It just doesn’t get any better than this. The Occupy Wall Street Mob had a “Climate Justice Day” scheduled for today. I don’t think they figured on a “Nightmare on Wall Street” irony like this.
I notice Bill McKibben isn’t there. Strange how he talks a big game about climate and weather events becoming more extreme, but when the going gets tough… well you know. No mention of this comedic slap in the face by nature on the 350.org website.
Here’s the record statement from NOAA/NWS:
SXUS71 KOKX 300633 RER NYC RECORD EVENT REPORT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW YORK NY 0221 AM EDT SUN OCT 30 2011 ...RECORD DAILY MAXIMUM SNOWFALL SET AT CENTRAL PARK NY... A RECORD SNOWFALL OF 2.9 INCHES WAS SET AT CENTRAL PARK NY YESTERDAY...OCTOBER 29. THIS BREAKS THE OLD RECORD OF TRACE SET IN 2002. ...RECORD OCTOBER SNOWFALL AMOUNT SET FOR CENTRAL PARK NY... CENTRAL PARK RECORDED 2.9 INCHES OF SNOWFALL ON OCTOBER 29 2011 SINCE SNOWFALL RECORDS BEGAN IN 1869...AN INCH OF SNOWFALL HAS NEVER BEEN RECORDED IN THE MONTH OF OCTOBER. THE LAST TWO TIMES THAT MEASURABLE SNOW FELL IN THE MONTH OF OCTOBER WAS...OCTOBER 21 1952 WITH 0.5 INCHES AND OCTOBER 30 1925 WITH 0.8 INCHES. THEREFORE...THIS BREAKS THE DAILY RECORD FOR SNOWFALL IN OCTOBER AND THE MOST SNOWFALL EVER RECORDED IN THE MONTH OF OCTOBER.
The irony, it b-b-b-burns:
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ferd berple says:
October 30, 2011 at 7:01 pm
……………Amazing all the extra snow made possible by the earth warming. Based on a straight line projection from historical records, it wont be long before we have 400+ days of snow a year.
_____________________________
Darn it Ferd, now I have to clean the tea off my screen again.
What a great way to high light the idiocy of projecting a straight line into infinity!
R. Gates says:
October 30, 2011 at 7:06 pm
“The saddest thing about this storm was the great number of very old trees that have been lost. My sister lives in Portland ME, and a 100 year old maple in front of her house was split in half by the heavy snow.”
Not sad for all the stuff that’s quickly going to grow in place of where that single tree was hogging up all the sunlight, water, and nutrients. In a normal forest that wouldn’t have happened because as the canopy sags branches from adjacent trees push against each other and the downward force gets redistributed sideways. It’s sad that this particular maple was anthropogenically deprived of the strength in numbers it gets from being a member of a natural ecosystem. I think cultivated lawns ought to outlawed. So there.
misterjohnqpublic says:
October 30, 2011 at 2:10 pm
p.s. – I wonder if AGW’ers flog themselves at night before they go to bed? Just curious.
No. They used to read their own propaganda.
Now they read about the real world.
Flogging was the version of the pre-mass media times.
Can we get past the damned trees and get on with how unprepared we have become to snow and ice? Global warming hysteria is one of the reasons our brains have shriveled and become lulled to the necessity of being prepared for bad weather, be it cold or hot, wet or dry.
This has happened everywhere. Even in Pendleton, Oregon (very much a western conservative town) the use of wood burning stoves is discouraged and even banned from burning if there is another heat source. Many households have thus turned away from having this “works in all kinds of weather” just-in-case heat source. And is many cases, it isn’t even a choice. The house I rent has no such stove and is entirely dependent on electricity for heat.
Maybe it’s time we re-visited a wise old grandmother, someone who lived through all kinds of hot, cold, dry, and wet conditions. Be prepared for weather catastrophy. It is your own responsibility. Not that of your elected officials. Maybe deaths of people (not the damned trees) could have been avoided.
Kasuha says:
October 30, 2011 at 11:15 pm
I can’t help it but apparently whenever it is hot, “alarmists” mistake weather for climate – and when it’s too cold the same happens with “skeptics”. It was funny at the start but it’s not anymore.
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Skeptics are just having a good laugh at Mother Nature’s timing. WE KNOW that weather is not climate. However it is really hard not to rub Hansen and Mann’s faces in this early snow given the years of bovine excrement throw at us. At least the snow is clean.
Cecil Coupe says:
October 30, 2011 at 11:48 pm
Why is everyone busting on R. Gates comment?
_______________________________
I’m not. I thought it was a great comment and I agree about the trees. I love old trees and hated when “Road Improvements” took down 100 – 300 year old specimens in the various towns I lived in.
Yes I also understand the problem humans have with snow too. When I lived in town in northern NY state, I would grab my snow shovel and put on my cross country skis and go help the elderly neighbors dig out. (I was worried about heart attacks)
I do not see both concerns as being mutually exclusive.
R. Gates @ur momisugly 7.06 on the 30th:
It IS sad about the tree; I’m sorry about that maple. I’m always very upset when a beautiful old tree goes, for whatever reason. I know there are other tragedies to cope with but a big beautiful old tree has a ‘presence’ which is hard to explain to some people (as do mountains have a presence). They feel like special friends. I also feel the same about my old friend ‘Orion’ in the night sky; one good thing about the Autumn is his reappearance for the winter. (When we lived Down Under for a while I had to stand partly upside down to see him properly!).
I’ve planted many trees in my time but it takes so long to produce a really sturdy large specimen.
#
#
Piers Corbyn (@Piers_Corbyn) says:
October 31, 2011 at 4:35 am
Hilarious isn’t it?!
AND EXTRA GOOD NEWS
We at WeatherAction forecast this heavy THUNDERSNOW in NE USA to the day from 30days ahead using our Solar-Lunar-Action-Technique – nothing to do with CO2! http://twitpic.com/7844m5
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
WOW
Now why doesn’t the New York Times/ Wall Street Gerbil print THAT story????
REPLY: Probably because, like the E-Cat Cold fusion thing, Piers doesn’t allow any inspection. – Anthony
If this was literature, this would be poetic justice. I suppose that applies to the theater of the absurd as well as it does literature.
Do they have a definition of climate justice anywhere, or is it just one of those things where if you have to ask,
1) you don’t get it
2) and they know you don’t belong there.
It’s kind of like the “pod people.” Start asking too many questions and the antenna come out.
Pamela Gray says:
October 31, 2011 at 6:27 am
Can we get past the damned trees and get on with how unprepared we have become to snow and ice? ….
__________________________________
Living up north I always carried a bags of sand, shovel ski-mobile suit, food and water. My friends laughed until we got snowed in at work and my bags of sand and shovel got the semi truck stuck across the driveway out of the way.
I agree about the wood stove. In northern MA we had electric heat and a wood stove. We set the electric heat at 40F to prevent the pipes from freezing if the stove went out and heated with the stove.
The really nice thing about a wood stove is it is great for cooking too. I made many of our meals, soups, stews, sauces on that stove.
Now we have a heat pump and I HATE it. I want my wood stove back….. (We have a kerosene heater and coleman stove and a generator for the well as back up)
The cold should at least help to keep the smell down.
Hisownfool:
Welcome to WUWT. Feel free to share your opinions, but be prepared to back them up with hard scientific data. The connection between Hurricane Irene and anthropogenic global warming is a case in point. Irene made landfall as a strong tropical storm: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/27/hurricane-irene-not-packing-much-of-a-punch/. That means we haven’t had a hurricane make landfall in the US since 2008. A little research of hurricane trends (available in articles at this very website) will convince you there is no connection between CO2 emissions and hurricane / tropical storm activity. The northeast was simply well overdue for a hurricane / tropical storm.
Know why those ‘sane climate scientists’ were really bothered? Two reasons: 1) hard scientific data doesn’t support a connection between burning fossil fuels and the once or twice in a lifetime tropical storm that hits the northeast, and 2) people like you can get hard scientific data at sites like this one and see for yourselves.
Read, learn, and enjoy! And yes, we engage in a little more schadenfreude than we probably should. It’s just so hard to resist when those ‘sane climate scientists’ act as their own straight men.
Ralph says:
October 31, 2011 at 2:31 am
> CNN said that up to 58cm had fallen in some areas. Is that right, or have they confused their units?
Lessee, that’s 22.8″. Concord NH the Official NWS reading was 22″. The hills in the southeastern NH had some 30″ (76 cm). Other states had major amounts too. I’m just north of Concord, and was too busy digging into Rossi background to properly measure snow fall, but we had 15″ at midnight and in the morning, there was a fair amount of compaction. (It was pretty fluffy for moist snow, dryer snow would actually have been less deep in some areas!)
One reason for the depth was a good feed of tropical moisture left over from TS Rina.
This storm has completely blown away many records for the whole month throughout the affected area. Only one November in Concord’s history had more than this October.
Several coworkers still don’t have power and probably won’t for a few days. In terms of power loss, this is the 3rd worst, #1 and #2 are an ice storm a few years ago and a wind storm last February.
Maybe if puny mortals get all political with Mother Nature, she’ll do it right back to them.
Repeat after me, “October Surprise.”
Jeremy says:
October 30, 2011 at 11:07 pm
Clearly you’ve never climbed a 100 year old maple tree in your front yard on a fall day or during a partial solar eclipse. Pity.
We had a ggod two feet in Southern New Hampshire, right on the Massachusetts border. As Rick Werme (2:21 AM) says, there was a good deal of compaction. The ground beneath was still warm, and where rocks poke up in my pasture there were dents in the smoothe sweep of snow, as the rocks were warmer than the “grassy surfaces.” I delyed snowblowing, which was a big mistake, as air temperatures rose to near fifty, which made the top of the snow sag as well. The snow didn’t “blow,” and instead came out of the blower like a white stream of milk. The blower would ride up over the snow, and then I’d have to back up and try again. The first swipe was hardest; after that I only took around eight inch slice of snow with my thirty inch blower. It took me four hours to do a long drive I can do in an hour, after a foot and a half of January powder.
Tree damage wasn’t too bad, but we were without power for 32 hours, and without internet for 42. I sure do hate not being able to check weather sites in a storm.
To our south, in Massachusetts, they had less snow but it was warmer and the snow stuck to trees better, and also they had more leaves on their trees, and some places may not get their power back until the end of the week.
Regarding the sad loss of the Gates Family Maple: Sugar Maple trees hit their prime between sixty and eighty years old. After that the heartwood can tend to get a bit punky. The ones most prone to rot are the ones with more than one major trunk. I think water runs down into the crotch of the forks, and causes weakness. I had a fairly big one in my barnyard “get old,” when it was only sixty, and it has lost three out of four trunks in three years, (2 to Irene.) The really massive maples that live to two hundred tend to have single trunks
I note the following blog post from Jeff Masters at Weather Underground (wunderground.com):
“Early season snowfalls and climate change
Naturally, the occurrence of a record early-season snow storm will lead to cries of “what happened to global warming?” Global warming theory does predict that we should see a decrease in early-season and late season snow as the climate warms, since it will not be cold enough to snow. However, the climate models also predict that we may see an increase in the intensity of the strongest winter storms, like the Nor’easter that dumped the record October snows over the Northeast on Saturday, and it is important to realize that snow is not the same thing as cold. Temperatures in the Northeast U.S. were quite cold on Saturday, but no observing station there broke a record for coldest temperature for the day on October 29, according to the National Climatic Data Center. Our climate is still cold enough in October to give us the occasional early-season record snowstorm.”
I would have made no comment at all if there had not been an objection to conservative comment. This is a scientific website but is there anyone without weather?
Some people want to ignore the political side of climate change and to limit or omit comments from conservatives and in doing so limit the argument and not identify the force behind the efforts to change how we live. Research in science does not exist in a bubble or without argument. There is political influence in climate change theory and as such involves everyone. In a free society such as ours or a dictatorship there has got to be public support or censorship or such fear that dialogue ceases.
Pope Pius X1 quote: “Communism teaches and seeks two objectives: unrelenting class warfare and the complete eradication of private ownership”
The two words climate justice makes no sense when put together, I looked it up and it is liberal speak for redistribution of wealth and that is where politics clicks in.
In other words climate justice is defined by communism, the central control of the world’s people and resources.
Climate justice is a call to ignore free enterprise and trade, to take hard earned money and resources from successful nations and distribute to other nations in the name of fairness and equality through force. The justification is by something that is not proven and is not happening and is caused by the ever changing name climate change. And of course whoever has the power to decide has dictatorial power.
The occupy Wall Street crowd is flush with demands of rights to be paid for by someone else. The rights of those others, who are expected to pay, such as the individuals who must walk through the paid, the indignant, self-righteous, and unwashed and the clutter to get to work does not matter. While they have a right to demonstrate within the law they have no right to create or destroy rights.
.Perhaps the record snow in Central Park is only a prelude to more snow and maybe Gore is not the only one being taught a lesson by the nonpolitical and un-obliging climate but as Watts said there is humor in the snowfall on that day. That makes the article worth printing.
I’ve ordered snow chains for my Segway.
Was anyone else a touch bit annoyed (maybe bewildered) by the press calling this a “winter storm”. It is easy to be accurate and call it a fall storm or just and October snow fall etc, but a winter storm it was not.
Climate? Just ice.
Yeah, These OWS people are the salt of the Earth.
“Woman charged with pimping teen recruited at Occupy NH rally”
http://www.unionleader.com/article/20111028/NEWS03/710289961
My thesis is that the reduced UV has let the atmosphere become less tall, resulting in a shorter path for heat to leave the planet and colder air out the polar vortex(es) so we ought to have one heck of a nice slide into multi-year colder winters. So far it has held up. About another 1/4 century of it to come, IMHO, so this “ride” will have “legs” for a loooong time. Mr. Gore: Prepare to enter history as one of the great jokes of the era. Gotta love it… We’re also getting an ‘up close and personal’ look at the ability of emotion and pre-formed prejudice to stand up in the face of facts, reality, and evidence. It ought to make a marvy study in abnormal psychology. Mass delusion writ large.
So yes, I’ll take my Schadenfreude served cold. Very cold. On ice even. “On the rocks”, neither stirred, nor shaken. Just “as it is”… Sipped neatly by the fire of truth…
thedudeabides says:
October 31, 2011 at 11:12 am
“I note the following blog post from Jeff Masters at Weather Underground (wunderground.com):”
Maybe Jeff needs to see this:
http://booty.org.uk/booty.weather/climate/1900_1949.htm
http://booty.org.uk/booty.weather/climate/1950_1974.htm
http://booty.org.uk/booty.weather/climate/1975_1999.htm
I have picked out some notable weather events (see below), some of which I experienced myself, but stopped as there were too many. Unfortunately I cannot assume that the content in the links or the extracts below are self evident so I want to know how we are to judge when the effects of CC will show itself above the noise and vagaries of the weather as it is?
1950 (February):
1. One of the WETTEST Februarys across England & Wales. Using the EWP series, it ranks in the ‘top-5’ of such months.
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1952 (15th/16th August): THE LYNMOUTH DISASTROUS FLOODS
After frequent heavy rainfall had over the previous couple of weeks saturated the hinterland of Exmoor above Lynton and Lynmouth, another heavy and persistent rainfall event started around midday on the 15th and lasted for over 21 hours, with estimated rainfalls of over 11 inches (~275mm): Approximately 135mm (out of a total of 228.6mm) is thought to have fallen in just 5 hours at the gauge at Longstone Barrow, on Exmoor.
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1953 (31st January/1st February): THE NORTH SEA STORM SURGE (UK-EAST COAST FLOODS: LOW COUNTRIES MAJOR DISASTER)
A northerly severe gale / violent storm (mean speeds up to 70 knots / 80 mph, with gusts in exposed areas in excess of 100 knots / 115 mph) developed as a depression (which had formed near the Azores) deepened as it moved east-northeast just to the north of Scotland (between Fair Isle and south Shetland 00UTC and 06UTC on the 31st January), then, still deepening, turned & accelerated southeastwards across the North Sea, making landfall in the Elbe-Weser estuary in NW Germany late evening of the 31st. As a result of the storm, the ferry ‘Princess Victoria’ foundered during a crossing of the Irish Sea, with the loss of 132 souls. Much damage (loss of timber) was done to afforested areas in Scotland too.
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1954 (Annual):
1. HIGHEST RAINFALL (UK) in any one calendar year known: 6527 mm at Sprinkling Tarn, Cumbria (was Cumberland).
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1955 (May):
1. On the 17th May 1955, the heaviest SNOWFALL in London in May for about 100 years,
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1958 (January): RECORD HIGH UK MID-WINTER TEMPERATURE
1. At Aber (Gwynedd/N.Wales), a MAXIMUM TEMPERATURE of 18.3degC was recorded on the 27th – the (equal) highest known for the UK (and Wales) for January. (see also 1971 & 2003).
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1958 (5th September): HEAVIEST HAILSTONE
1. What is thought to be the heaviest recorded hailstone to fall in the U.K. fell at Horsham, Sussex. 141g (5 oz) is usually listed with diameters of up to 6cm. Regarded as one of the most violent hailstorms in the modern day record and accompanied by a tornado.
1974/75 (Winter):
1.It was the 2nd MILDEST winter in England and Wales since 1869, and notably SNOWLESS
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1975 (June):
1. SNOW and SLEET occurred in June as far south as the London area during the first few days of June 1975 (sleet as far south as Portsmouth). (also noted on 12th Jun 1791). The snow melted away almost immediately, except over the higher parts of central and northern England. This is thought to be the first time since July 1888, that snow has been reported so widely so far south in summer. More than 10 cm of FRESH SNOW over the highlands of Scotland. SNOW (circa 2.5cm/1 inch) stops play (subsequently abandoned) at a CRICKET MATCH [ Derbyshire v. Lancashire ] at Buxton, Derbyshire on the 2nd. (some GPE, Manley)
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1975 (14th August): THE HAMPSTEAD STORM
A very localised, but exceptional heavy convective storm led to rainfall of some 170mm in approximately 2.5 hours. It occurred during a notable heat-wave, and is thought to be the highest intensity of rainfall in 100 years.
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1975/76 (Winter):
1. For England and Wales (EWR), it was one of the six DRIEST winters in the previous 100 years, and the third consecutive season with less rain than usual: summer and autumn 1975 were also dry.
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1975/1976 (two-year drought):
1. The famous DROUGHT of 1975/76 was memorable for its severity over most of the British Isles, and also for its exceptional persistence. It produced the highest values for a drought index for south-east England in three hundred years. Not since 1749/50 had a period from one summer to the following spring been so dry in southern Britain.
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1976 (January):
1. The GALE late on the 2nd (into the 3rd) in 1976 was one of the most severe to affect the British Isles in the twentieth century.
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1976 (Summer):
1. It was easily the DRIEST, SUNNIEST and WARMEST summer (June/July/August) in the 20th century (at this date, but see 1995 – which is now regarded as the driest). Only a few places registered more than half their average summer rainfall. In the CET record, it was the WARMEST summer in that series.
2. It was the WARMEST summer in the Aberdeen area since at least 1864.
3. It was the DRIEST summer since 1868 in Glasgow.
4. Probably the HOTTEST summer for over three centuries.
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1976 (September+October):
1. For England and Wales as a whole (EWR), it was the WETTEST such spell in the entire record … back to 1727.
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1978 (18th/19th February): BLIZZARD/HEAVY SNOWFALL OVER SOUTHWESTERN BRITAIN.
1. Ranking alongside the worst snowstorms of the century, particularly that of December 1927, this SEVERE BLIZZARD affected southwestern England, parts of the SW Midlands and much of south and mid-Wales
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1978 (9th May): LARGE DIURNAL RANGE
1. Large diurnal range: 29 C (52.2 F), from -7 C (19.4 F) to 22 C (71.6 F) at Tummel Bridge (Tayside) on 9 May 1978. (SEE ALSO 1936/AUGUST & 1995/DECEMBER)
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1978 (Autumn):
1. For England and Wales as a whole, the DRIEST autumn for at least 150 years
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1979 (13th/14th August): THE FASTNET STORM
This poorly forecast storm approached southwestern waters just as over 300 yachts were about to approach and round the Fastnet Rock (off SW Ireland) on a race out of Cowes on the Isle of Wight.
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1980 (November):
1. SNOW lay in Jersey from the 5th to 7th with 8cm at St. Helier, an event thought to be without parallel for the time of year in the Channel Islands.
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1981 (Annual):EXCEPTIONAL TORNADO NUMBERS (UK)
An exceptional year for TORNADO outbreaks: total for the year 150 (84 definite & 66 probable, mostly in two outbreaks in October & November),
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1982 (9th/10th January): COLDEST NIGHT IN ENGLAND (KNOWN RECORD) COLDEST WHOLE U.K. 20TH CENTURY
1. With a morning minimum temperature of -26.1degC, this reading from Newport, Shropshire, represents the lowest night minimum temperature for England known. On the same night, Braemar, Aberdeenshire in Scotland equalled the lowest all-UK temperature of -27.2degC, previously set in 1895.
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1986 (20th March): HIGHEST GUST .. ANY STATION IN U.K.
The Cairn Gorm automatic station, at an altitude of 1074m, recorded a gust of 150 knots (173 mph), beating its own previous record for the U.K. set in 1967.
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1987 (evening 15th/morning 16th October): THE GREAT OCTOBER STORM (AN ‘ENGLISH’ HURRICANE!)
After a wet period, and when trees were still in full leaf, an explosively deepening storm moving northeastwards from the Bay of Biscay towards the central North Sea, produced winds of well over 100 mph across the SE part of England after midnight 16th – not out of ordinary for northern Britain, but unprecedented in the modern record for this populated area of the U.K.
jorga ka
You said you can’t find anything to question in R Gates statement. Allow me.
“100 year old maple in front of her house was split in half by the heavy snow. That fact alone tells you how rare this snowstorm was, as trees don’t get that big and old if these kinds of storms are frequent.”
One can’t draw a simple inference that an event is unprecendented because a tree that is a 100 years old came down in a storm. It is entirely possible that the fact it was so big was the primary contributor to it coming down. Years ago when a wind storm came through Hastings Minnesota, hundreds of trees were uprooted. The majority of them were some of the biggest, healthiest ones. The reason? They had more sail area for the wind to act on. The same could hold true for grandma’s maple. A smaller, younger tree would not collect the same amount of weight in snow as a healthy 100 year old one.