Time lapse video of the 2013 Snowpocalypse in the Northeast

EXTREME WEATHER PROVES GLOBAL WARMING (/sarc)
The great snowstorm that swept the greater portion of the United States on February 7 and 8 was worse than that memorable bliizard of March, 1888, in three ways – in wind, temperature, and area affected.
Only in the snowfall was the storm of 1888 greater. The wind this time averaged 60 miles an hour, against 50 in the blizzard of 1888. The temperature hovered about zero, while in 1888 it was five degrees above.
Five and one-half inches of snow fell now, against 2ft then. In the area of the storm, however, is the greatest difference noted. The blizzard swept almost the entire country, instead of a mere radius of 400 miles around the city. The snow swept down on the city and took full possession. It was driven along with blinding force by a furious north-west gale of bitter coldness. It was so dry and light that it was piled up in great heaps and ridges in every sheltered point, so that snow was drifted so high in the streets that traffic on the surface and elevated lines was impeded, tanks and pipes were frozen, persons were overcome by cold, and frost-bitten noses, ears and hands were plentiful.
Despatches from interior points in the State report the storm as the most severe experienced in seven years. Railroad traffic is much impeded, traffic on street railways in many cases is entirely suspended, and country roads are completely blockaded with snow. In some localities the fall of snow in the last 18 hours is reported to be as much as 3ft and everywhere the high wind which prevailed has created drifts of great size.
The sharpest cold wave that has visited Chicago for 21 years made its appearance on the night of 8th February. The mercury in the office of the signal service fell to 13deg below zero, the coldest on record sinoe 1878.
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/84850077
Only desperate efforts by hundreds of thousands of workers saved New York’s public services from complete breakdown as a result of the worst snowstorm in the city’s history.
The storm lasted throughout Friday until 9pm, by which time 25.8 inches of snow had fallen – five inches more than in the great two-day blizzard of 1888 – slowing the pulse of the great metropolis to a faint beat and causing 55 deaths throughout the whole storm belt.
As the storm progressed, with snow falling at a steady rate of three inches an hour, the complex transport system of the densely populated metropolitan area of New York gradually slowed down, until the only railways still moving were the subways, which carried on at reduced speed attempting to cope with the swollen crowds trying to get home. Motor cars ploughed to a standstill under great mounds of snow and were abandoned in thousands on nearly every road in the city.
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At one time officials of the bus companies reported 2,000 vehicles ‘lost’ – their whereabouts temporarily unknown. The storm covered an area north to and beyond the Canadian border, south as far as Washington and west as far as Ohio. While New York shivered, the temperature at Los Angeles reached a Boxing Day record of 84 degrees.
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/93220760
The oceans, slow to respond to changes in solar radiation, surrender their accumulated heat with equal accumulated heat with equal deliberation. From the beginning of 1917 to the end of 1920 the solar constant was high, running even to two gramcalories per square centimeter per minute and averaging well above a normal of slightly under 1.94. Using the Atlantic Ocean for illustration, the primary effect of this rise in the solar constant was an increase in temperature of tropical surfaces, and, in sequence, an increase in the temperature, volume and current of the Gulf Stream. The northern arm of the stream flowed into the Norwegian Sea Eastern Arctic in increased volume and at a higher temperature. The sun in its northern tours still further aided in raising the temperature of Arctic surface waters.
The Hoel expedition to Spitzbergen in the summer of 1922, sent out by the University of Christiania, reported an ice free sea as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes, the furthest north ever reached in open water with modern oceanographic apparatus. The Gulf Stream could be traced as a surface current as far as 79 degrees, with a surface temperature of 15 degrees Celsium asainst a usual summer temperature of 3 degrees. Glaciers had melted, exposing for the first time on record open moraines; while the migrations of fish further indicated conditions not paralleled in a century. It should be noted that the beginning of these changes was dated back to as far as the year 1918.
The increased flow of the northern arm of the Gulf Stream and the further heat expansion of Arctic water necessarily displaced an equivalent quantity of cold water, which pressed south, and in large part found its expansion in the cold water area which generally lies between the Azores and the Spanish coast. But the southern arm of the Gulf Stream, seeking in larger volume its return to subtropical latitudes, in its turn had the effect of pushing the expansion of the Azorean area by the year 1922 several hundred miles south and west. Sequences now appear lagging in their effects several years behind the initial cause, the rise of the sun’s heat in 1917-20. It will be noted that the average temperature of the United States in 1922 was over 3 deg. above the normal. The autumn of 1922 and the winter of 1922-23 were notable in this country for lack of rain and snow. The north-Western lows, which usually penetrate deep into the Mississippi Valley, crossed the continent near the Great Lakes, acquiring vitality only as they approached the Atlantic seaboard where, with the onset of winter, they gave New England almost the heaviest snows on record, and then raged across the Atlantic, which for six months had the severest storm period in 100 years.
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/76534194