Global Warming alarmists have long claimed that snowfall would soon be a thing of the past in the Swiss Alps, that the glaciers would melt, tourists would leave, and the ski industry would die. There CERTAINLY would not be any snowfall at lower altitudes, or any snowfall even before the official start of autumn. Yet today there fell snow as low as 1200 meters, with heavy falls in St. Moritz, a very early time for a blizzard in the alps.
As reported by NZZ Online:
Translation to English:
Earlier onset of winter in the Alps
Several disabled passes
With the first snow in the mountains in the middle of the winter moved in September. In Graubünden the snow line was at 1,200 meters. In some places the snow piled up to half a meter high. Yet the soil is warm, the white splendor should melt quickly.
(Sda) On Sunday, a cold front moved from west of the Jura and the Bernese Oberland Grisons in the Alps. In the high alpine regions, there was up to half a meter of fresh snow. In parts of the Grisons, the snow line was at 1,200 meters above sea level or even lower. In the Midlands at the weekend when temperatures dropped some heavy rain and thunderstorms to just over 10 degrees. In Valais, the temperatures were on Saturday still climbed to 28 degrees.
In the snow caused traffic in the Alpine passes of disability. According to the traffic information service Viasuisse since Sunday afternoon, the Furka Pass and Klaus are locked. Snow covered are the Gotthard and the Nufenenpass. The entrance to the San Bernardino tunnel is more difficult.
The Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research (SLF) in Davos warns climbers, hunters and hikers in the face of the snowfall to be cautious in steep terrain. Below 3000 meters the snow could slide off on the warm ground. Climbers could also bring fresh-driven snow fields to slip.
Note: There have been no Al Gore sightings in the region recently…
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It by Yoda translated was.
Can we all stop using ‘altitude’ instead of ‘elevation’?
When you’re in high mountains, your ‘altitude’ is still zero, because YOUR’E ON THE GROUND!
(All pilots agree with me.)
@Interstallar Bill I think you’re fighting an uphill battle on this one. 8^D The interchangeable use of altitude and elevation is probably as entrenched as that of power and energy among the general public
To mikelorrey:
Thank you for responding. So you agree, this IS just weather. Good. While I understand your glee (Schadenfreude?) at early snowfall, it is too early to declare this a return to heavy snowfall for the entire season. (Nobody is waxing their boards just yet). IMHO it would be helpful if skeptics did NOT fall into the trap of declaring weather is climate (this raises credibility).
Oh, by the way, how did you determine that “1200 m is pretty low altitude in Switzerland” and what makes you think UHI determines isotherms (& snowlines)? The majority of the population in the Helvetic Confederation lives at below 500m. St. Moritz, where the photo was taken, is > 1700m.
Like I said earlier, nobody said snow would be a thing of the past in Switzerland, that was a Brit (about Great Britain) and he was wrong.
I think you were perhaps a bit hasty, a bit sloppy and slow to admit it.
Kurt in Switzerland
Kurt In switzerland
I am sure you will agree that it is vital to monitor whether this early snow fall is indicative of a returm to colder winters at all levels in Switzerland.
i will selflessly volunteer to come and stay in Switzerland during the winter season and move around the various resorts testing the snow with my skis and report back here next spring on my research. I am looking for generous funders-any takers?
tonyb
I live in northern Italy, the recent heavy snowfall and do not change the situation of this September, and in the Central-Mediterranean Europe will be the warmest since 1900
sorry for my little english
Mr. Lorrey.
Firstly let me thank you for taking the time to create the post and putting together such a lengthy reply. I suspect that blogosphere wages are extremely low and that the greater portion of your compensation comes from our appreciation. Anthony, the mods, and all of the guest posters are greatly appreciated.
And as you know, wIth the exception of a few folks from the radical other side, folks are generally civil around here. In that tradition, D Marshall, Kurt and my posts were polite and we certainly did not deserve this portion of your reply:
“To the detractors: Firstly, I forgot to include the gratuitous “from the weather is not climate department” at the beginning, to make sure those incapable of comprehending irony and sarcasm got the hint.”
The readers who failed to take the time to read the links you provided may have found the story ironic. Some of us who read the links however found your post to be inaccurate. It is fair to say that the irony was lost on us. Had the warmists actually written words consistent with your paraphrasing, maybe it would have been otherwise. But they didn’t.
This blog frequently calls on the other side of the debate to correct the record when their claims aren’t synchronized with reality. See the ongoing discussion of the 15% melt in Greenland, for example.
WUWT typically holds itself accountable to the same standard. I say rightly so.
“Thank you for responding. So you agree, this IS just weather. Good.”
And a hurricane is just a hurricane. You probably don’t realize how much some of us in the US were disgusted (and remain so) by the post-Katrina orgy of blame on AGW. Go back and read the doomsday scenarios that were being spouted at the time. By their reckoning, we should have had five more Katrinas by now. Instead, hurricane activity in the US was virtually unremarkable for the next five years. Global weirding decidely isn’t. We’re having weather like we have for millennia. Sometimes it snows in summer. Sometimes there’s a big hurricane in the Atlantic. Whoop-de-doo. None of it is proof of a theory of climate as it will be 50 years from now.
Here you can see what the early Winter in “Switzerland” looks like:
2012-09-26: Gonergrat: above 10,000 ft T: 45°F: Winter 2011/12 is already gone?!?
http://tinyurl.com/5vbtyn3
No, is wasn’t here yet. It was just a late summer snowfall.
I sent in a report from ZAMG (an official Austrian weather agency) about September 2011 in the Austrian Alp region (and this will be valid for Switzerland as well) from which you can derive that September 2011 was the hottest September since instrumental measurements started at around 1850 in Austria. Only one tiny spell with early snow was disrupting the warm summerlike month!
Of course on this website only the tiny spell (fluctuation in weather) is inflated to a huge climate item but the record breaking hot September is fully denied by the editor of this website, that is really cherry picking!
Although they had more than 15” snow in Arosa on September 19, Meteoswiss states:
“September 2011 was again one of the warmest in the MeteoSwiss data series since 1864. The
positive temperature deviation from the 1961-90 mean temperature was to 2-3 degree…. Lugano had the warmest September on record”.
Looks like “Early Winter in Switzerland”? No it was a prolonged summer with a snow inteermezzo.