According to the ice breakup log, the latest the ice has ever gone out was May 20th, 1964 at 11:41 AM Alaska Standard Time. As of this writing there is about 28 hours to go to break that record.
Geophysicist Martin Jeffries at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks said in 2009,
The Nenana Ice Classic is a pretty good proxy for climate change in the 20th century.
If that’s true, it looks like we are headed to colder times. Here is the current live view which updates every 30 seconds.
Refresh to see the latest.
I’ve been watching over the past 12 hours and the tripod has drifted downstream slightly, rope slack changes gave the impression that the tripod had changed position, but that’s an artifact of wind, and there appear to be leads in the ice opening nearby, though it is hard to tell if they go through the ice or if it is simply water on the surface.
Here is what the image looked like on 5-15-13 (thanks to Willis):
They need a weather station there to go with the live image. Many people want to know what the temperature and wind conditions are like.
[UPDATE] I trust Anthony won’t mind my adding a blink comparator between the 16th at two in the afternoon, and the 19th at ten in the morning. Click on the image to see the comparison.
From my inspection, I’d say the tripod hasn’t moved … it looks like it’s tipped a bit, but I think that’s just the different sun angles, because the black-painted sections don’t seem to be moving.
It’s the most exciting slow-motion event I know of …
w.
The nice thing about the Nenana proxy is that there is no plausible way or excuse to “adjust” the breakup date. Hence the warmists cannot come up with reasons to adjust the date the way they have adjusted the historical temperature records. So we look at Willis Eschenbach’s graph and see right away that in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s the Alaskan climate was as warm as it was in the late 1990’s. This contradicts the “adjusted” temperature-anomaly record and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
Actually the ice looks little bit weak below the tripod, or are my eyes deceiving me?
[AKDT 16:49]
From the “Ice Conditions” tab:
Latest pic shows 4 cars in the lot.
petermue: that’s known as a “shadow”.
Separately, I much prefer the world warmer, but we need to shake off this warmist encrustation which is sapping our economies and future. So unfortunately we need a “cold treatment”, sort of like medicine for Gaia.
Ye…… Call Mr.All Gore and ask Q???
NZ Willy says:
petermue: that’s known as a “shadow”.
I wasn’t quite sure, especially about the broader spot around the mullion.
NZ Willy says:
May 19, 2013 at 5:30 pm
“Separately, I much prefer the world warmer, but we need to shake off this warmist encrustation which is sapping our economies and future. So unfortunately we need a “cold treatment”, sort of like medicine for Gaia.”
That will only help until the first entrepreneurial spirit gets the idea of calling on the governments of the world to do something about the dangerous cooling. Probably his book is already waiting for a publisher…
History of warming vs. cooling scares:
http://butnowyouknow.wordpress.com/those-who-fail-to-learn-from-history/climate-change-timeline/
I agree with Willis but I couldn’t find a complete set of data so I made one. Since I did it I know the situation. Those worrying about leap years etc. all accounted for. (whether it matters or not)
I’ve also posted a decadal plot in comments elsewhere.
Data is here http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/nenana-ice-classic-data/, otherwise adds nothing. If you want to normalise etc., your bag.
When the earth goes into a normal cooling cycle, will they want us to “warm” it up?
petermue says:
May 19, 2013 at 5:37 pm
NZ Willy says:
petermue: that’s known as a “shadow”.
I wasn’t quite sure, especially about the broader spot around the mullion.
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Zooming in it looks like bare ice or possibly bare ice and a bit of water on top like several other spots around the tripod. No way to guess how sound the ice is though. Depends if the ice is melting more from the top or the bottom and how “rotten” it is. It could be a couple of feet or more thick when it breaks up.
The quadra-legged tripod soldiers on
But can make it through another day?
A strip of ice behind the tripod’s gone
The breakup might be just a bit away
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle
Hmm – the large snow pile they made to clear the ice to put up the tripod has just drifted off downstream so I am thinking when I wake up in the morning the tripod will have tipped. Watching the hockey playoffs, and flipping over to WUWT during commercials. Thanks for an enjoyable evening WUWT.
Someone tell that fellow not to park his car under the ropes to the tower.
With a prize of $318,000 bucks I would guess that there are guards watching for anyone flying kites late at night. LOL
Summary is that relative to astronomical time, breakup will be a new record if it occurs later than 8:33am tomorrow.
If it can survive until tomorrow morning? That’s all it’s got to do?
Might as well pop the corks. Cause that’s in the bag.
Thanks. (He moved his car.) (Guess I’m just an Alarmist at heart.)
Slightly O.T., but while we wait to see if we break a record here, we broke the record for the fewest tornadoes in any 365-day period, evah!
On his excellent blog at the WeatherBELL Premium site, Joe D’Aleo notes the old record was 247 tornadoes – starting in June 1991. We smashed that record, with only 197 tornadoes – starting in May 2012. Those numbers will change, with big storms from Lake Superior down to Oklahoma this evening, and a tornado reported in Oklahoma, however if anyone tries to say the extreme weather is caused by Global Warming, tomorrow morning, make sure to tell them the bit of non-extreme-weather trivia Joe D’Aleo dug up.
There is some speculation that Mann et. al. are upstream attempting to propel depth charges under the ice to avoid the inevitable jeers from the skeptics. Their Plan B is to toss a couple of virgins to the river gods as a bribe to break the ice before tomorrow. Plan B has its drawbacks in that they didn’t bring their own virgins and none are to be had. Apparently America is long past “peak virgin” and fracking will not yield a solution anytime soon.
philjourdan says:
May 19, 2013 at 6:15 pm
When the earth goes into a normal cooling cycle, will they want us to “warm” it up?
————————————————————————–
I doubt it , while warmer means a more benevolent planet for almost all life on it , the idea that humanity would do better out of it too leaves the typically misanthropic “Greens” grinding their teeth . Have a look at most Green “solutions” to perceived problems , it doesn`t seem to matter if they have a negative environmental impact as long as they make things more difficult for humans ,
Next year there will be a bunch of tickets marked for late May. I might have to buy a couple.
Seems like a steady stream of different people appear in the picture coming to take a look at the tripod.
So this is what Alaska gets with a negative PDO.
The same will happen with the Arctic and cold AMO.
And “polar” amplification is then just a consequence of warm ocean currents running into the Arctic dead end. Antarctica didn’t warm anyways during the last 40 years.
Did the models get it ALL wrong ?
There’s a stretch of considerable heft
That’s detached itself (look on the left)
That departed thin ice
Makes the prospect less nice
But at this point, we’re hardly bereft!
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle
Still looks no movement from using group of trees on other side of river.. When ice goes out it normally looks like this. It goes quick..
Darn, up to now my favorite watching was the grass growing!
@ur momisugly Chris @ur momisuglyNJSnowFan says:
May 19, 2013 at 8:34 pm
How can you not be romantic about Alaska after watching a video like that?
What a magical event.