Paging Dr. David Viner, white courtesy phone please
Here is the map from NOAA’s National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center showing the snow coverage at 53%, the most in 11 years for this date.
December 15, 2013
| Area Covered By Snow: | 53.0% |
| Area Covered Last Month: | 5.8% |
And here are the past 11 years for this date, December 15th:
Image courtesy on NWS Kansas City, MO
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izen says: blah, blah blah. Essentially, you’re saying that sometimes in late-Fall/early-winter AGW is responsible for more snow, and other times in the Spring it’s responsible for snow melt. Tell us another one. Pretty please?
@- Bruce Cobb
” Essentially, you’re saying that sometimes in late-Fall/early-winter AGW is responsible for more snow, and other times in the Spring it’s responsible for snow melt.”
Thats what the observations show.
Increased precipitation also means increased snowfall as a result of the increasing amount of water vapor in the warmer air.
Warmer spring temperatures however melt that increased snowfall earlier than in the past. The change is quite clear in the figures for humidity, rainfall, snowfall and spring melt, look then up if you think that is my invention rather than valid results from weather observation.
What was it a day or two before, when the snow line encompassed the high plains, down to central Texas. THAT’S when I thought it was unusual, for so early in the year. All of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, down to Midland/Abilene/Dallas.
These government funded climate data collection organizations would be more helpful to the taxpayers who pay their wages if they reported climate data fairly and in an unbiased way that is useful to the public. Being an advocate for global warming special interest groups does a major disservice to the public. Giving press releases for isolated warming events and totally ignoring the approaching cold climate phase leaves the public and the various national agencies that provide heating fuel, infrastructure, transportation, road clearing services ,farmers ,etc unprepared for the more severe winters that are surely coming . I think the public should write and complain about the one sided climate reporting. It is like getting stock market news only about market rises and ignoring all price trends that are down. We all know that the market drops and has major crashes regularly. Well the climate has the same down turns and even major downturns that could be just around the corner. Winter temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere have been declining now for about 17 years. The government funded temperature data sets show that winter temperatures for the entire Northern Hemisphere including United States, Canada, Europe, and UK are all dropping. I have not seen a single press release about this . Have you? Yes, we will have isolated warm periods and El Nino years when the winters will be milder but the future trend is for colder winter weather to continue because the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans SST pole to pole , have been declining for a decade and may stay cooler until 2030/2040. It is not global warming that we should be concerned about at this time . We should prepare for more very cold and snowy winters. [Like we already had in December this year]
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims/ims_gif/ARCHIVE/NHem/2013/ims2013343.gif
December 9 looks to me to be the greatest snow coverage achieved. I thought when I saw that it has to be some kind of record, for so early in the season.
IZEN
you said “Warmer spring temperatures however melt that increased snowfall earlier than in the past.”
There has been no warming trend in US springs since 1998. The NOAA/NCDC data shows a completely flat curve . It would help all of us if you did your home work before posting, Izen.
@- herkimer
“There has been no warming trend in US springs since 1998. The NOAA/NCDC data shows a completely flat curve . It would help all of us if you did your home work before posting”
You are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts, and I ALWAYS have substantive peer review published research for any claim I make. The trend in the US may have been smaller than in the rest of the N.H. But it is still detectable.
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=3587&from=rss_home#.Uq8ubH8gGSN
BOZEMAN, Mont. – Warmer spring temperatures since 1980 are causing an estimated 20 percent loss of snow cover across the Rocky Mountains of western North America, according to new research from the U.S. Geological Survey.
Time to roll out scare videos about global cooling from the 1970’s (with a much younger Leonard Nimoy)
izen
Wether you go back to 1980 or 1998, for Contiguous US , there has been no extra spring warming trend for US as a whole for now 33 years . The trend is completely flat . Matter of fact , the spring temperatures for Canada have been actually dropping since 1998. You can look up the data for yourself at NCDC/NOAA web page. This track is about snow cover across the nation not just Rocky mountains . You need to qualify your comments better and not just generalize about spring getting warmer.
I have had problems in the past on these Global Warming debates, it seems that my observations, gained by actual experience in the actual weather, don’t correspond to the accepted theory and therefore don’t count. Seems the fact that it gets cold and snowy in the winters around here run counter to the “consensus” so– I’m only looking at weather, not climate.
Horse hockey. Weather and climate are so intertwined that the observations of one directly relate to the other– unless you have a political axe to grind, in which case anything that doesn’t fit your theory must be wrong.
It’s cold right now in Chicagoland, about 12F according to local readings— and we’re about to get a couple of more inches of Global Warming to shovel off of the driveway. Happens every winter.
Biltonn: Gore talks a lot. Unfortunately for him a lot of it makes it to youtube.
http://m.youtube.com/index?&desktop_uri=%2F
“Al Gore warns Polar ice may be gone in five years”
If someone can find a video of his talk in Germany in 2008, it will show a more dire predictio.
@- herkimer
Wether you go back to 1980 or 1998, for Contiguous US , there has been no extra spring warming trend for US as a whole for now 33 years . The trend is completely flat ….You can look up the data for yourself at NCDC/NOAA web page.
That is what I did, the ‘Climate at a glance page’ enables you to plot the temperature of any month, or season.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/
Weather I choose 1980, or even the cherry-pick of 1998 as a anomalous hot year I STILL get positive warming trends on all the plots for any single month in the spring or any 3 month season for any period going back more than ten years.
Perhaps I missed an option, what start date and months should I choose to get a flat trend as every year/month/season combination of more than ten years gives a positive trend of spring warming for the contiguous US on the NCDC/NOAA web page contrary to your assertion.
IZEN
You are correct. I was looking at the slope of the spring temperature curve for 1998-2013 and it is quite flat but nevertheless if one also ask for the hard numbers of the
trend , the numerical figure for the period does have a slight positve trend of +0.19/decade. The vertical part of the + sign was a little weak and I read it as – ve sign
Felix says:
December 15, 2013 at 9:35 pm
NASA has November 2013 as the globally warmest November on record.
And RSS at 0.131 was the 13th warmest November. Were they doing the same planet?
@izen; Even if Springs are slightly earlier in some places, that most certainly doesn’t mean AGW caused them. Nor can AGW explain the halt in warming the past 17 years or so.
@- herkimer
My thanks and respect for making that correction.
I hope I can live up to the same level of integrity if/when I find my own understanding of an issue is similarly in conflict with the observable facts. (grin)
@- Bruce Cobb
“Even if Springs are slightly earlier in some places, that most certainly doesn’t mean AGW caused them.”
Correct.
The earlier springs and pole-ward shift of the growing regions is a phenomena that REQUIRES an explanation, it certainly does not provide one.
The energy to warm those regions earlier and shift the climate to favor different crops must have come from somewhere, but the changes observed do not indicate a source.
@-“Nor can AGW explain the halt in warming the past 17 years or so.”
But it can explain the observed facts of rising sea level from thermal expansion from rising heat content and the negative mass balance of glaciers and ice-caps.
It is also the best explanation we have for the observed changes in spectrum and energy content of the outgoing and downwelling energy fluxes that constrain our climate.
It has been of utility in predicting the pattern of change seen in the satellite record of a warming troposphere and cooling stratosphere.
It might have something substantive to contribute to an explanation of the earlier springs as well.
The most that the surface temperature record conveys for whatever time window you choose is uncertainty. As the actress said to the bishop, we are arguing about how much (and how fast) not weather we are doing it…
We were in Manhattan this past weekend. On Saturday, it snowed all day, and the temperatures were in the 20s. After one trip outside I got on the hotel elevator with a large group of wet cold people. I said: “Damn, that Global Warming is tricky”. They all laughed.
When Global warming is a punch line. We have won.
Homing in on even earlier records (e.g. last negative PDO)?
herkimer says “Matter of fact , the spring temperatures for Canada have been actually dropping since 1998. You can look up the data for yourself at NCDC/NOAA web page.”
In our neck of the woods above the 51st on the Canadian Prairie, snow appeared on October 27, 2012 and stayed on the ground into May 2013, a record length of time for this area. An extraordinarily cold April 2013 plus a large snow cover produced the record.
Janice:
Your absence will be missed.
Better late than never. #(:)) …. upon receiving some anonymous encouragement….
Advent Calendar Door Number 17
Today was THE day!
December 17, 1903 — Wright Brothers’ First Flight
History of Flight — “Hold On Tight to Your Dreams” — ELO
Note: per my anonymous source…
“There is actually a very useful lesson to be learned from the above:
… given the technological changes in only 45 years (from
the Wright brother’s first passenger flights in 1908 to the B-52 in
1952) {to presume that humanity will not develop the technology
necessary to adapt to climate change (no matter what causes it)
demonstrates a laughable ignorance of history.}”
Oops — brothers’ Poor ol’ Orville, always getting left out of the picture… .
Virtual Advent Calendar Door Number 18
(if you can’t stand something sweetly sentimental that expresses how very, very, glad I am to have been encouraged to continue to post on WUWT, better skip this one)
From my grateful heart to all of you…
“Bless Us All” — Tiny Tim, et. al. in Muppet Christmas Carol
YOU ARE LOVED. ALWAYS.
#(:))