and observing stations are usually in forest clearings, in some cases the model was left to melt at a slightly slower rate than the observations to more closely follow a likely snowpack depletion pattern under heavy forest cover. In the Northern Rockies and the Yellowstone region, the model was melting the snowpack faster than what was observed at several SNOTEL sites. Therefore, water was added back into the model, particularly at the highest elevations.
==========================================================================
Rapid melt ?
Just about every news outlet that covered the snow melt said the exact opposite.
Many were grateful that the snow melt was slowed, due to cooler temperatures.
Heavily forested regions my ass.
I guess the skiers/boarders out there are were weaving their way through dense trees during the 4th…
And our taxes pay for this.
Brilliant !
The second reason is the continuous rain with low temperatures in the region.
The key is stuck weather patterns.
Same thing happened in Russia last year, now it would seem that the weather patterns are even more stationary than ever. Have y’all been watching this progression that started in 2008?
The first sign of it was weather fronts that stretched 2,000, then 3,000 miles in latitude.
The only reports we have of weather east of the Mississippi from the early 1800’s was that of the Lewis & Clark Expedition. They spoke of the oppresive scorching heat of the Plains, then the miserable damp of the Pacific Northwest.
keeperofthederp says:
“it’s at 13,000 feet!”
The interview was with a tourist in the area, who said “I came from Nanjing City of Jiangsu Province. I’ve come to Sichuan for a tour. I never saw snow in July. It is indeed rare. Even in winter, I rarely saw snow in Nanjing.”
But if you understand this point, she looks around 25-30 years old and the (estimated) past 10+ years of her life solar activity has been in decline and the10-20 or so years before that, solar activity was increasing and reaching it’s peek, then you can under stand why she believes that snow at 13,000 feet in that area is an unusual event for her.
QUOTE
Meteorologists offer two reasons for the sudden snowfall in summer. The first is the altitude of Zheduo Mountain, which is more than 13,000 feet high. The second reason is the continuous rain with low temperatures in the region.
UNQUOTE
So high altitude, moisture and low temperatures causes snow fall.
I see.
Thank you.
One question – when was the area under study moved into such a snowy place without notice?
Who authorised it?
She or he must be punished.
We cant’ have people causing global freezing without proper authorisation.
It does make the AGW story very thingy and that will never do.
TrueNorthist says:
July 16, 2011 at 6:11 pm
I wonder if they are separating the humidex from real temps any more?
ABC World News Tonight interviewed a meteorologist who did his very best to blur the two.
Even with the forecast, you couldn’t tell which he was referring to.
In the UK summer has been colder and wetter than usual for much of the time.
On the BBC weather forecast for this weekend [From the UK Met Office] the presenter said “Think ‘Autumn’ “!
There was snow skiing at Arapahoe Basin (Colorado) on the 4th of July this year. Here in south eastern Washington state, snow drifts along open ridges in the Blue Mountains at 4,000 feet finally melted during the second week of July. This is the second time I have observed this since the mid 1960s.
@rbateman
It’s still miserable damp in the Pacific Northwest :(( Our summer ration seems to be about 1 day a week so far where I live. (We don’t call it the Olympic Rain Forrest for nothing.) I Understand the Cullen family has opened a bed and breakfast in Forks where they haven’t seen the sun since last September. ( I think I’m exaggerating, but don’t bet your farm on it! )
The Ill Tempered Klavier says:
July 16, 2011 at 7:54 pm
Here in NW Calif., we have had the strangest Thunderstorms. They don’t seem to move, but stay parked all day. No flow. Yesterday had one in Yreka and one in Redding. At the end of the day they just dissipate, but no movement. We had our (Weaverville) turn today.
Remember the movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still”?
anticlimactic says:
July 16, 2011 at 7:36 pm
In the UK summer has been colder and wetter than usual for much of the time.
On the BBC weather forecast for this weekend [From the UK Met Office] the presenter said “Think ‘Autumn’ “!
I was in the UK at the beginning of the month and in Windsor Great Park the Holly bushes all had berries as did the Rowan trees, sycamore trees had bunches of brown winged seeds and pine trees had dropped many cones. This was in the first days of July.
So yes – think autumn.
Boy, when the alarmists claim Chinese “aerosols” have a cooling effect, they’re not kidding!
Next time we get a heat wave, I’m gonna throw some Chinese coal in my wood stove.
I skied on the 4th near the top of Highway 50 (Echo Summit) I took the boat ferry across Echo Lakes and hiked up a peak the locals call Baldy. The snow was excellent and I managed to ski most of the way back to the boat dock with a few portages. Very unusual for that late in the season. Lots of water was flowing and the temps were very hot. A friend and I went back today and skied the same hill. Quite a bit of snow has melted or sublimated since the prior trip but we were able to ski a continuous line of snow from the top of Baldy to the flats at the bottom of the hill, well over a 1000 vertical feet. I think Baldy summit is 9200. Again the snow was excellent with very little sun cupping near the top. This is a most unusual snow year for the Northern Sierra. If this is the result of global warming I am a fan.
Richard Sharpe
July 16, 2011 at 4:46 pm
Could you speak English?
Here in PDX so far this year we’ve had 136 days below normal 59 days above normal and 1 day of normal temperature for a 1.07 Deg F below normal for the year so far. 1.07 deg below normal really is quite a bit this far into the year. Stuck weather patterns is for sure the operative word. The forecasters in this afternoons weather discussion said that a upper level trough is expected to be stuck over the West Coast for the foreseeable future (which translated means for at least the next week and a half). Summertime the northern part of the Subtropical High is supposed to dominate (with weak short waves bringing in occasional clouds), not troughs.
In-laws in Shanghai say the temps have been hovering in the 35-38 degree range, typical for Shanghai in the summer. It’s like living in a roaster! Meanwhile in Colorado, snowfields in late June blocked most of the high passes above Stillwater Reservoir, which is the headwaters of the Yampa River, one of the five main river basins in Colorado. National Resource Conservation Serivice says the basin’s June snow-water equivalent was 312% of average. And here in Denver it’s been raining every day for the last three weeks, and a boy drowned in a culvert the other day. Urban rivers are running fast and full. Do people delivering the daily harangue about drought and melting Arctic sea ice want a different perspective? They sure don’t need to look very far.
Rushing round finding every bit of colding news and posting it doesn’t make for a good look mate, and rushing to print whenever the Arctic sea ice spikes to get anywhere near normal as if it proved that global warming wasn’t happening is also a bit desperate, I’m hoping that those in the warmist camp are wrong but I’m also getting very dissapointed by those trying to prove them so.
I witnessed fresh snow at eight hundred feet elevation on Vancouver Island this week.
Oh and seeing my breath at sea level. This is AGW. OK I see…
Here on the farm north of Seattle we have hundreds of acres of hay we can’t cut because we can’t get any temps above 70 deg. F or more the two days in a row without rain. First, we had no spring (the coldest April on record); now we’re having no summer. I can’t remember anything like this since the 1970’s.
Send some global warming, Al. Quick, before we lose the whole crop.
east of the Mississippi — rbateman says: @ 6:58
west ?
John F. Hultquist says:
July 17, 2011 at 12:42 am
west of the Mississippi.
After that, it’s Phil Jones compilation of Sitka, Alaska 1833-1988 (CRU99)
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/TempGr/Sitka.GIF
plus this for AMS: 640 MONTHLY WEATHER REVIEW. DECEMBER 1898
“ARE OUR WINTERS CHANGING’?
By ALFRED J. HENRY.
describing big freezes in the Deep South in the 1830’s followed closely by the big 12-year Columbia River Basin drought of the 1840’s
http://wa-node.gis.washington.edu/usgsbrd/fme-gedalof-ColumbiaRiverFlow.html
Now toss in this big heat wave in the South/Midwest plus PNW way below normal and you get a tantalizing view from afar of 200yr cycles in US Climate.
PeterT 10:14 pm
It is legitimate cherry picking my son (just like the warmists used to do) but now that it’s cooling the Denialati are determined to keep track of reality and prove we have no need of a CO2 tax.
It has been cool and wet this year in eastern Ontario for spring and summer thus far, unusually so.
Temps are below normal for both days and nights yet E.Can insists were having a hot summer. Other than the last week or so of actual summer weather temps and sunshine, just before it arrived we had 8 and 9 C nights for temps after 18 C and 19 C days. For most of May, June and first week in July – cloudy all day with rain sometimes, then skies clear at sunset/dusk and remain so over night which usually brought cooler than normal temps. Actually used the wood stove during the unusually cold summer nights, also helps with the dampness and at no extra rip-off greenie tax grabs on the monthly hydro bill.
No sounds of the too hot bugs yet either -cicadas.
When a recently asked a bunch of hip and kind and ‘concerned’ folksy (yet, ever so smart) folks about a similar cold/snowy event, I was told by several of the caring and sensitive ones that I need to learn the difference between ‘weather’ and ‘climate’. “It’s only weather”, they said and the chorus chimed in “yes yes yes- only weather”.
When I suggested that all of the late- season snow pack would help fill western states’ reservoirs, they told me I needed to understand that it was proof of global warming: “Warmer air holds more moisture and therefore it snows more was the reason, you see”, and again the chorus-“Yes Yes Yes- proof of Global Warming”.
When I dared to suggest that the current drought and subsequent very hot weather in Oklahoma and the South West right now was just like similar droughts during a La Nina event and many ‘scientists’ were already saying that no ‘Global Warming’ was involved, the sensitive ones turned snarly and told me I needed to really learn that , “It isn’t Global Warming, it’s Global Climate Disruption and that the drought is proof positive of Global Warming”. Again a chorus of “Yes Yes Yes Climate Disruption and the drought proves Global Warming”
I also learned about this time that all of the wonderful hip and cool ones were convinced that I was thick as a brick and they were now all quite angry at having to explain all of this to one so dim as me.
When I pointed out that they were claiming all sides of each argument to maintain their belief structure, I learned that I must apparently “Work for a major oil company and am obviously corrupt”.
I’m fairly certain that the chorus chimed in “Yes Yes Yes corrupt”,, but I couldn’t really hear them, I was laughing so hard (and no longer welcome among the enlightened and concerned.)
At 40°N in the Rocky Mtns of Colorado, Trail Ridge Road is billed as the Highest paved through road in the US. It is at about 12,000 feet. At that altitude and latitude it can and does snow any month of the year. The flora are living in tundra, tree line is about 10,000 feet.
The weathers weird now. Global Warming makes it cooler – scietifically proved like in the day after tommorow. It must be nice to have some snow, or sunshine, or any other weather but rain, I suppose. The weirdest part must be when you’re on your summer holiday to China and it starts snowing.
Well, that wasn’t very witty. Sorry about that
I’ve been very amused to see the comments on an Australian ‘self-sufficient, sustainable, etc.’ magazine website…a lot of whose contributors subscribe to the Global Warming myth. There have been many, many moans about the cold winter they’ve been having DownUnder! Our daughter and son also have told us about their cold winter; and the ski resorts have fantastic snow (look at the weather reports in ‘The Age’ of Melbourne).
I have found this year’s ‘Summer’ here in the UK to be somewhat lacking in ‘good’ (ie. warm weather). We had our summer back in April. There are ripening rowan berries nearby; but on the other hand, my agapanthus are flowering a lot later than usual. I haven’t needed the aircons either. Do they think we still believe them when they tell us we are having ever-hotter summers?
TrueNorthist says:
July 16, 2011 at 6:11 pm
About the “official” topping up of temps a couple of degrees C by Environment Canada: I have emailed The Weather Network (re Ottawa temps) without reply that my forecasts over the last couple of years have been more accurate than theirs by simply docking 2C off their forecasts. They also give the two week forward graph always rising in the last week, only to have to bend the curve back down as we approach the days. The belief in AGW is so dominant that they are forecasting to average out to at least “normal” rather than following what their instruments are trying hard to tell them. I think it would be a good study to take the forecasts of a dozen sceptical meteorologists and those of a dozen AGW mets and compare with each other and the reality of what happened. I think this would be a powerful demonstration.
Solar wind is about to blast us from large coronal holes. Be looking like a bomb went off. Or two bombs in places already wilted and parched.
1930’s level volcanic activity, stratospere mostly clear. Baby, I’m going to be too hot to handle!
Ian W says, July 16, 2011 at 8:53 pm:
anticlimactic says:
July 16, 2011 at 7:36 pm
In the UK summer has been colder and wetter than usual for much of the time.
On the BBC weather forecast for this weekend [From the UK Met Office] the presenter said “Think ‘Autumn’ “!
I was in the UK at the beginning of the month and in Windsor Great Park the Holly bushes all had berries as did the Rowan trees, sycamore trees had bunches of brown winged seeds and pine trees had dropped many cones. This was in the first days of July.
So yes – think autumn.
====================
Some birds are also thinking autumn …
Black-headed gulls flock to the city during autumn and winter, to feed on the garbage dumps, and they rest on the playing fields in the city. In spring and summer, they move to the heaths up the valleys.
The first of them have already come back from those grounds – and the second half of July has only just started.
Ordinarily, I would expect to see them from end of August/beginning of September.
What is going on?
I traveled that road (or one that looked like it) many times in 1985 to 1986. It was always muddy, traffic was often stopped. It consisted mostly of “three legged chickens”, bicycles, & military style trucks. The few automobiles, none American , blew their horns continuously. That rock cliff face in the background was always occupied by about 100 workers chipping away with hand tools.
Viv Evans says:
July 17, 2011 at 10:55 am
What’s going on? The birds are telling you something. Listen to them.
Gary Pearse says:
July 17, 2011 at 9:01 am
Don’t look now, but ABC World News last night had the Texas/midwest heat wave spread clear out to Northern California, where it’s 15 degrees below normal. Obvioulsy, their report was meant to scare people, rather than accurately portray what’s really going on.
hmmm, change is happening everywhere. Mother nature is not predictable.
Isnt china the biggest country after the USA for greenhourse gases….
Meanwhile, here in NorCal:
MAIN ITEM OF INTEREST TODAY IS A LOW SPINNING OFF THE NORCAL COAST THAT IS ASSOCIATED WITH A SHORTWAVE TROF. COASTAL RADARS ARE SHOWING SOME ACTIVITY WELL TO OUR NW AND THERE REMAINS AN OUTSIDE CHANCE THAT SOME OF THIS COULD MOVE INTO THE NORTH BAY LATER THIS MORNING INTO THE AFTERNOON HOURS. CURRENT GRIDS DO SHOW A SLIGHT CHANCE FOR SHOWERS AND THAT WILL BE KEPT IN. MOSGUIDE THUNDERSTORM POPS ALSO INDICATED A 2-5% CHANCE OF SOME THUNDER OVER THE FAR NORTH BAY.
===================================
Given it’s nearly one month after the Solstice, the question then becomes, is this a very late Spring system or a very early Fall system? I vote the latter. This sort of cut off low is very typical of October.
The Ill Tempered Klavier says:
July 16, 2011 at 7:54 pm
Here in NW Calif., we have had the strangest Thunderstorms. They don’t seem to move, but stay parked all day. No flow.
====================================
That’s like Munich or Salzburg.