Climate Poetic justice in the land of ETS. From the Sydney Morning Herald:
Freak snowfall has NZ reeling
WELLINGTON: New Zealand is shivering through a one-in-50-year polar blast that has brought snow to much of the country, the weather service says.
A bitterly cold southerly blast has caused snow to fall in areas of New Zealand which do not usually receive it, making roads impassable in many areas on both islands, closing airports and cutting power to thousands.
Staff at Wellington Zoo took advantage of the first major snowfall in the capital for 40 years to give the visiting penguin ”Happy Feet” a dip in an icy saltwater pool.
…
The MetService head forecaster, Peter Kreft, said the polar blast was ”of the order of a 50-year” event and warned it could last for days. The level of snow that had fallen in Wellington had not been seen since at least the 1970s, he said.
In Wanganui in the North Island, snow had settled for the first time since 1974, Constable Simon Beswarick said.
…
The MetService has forecast the heavy snow to continue today before easing tomorrow. It is unlikely to continue down to sea level.
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I have lived in Auckland since 1955, so I don’t remember the 1939 storm. I do remember seeing a white cap on one of the eastern suburbs volcanic cones one winter morning about 1960 or so. There was no ground frost so it couldn’t have been that and it disappeared pretty quickly after sunrise.
On Thursday, 3rd June 1976, it was sleeting in downtown Auckland (CBD). That’s not quite snow, but it’s close.
It snowed in the high Wellington suburbs (Newlands et al) over the night of the 6th-7th June that year. On the morning of the 7th (I arrived in Wellington on the 6th—a Sunday), cars coming into the city still had several inches of snow on their rooves, and the Rimutaka hills to the north had a good covering.
Between then and now, some snow has fallen around Auckland suburbs overnight during some cold spells—at least twice if my memory serves. These falls were all gone by sunrise.
Over the early to middle 1970s, I remember cold (frosty) dry Julys. South Island farmers have often had to scramble to save their August lambs from a sudden snow fall.
This cold patch is really nothing new. This all happens about once a decade +/- a few years.
What is unusual is the weather system alignment producing this one. This time we haven’t been battered by a storm (it missed :-).
It proves that we are most definitely doomed.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
August 16, 2011 at 7:40 am
“All 50 US states broke heat records this summer.
Hardly. The Pacific Northwest, Washington, Oregon have been COLD COLD COLD through July. It has only been remotely summer like for the past two weeks.
http://www.komonews.com/weather/blogs/scott/122804029.html
Spring 2011: A broken record of broken records
By Scott Sistek
Story Created: May 29, 2011 at 3:06 PM PDT
Is breaking records is starting to sound like a broken record? It is if you’re tracking how this spring stacks up against the previously coldest spring months in Seattle.
“Hardly. The Pacific Northwest, Washington, Oregon have been COLD COLD COLD through July. It has only been remotely summer like for the past two weeks.”
We have not hit the 90’s even once this year at the WA/OR border.
Here in Christchurch (NW suburb 5km from city centre), we had about a day and a half of intermittent snow (Sunday night to Tuesday morning). Since Tuesday afternoon, it has mostly been light rain, with temperatures hovering above zero. Much, but not all of the snow has melted. It is not pleasant outside, because of the combination of cold, wet and wind (but the wind is nowhere near as strong as during the storm proper). The forecast now is for a couple of nights of frost, no doubt with some black ice on roads.
The wind has been from the south since Saturday/Sunday, coming straight from Antarctica, and is forecast to change only on Friday/Saturday. This will mean something like 5-7 days of constant wind stream from polar regions. The log burner has been on constantly for 3 days so far – I took the precaution of stacking a week’s firewood in the porch.
Must be Quote of the Week:
Pascvaks says:
August 16, 2011 at 3:59 am
Are all the Hobbits OK?
Oh, ye of little faith!
See, ETS works!
A miracle, indeed!
(/sarc)
Here in Christchurch, the wind is still from the south. We have had nearly 2 days of near-constant rain, but it is so cold that it has failed to completely melt the snow!
Have any of the ‘Brain-boxes” on this site thought to Google the actual global average temperature. The latest months satellite average temp can be found by a Google for ‘Roy Spencer’ (University of Huntsville Alabama) Mr Spencer is a practicing climate scientist and ‘skeptic’. The record will disappoint most on this site. It continues to show a clear upward trend – despite a quite sun & negative PDO.
Sophocles,
I am of a similar vintage to you having spent most of the last 54 years on the Lower North Island’s west coast I can relate to those small events of the ’70s, but in no way do they compare with this event. having read about the July (and even August) 1939 event I would have to say that for nation-wide impact this 2011 event can only be compared to 1939, and possibly 1904 (I have found less info on that one so far).
I guess if you don’t live in New Zealand, it’s just some tiny joint at the bottom of the Pacific that pops up in conversations or makes the news about once a decade or five. Has any Kiwi become a worldwide household name since Ed Hillary climbed Everest? Can’t think of one. Even the Aussies — apart from racegoers, rugger-buggers, leagueites, Queensland real estate agents and now Tassie apple growers — tend to ignore us, although their coppers are kept on their toes by some of our more enterprising expats from time to time.
And that’s maybe why, when the Christchurch earthquake hit earlier this year, I had a few emails from abroad asking if I was OK. As I’m eight degrees of latitude north of the quake’s epicentre, the question was as daft as asking someone in Lexington, Ky, back in 2005 how they were coping with Hurricane Katrina.
Here’s the thing about New Zealand’s weather . . . it’s varied. There’s a bloke comes on TV One’s news every night and has three goes, amounting to about ten minutes in total, trying to explain it and predict it. The job is so difficult that three or four times a week a sheila has to take over.
Basically, here’s how the place lines up weatherwise. The deep south is cold, bloody cold, freeze your tits off cold. The far north is temperate, bordering subtropical, very pleasant. The places in between are warmer than the deep south and cooler than the far north. Because of mountains and prevailing winds and other factors, various areas have their own mini-climates.
Just like everywhere else on the planet.
So if someone in Dunedin posts an opinion on the current cold snap — and reckons it’s nothing out of the ordinary — then keep in mind that the poster is speaking about his own limited area and his opinion is worth as much overall as a Lexingtonian’s would be about weather in New Orleans.
Taphonomic says:
August 16, 2011 at 9:32 am
It’s hard to blame the Kiwis for ETS. They got screwed on the Kyoto deal.
**********************************
Mmmmmmmm. Maybe.
As I recall, the Kyoto deal was originally reported as being a great triumph. I forget the details and the exact figures — and I wasn’t particularly interested back then — but early headlines suggested that Treasury had done its sums and New Zealand was in for a billion-dollar windfall.
The back-slapping had hardly ceased when the “Oops” headlines appeared . . . Treasury had recast the figures, discovered that the Europeans had pulled a swifty, and New Zealand was now in a billion-dollar hole.
With a change of government — from centre left to centre right — and the Copenhagen fiasco, plenty of Kiwis expected New Zealand to slip out of the Kyoto nonsense.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be. Politicians who’d been climate realists — some stridently so — when in opposition were now pushing the ETS like 19th century missionaries in Africa touting the Holy Bible.
As with most occurrences of human behaviour, odd or otherwise, this one has the usual one-word explanation . . . money. No politician, whether he’s to the right of Reagan or to the left of Lenin, or anywhere in between, can resist the lure of a new tax.
With things like the Christchurch earthquake and the Rugby World Cup, an ageing population and an over-generous welfare scheme, the current government have bills to pay and promises to keep. To them, global warming is manna from heaven.
John Tee
Have any of the ‘Brain-boxes” on this site thought to Google the actual global average temperature.
Yep and if you use the link that Anthony provides, you will see that at 14,000 feet, almost every day this year has been a lot colder than its equivalent last year. None has been warmer. Seems to hold good for most levels of the atmosphere. That’s what it feels like down here, too.
“John Tee says:
August 17, 2011 at 1:00 pm
Have any of the ‘Brain-boxes” on this site thought to Google the actual global average temperature. The latest months satellite average temp can be found by a Google for ‘Roy Spencer’ (University of Huntsville Alabama) Mr Spencer is a practicing climate scientist and ‘skeptic’. The record will disappoint most on this site. It continues to show a clear upward trend – despite a quite sun & negative PDO.”
Have you checked AQUA ch05 lately? It has been falling like a rock since August 6 and on August 15 it was 0.45 C below the 2010 mark. It is no doubt reflecting the ENSO which has also been dropping like a rock lately and is now -0.46 which is just slightly above the La Nina mark of -0.50.
Here in Christchurch it’s getting steadily a bit warmer each day, but it’s still cool, and the wind is in the south (from the Antarctic) for the 6th straight day. Log burner in its 5th day of continuous operation (previously never did more than 2).
To whoever mentioned warm April in UK…
Have you been in the country for the past 4 months? I have lived here for 16 years, and that’s the coolest I’ve experienced here. Half the days the temp doesn’t get past 20. This is freaky and might I add, cold. Today it felt like Autum. Yes, April was the warmest, but the rest of the year sure isn’t.
Polar blast definitively over here in Christchurch. Warm, still and sunny today (no clouds). Log burner finally not needed after five and a half days of continuous operation. Over and out.
“John Tee says:
August 17, 2011 at 1:00 pm
Have any of the ‘Brain-boxes” on this site thought to Google the actual global average temperature.”
No global average actually exists and is completely meaningless to boot.