Readers may recall our story from Dec 15th, 2013: Over half the USA covered in snow, the most in 11 years
Now, it’s even more. See the map and the 3D image:
February 7, 2014
| Area Covered By Snow: | 67.4% |
| Area Covered Last Month: | 48.1% |
The map is from NOAA’s National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center
The 3D image is from this KMZ file and Google Earth:
h/t to Joe Bastardi of WeatherBell
UPDATE: Values of snow cover for this date show this is the highest in a decade.
February 7, 2014
Area Covered By Snow: 67.4%
February 7, 2013
Area Covered By Snow: 34.8%
February 7, 2012
Area Covered By Snow: 25.5%
February 7, 2011
Area Covered By Snow: 48.9%
February 7, 2010
Area Covered By Snow: 60.8%
February 7, 2009
Area Covered By Snow: 33.2%
February 7, 2008
Area Covered By Snow: 51.1%
February 7, 2007
Area Covered By Snow: 38.9%
February 7, 2006
Area Covered By Snow: 26.6%
February 7, 2005
Area Covered By Snow: 26.4%
February 7, 2004
Area Covered By Snow: 53.4%
Stephen, while some of these papers rely on models and many are infused with global warming hype, the underlying physics related to our discussion is applicable. I thought you might appreciate some of these papers as they might add information to your understanding.
http://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2013/05/07/papers-on-tropopause-height/
Linda Goodman says: @ur momisugly February 8, 2014 at 4:53 pm
…could the triple meltdowns in Japan be affecting the weather via the radioactive isotopes…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Gail Combs says: @ur momisugly February 8, 2014 at 7:31 pm
No. If you want the straight story do not listen to the hysterical News Media that wants to sell papers not report the news accurately.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Actually, the news media says very little about the meltdowns – almost all of it reassuring, I don’t need a lesson on their motives and I have no use for hysteria, or insulting assumptions.
When the accidents first occurred in Mar 2011, there were freak radioactive snowstorms nearby, including CA & HI and on the US navy ship off Japan’s shore that severely poisoned dozens of servicemen and women. What is the science behind that, and might it explain the current frigid weather? btw, the ‘worst snowstorm in decades’ hit Japan today.. “Approximately 13.8 inches of snow was dumped on the northeastern city of Sendai…. the heaviest snowfall in 78 years. Fukushima was also blanketed in 17.3 inches of snow.”
Linda, the loopy jet stream fully explains the frigid extreme weather. It happens from time to time. Nothing to worry about. This link might help:
http://www.oregon.gov/ODA/nrd/docs/dlongrange.ppt
Dear Ms. Goodman,
There is natural radiation around us {for instance, a granite kitchen counter top} all of the time and has always been there since the birth of the earth . Source: Physicist: There Was No Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, Kelvin Kemm, 10/12/13.
Link: http://www.cfact.org/2013/10/12/physicist-there-was-no-fukushima-nuclear-disaster/
A selection from the above source:
Id. {emphasis mine}
Further, as post hoc, ergo propter hoc is all that you are floating your speculation on so far, your ideas above just sank. Until you rest your case upon facts and evidence, every one of your comments will just… blub….blub…. blub…….. sink to the bottom.
Cite your evidence and your sources, and you will greatly increase your chances of getting a thoughtful response here. If the quality of your evidence is poor, the response may be quite curt.
So far, you appear to be merely a wild-eyed hand waver. I’m not saying that you ARE one, just that by your failing to cite evidence, you do yourself the disservice of making yourself APPEAR to be one.
If your pursuit of truth is genuine, I wish you much success in your investigation of the facts!
If you are emotionally and irrationally simply against nuclear power per se, I hope that, someday, you can bring yourself to step back from that ledge and take a calm look at the facts. Once your eyes are able to focus, gazing through unglazed lenses of objectivity, you will like what you see!
Best wishes,
Janice
P.S. Re: my referring to you above as ignorant — That is, per se, nothing of which to be ashamed and is not a put down. It is simply a fact (albeit stated a bit bluntly). In case this will encourage you, I’ll tell you that, compared to the majority of the commenters on this site, I am highly ignorant of physics, nuclear power engineering, chemistry, and math (among many other subjects!). This is a great place to LEARN!
@ur momisugly Werner Brozek — Du bist willkommen! Es war mir ein Vergnügen.
(yes, I most certainly DID have to use a translator, lol)
[For the rest of us minions, that was “You are welcome! It was my pleasure.” 8<) Mod]
Well, Hellooooooo Mod! Thanks for that. lol, and, waddaya know, that’s exactly what I typed into that translator.
#(:))
Well, Pamela Gray, while your comments were directed at S. Wilde, they were helpful to me, so, I say, “Thank you for your persistence in explaining.”
I think wherever Wilde is, it must be quite late in the evening. I just want to jump in before he returns to say that he is blessed to have been given so much of your helpful tutoring. He should hire you to be his mentor to write up his dissertation!
Hm. Somehow, I don’t think he is interested in doing that… .
Sending you admiration and respect from far to the northwest of you,
Janice
Janice Moore commented:
So far, you appear to be merely a wild-eyed hand waver. I’m not saying that you ARE one, just that by your failing to cite evidence, you do yourself the disservice of making yourself APPEAR to be one.
If you are emotionally and irrationally simply against nuclear power per se, I hope that, someday, you can bring yourself to step back from that ledge and take a calm look at the facts. Once your eyes are able to focus, gazing through unglazed lenses of objectivity, you will like what you see!
>>>>>>>>>>
Eyes focused, here’s what I see.. Lethal nuclear waste continues to accumulate, poisoning the earth and all living things for countless ages, darkening our collective future, maybe even destroying it. Nuclear power puts extinction in our reach: “I am become death, destroyer of worlds.” If reincarnation is a fact, nuke profiteers will be among the unfortunate who stumble on the waste in one, ten, a hundred thousand years, dying slowly and horribly without a clue, over and over again. Karmic justice.. assuming there’s still a world worth being reborn into.
Most reactors have the increasingly likely potential to kill and maim millions, leaking demons that sit among us, poisoning our children and saving the worst for last, and for what? Boiled water and bombs. So with all due respect, I think the support of nuclear energy at best lacks any common sense, at worst is nihilistic and pathological. Some nuke supporters also claim CO2 is deadly and produce all the baffling bull to back up that absurd claim, too. They’re a special kind of crazy, imho.
Pamela.
What part of your link indicates that tropopause height changes always precede ozone changes.
My position is that anything which affects stratosphere temperatures will also affect tropopause height.
If one has both top down and bottom up effects as I contend then both processes can occur not just one or the other.
There would be no tropopause if ozone had not been formed first so your attempt at downplaying the effect of stratospheric ozone on tropopause height is doomed.
@ur momisugly Stephen Wilde
I am following your argument with increasing and positive interest because I have speculated in the area for myself.
I have derived my very understanding of the climate dispute from the tropopause and the fact of global cooling rather than global warming, the tropopause being the cool side of the globe with allmost incredibly low temperatures worldwide and right towards the sunstitch also.
Care to give that fact the right physical explaination first, before you enter and interfere in the climate dispute.
The tropopause is what is denied and hidden by the climate surrealists, but the tropopause is the economic commercial levels and fields of the worlds fleet of long distance civil jetliner traffic.
Discovered by balloon in 1905 where they fainted even with oxygen masks going higher up, they woke up again lower down as their balloon ran out of gas, and could publish this to humanity. (The discovery of the stratosphere)
The worlds fleet of weather balloons have reported that fact ever since simply by carrying a barometer, a termometer, a radio transmitter, and a proper Radar reflector, the knick of the lapsrate and the quite phaenomenal low temperatures there, the very fameous “isotherm layer”.
On the Venus transit, good amateur photos showed that Venus also has got a thin gas above its tropopause, that follows Bolzmanns barometric law. But I was told that it is not a “stratosphere”, which is probably bullshit. Only that it has no oxygen. It is nearly pure nitrogen and CO2. The top layer on Venus the shiny white clouds measure …… -40 celsius right in the sunstitch.
I just tell you this. It must be checked up in order to stick to reality and to science , and I do not think or believe that Oxygen and Ozone and sunstitch = sharp UV on common air does regulate so very much on the tropopause that rather seems to be a CO2- phaenomena.
The temperature maximun at about 30 Km height, also consequently shown by the weather balloons, is sun and oxygen and ozone- related according to orthodoxy.
I know a bit of what eats ozone and what makes it, from the side of physical chemistery. Thus I rather discuss photochemical smog and perhaps volcanoes after having dug a bit into it.
I also discuss Pearl mother clouds and Nocti- lucent clouds that tell us more about the stratosphere physical chemistery and radiology. Those clouds are what we can possibly follow on amateur level and try and give the right physical explaination for first.. Do not be blind to the heavens and do keep proper ground contact.
We were lucky to have the Eyafjallajøkull high smokes one afternoon showing no pearl mother effect at the same heighth, so I can discuss particle and cristal size. Do not take anything for serious in science unless you have seen it or heard it quite consciously for yourself, because the experts may cheat you.
Auguste Piccard soon went higher up in a balloon using a light and tight tank for being able to breathe pure oygen at high enough pressure.
The russian Mig 27 has gone up to 21-22 Km with paying passengers. That plane looses breath and begins to stall at that heighth, and the passengers must wear a pressure- suit.
I red that the US air force is stalling and loosing breath at 27 Km.
The record of big balloons is around 40 Km. A man has jumped from there in pressure suit.
For higher measurements you must shoot ballistic rockets or use indirect radio or optical methods.
This seems to be reality.
Thus, Allways keep in touch with what is possible eperiments and measurement.
I find life quite more exiting when I do that, and it enables me to do it for myself and to beat the big guys now and then on my small scale allready.
I could beat Henrik Svensmark for instance on CLOUD in CERN, simply by using an iron and HCl & H2O2 & NH3 & H2SO4 & Citric acid & K3Fe(CN)6, + a filter paper + an incandescent lamp & the early morning sunlight & the milky way galaxy in 2011.
Thus Non fingendum aut excogitandum sed inveniendum quod natura faciat aut ferat,
= a very good advice from Francis Bacon that I hereby give further..
.
Tokyo’s heaviest snow in decades seems to be bringing out some nuclear common sense, they just voted in a new governor who promises to restart the city’s nuclear power stations:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26103296
Maybe brains, like silicon chips, work better when its cold. In Japan at least, it would be good if the same happened in the USA.
Linda Goodman says:
February 9, 2014 at 11:14 pm
Eyes focused, here’s what I see.. Lethal nuclear waste continues to accumulate, poisoning the earth and all living things for countless ages, darkening our collective future, maybe even destroying it.
Both a coal fired power station and your average hospital discharge more radioactivity in a week than a nuclear power station.
Nuclear power puts extinction in our reach: “I am become death, destroyer of worlds.” If reincarnation is a fact, nuke profiteers will be among the unfortunate who stumble on the waste in one, ten, a hundred thousand years, dying slowly and horribly without a clue, over and over again. Karmic justice.. assuming there’s still a world worth being reborn into.
No you are become Cornholio, this is the most entertaining insane rant all week. (That’s a lot of rants.) We live in a radioactive world whose radioactivity has been declining over its 4 billion year history. Life evolved and flourished in a sea of ionizing particles. Life is self-assembling entropy-exporting order out of chaos which is constantly repairing itself. Every DNA strand breaks every few minutes but is continually repaired, this is not from radioactivity but just quantum chaos, radioactivity has to reach very high levels before it makes a significant difference to this. Such morbid fear of radioactivity is exactly as irrational as medieval fear of demons and witchcraft behind every miscarriage or crop failure. The popular fear of things nuclear and radioactivity is pure superstition in defiance of a large literature that shows that both animals and plants receive beneficial, not harmful effects from doses of radiation in the tens or even hundreds of milligrays. Ionizing radiation, like any other toxin, becomes harmful only above a threshold which is way above all but the most catastrophic nuclear discharges.
Most reactors have the increasingly likely potential to kill and maim millions, leaking demons that sit among us, poisoning our children and saving the worst for last, and for what? Boiled water and bombs. So with all due respect, I think the support of nuclear energy at best lacks any common sense, at worst is nihilistic and pathological. Some nuke supporters also claim CO2 is deadly and produce all the baffling bull to back up that absurd claim, too. They’re a special kind of crazy, imho.
So the only logical thing for you to do it put on your anti-nuclear missionary pith-helmet and try to evangelise a nation like France who have lived for more than a generation receiving 70-80% of their electricity from nuclear power – and this is old generation PWR’s, much less “safe” intrinsically than the latest generation of reactors. Are you the chosen one to tell them of their nuclear damnation and need for US-liberal repentance? Good luck with that. Are 50 million French folks being killed and mained every day but somehow just don’t notice? Are their children being likewise silently poisoned? Including the ones living to their 90’s? Get help Linda.
@daddylonglegs says:
February 10, 2014 at 9:38 am
Yeah, and just think what their (France) economy would be like with no nukes and energy costs like Germany…the thought of windmills running our (mostly electric) trains makes me want to retch. Time to get Thorium and/or cold fusion going…IIRC Thorium reactors would consume most or all of the waste that Linda is aftraid of…
@ur momisugly Daddy Longlegs (9:14am and 9:38am) — LOL. And, also, GREAT facts. As to the Cornholio of the Week Award…. I’m afraid you are right. There were though, (ahem), a couple of really, really, close runners up … .
#(:))
WUWT — Truth in Science and…… COMEDY, too!!
Thank you, dear Cornholios (and Cornholias) of the world, you light up our lives here on WUWT (no, no, no, it is NOT because you have become dangerously radioactive — all that nuclear waste that France has been sending the U.S. for years cannot POSSIBLY get to you or to your grandchildren or to your great-to-the-1000th-generation-grandchildren — yeah, EVEN IF some pesky leprechaun decides to bury his gold there and accidentally hauls some of it back to the surface… by the time he gets back, the radiation level will be so low that it — won’t — matter).
PLEASE KEEP POSTING! #(:))
daddylonglegs commented:
“this is the most entertaining insane rant all week. (That’s a lot of rants.) We live in a radioactive world whose radioactivity has been declining over its 4 billion year history. Life evolved and flourished in a sea of ionizing particles. Life is self-assembling entropy-exporting order out of chaos which is constantly repairing itself.”
“France who have lived for more than a generation receiving 70-80% of their electricity from nuclear power … Are you the chosen one to tell them of their nuclear damnation and need for US-liberal repentance? … Get help Linda.”
>>>>>>>>>>
spider man: Nature is perfect, Man is reckless. Inhaling, absorbing and ingesting manufactured isotopes is harmful, cumulative and ultimately deadly. There are no ‘safe levels’, only degrees of harm determined by quality, quantity/rate of exposure and genetics.
And calling nuclear ‘clean energy’ is as much a lie as calling CO2 a toxin. One lie would destroy our health, the other would destroy our freedom. Orwell would blush.
About France, last week French researchers reported that the incidence of cancer is expected to soar by 90% in developed nations by 2030 – yikes! http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/246061.php Not surprisingly, there’s no mention of the three meltdowns slowly, steadily blanketing much of the world and our food supply in lethal residue. For an invisible killer, denial is a cinch, except when it’s swift and acute, as with the sailors aboard the USS Ronald Reagan.. http://www.turnerradionetwork.com/news/99-pat
About buried nuclear waste, out of sight, out of mind, pun intended. And I refer again to the hopeful possibility of reincarnation and karmic retribution.
And I may be over my head in this Lofty Space, but thanks for the smugly amusing insults. I’m oddly flattered.. I should probably get out more.
Ms. Goodman (applause, applause),
That was a very fine acceptance speech.
Janice
Linda Goodman:
At February 10, 2014 at 12:55 pm you say
Really?
Perfection is an ideal state which cannot be improved.
Nature changes. It always has and it always will. It is in constant change.
Nature is different now than it was more than half an hour ago when you wrote your statement.
So, was nature imperfect when you wrote your statement or now?
Or, is it your definition of “perfect” constantly changing?
I would appreciate an explanation of your assertion which seems to make no sense.
Thanking you in anticipation.
Richard
Correction: re USS Reagan story, wrong link, accurate story.. This one’s legit: http://www.navytimes.com/article/20131228/NEWS08/312280004/Reagan-sailors-press-radiation-lawsuit “It just seems to me that based upon Chernobyl and everything that occurred there … that it should really be a situation where the naysayers have to demonstrate that it did no harm to these people”
Oooh, Richard (1:47pm today), heh, heh, heh. (smiling and smiling and smiling) Just could not resist, hm? lol
Have fun!
Oh, and try talking to Carbo mon Tanus. THAT is super-fun. Except… his attention seems to wander, so, he may not get back to you.
#(:))
richardscourtney says:February 10, 2014 at 1:47 pm
“Really?
Perfection is an ideal state which cannot be improved. Nature changes. It always has and it always will. It is in constant change.
Nature is different now than it was more than half an hour ago when you wrote your statement.
So, was nature imperfect when you wrote your statement or now? Or, is it your definition of “perfect” constantly changing?
I would appreciate an explanation of your assertion which seems to make no sense.”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Cute. Everything changes, of course, change is the only constant. Nature, the Galaxy, the Universe, is a perfect system that self corrects. Nature supplies everything we need.. and most adorably, WE evolved from its earthy womb. Okay, maybe it goofed a little there. How would YOU improve on nature?
Linda Goodman:
At February 10, 2014 at 2:28 pm you ask me
Assuming I had unlimited resources, I would use what nature has provided to build and to operate
farms, fishing fleets, factories, cities, shops, schools, colleges, universities, hospitals, medical facilities, power stations (fossil fueled and nuclear), sewerage systems, systems for clean drinking water, roads, railways, aircraft, airports, and electronic communications
so all human kind could have full bellies, health, wealth and the hope of happiness through a long life.
That is what I would do.
What would you do, live a short life in a cave as a hunter gatherer?
Richard
btw, I know I’m a bunny hopping through the fox fields, but it would be interesting to see a direct response to the issues I raised, rather than just gleeful attacks on my presumed lack of knowledge, understanding, intelligence, and my assumed alliance with leprechauns.
Linda Goodman:
I am grossly offended by your post at February 10, 2014 at 2:52 pm which says in full
How dare you!?
1.
You made an assertion which made no sense to me rationally, logically, scientifically or theologically so I politely asked you to explain it.
2.
You replied that you had made that statement by mistake and you added a question which you put to me.
3.
I answered your question and put the same question back to you.
4.
You have replied with the assertions I have quoted in this post.
I said NONE of those things and I have NOT made any “attacks” of you (gleeful or otherwise). You have raised no “issues” but have provided irrational rants and when queried on one of your assertions you replied you did not mean it.
I am willing to accept your apology.
Richard
===============================================================
If “nature” is perfect, then how can Man mess it up? Is Man not part of your “nature”?
Richard and others have given you direct responses. You just didn’t like what they said. So you pretend they didn’t happen.
This is my one and only response to you.
richardscourtney says: February 10, 2014 at 2:50 pm
“Assuming I had unlimited resources, I would use what nature has provided to build and to operate farms, fishing fleets, factories, cities, shops, schools, colleges, universities, hospitals, medical facilities, power stations (fossil fueled and nuclear), sewerage systems, systems for clean drinking water, roads, railways, aircraft, airports, and electronic communications so all human kind could have full bellies, health, wealth and the hope of happiness through a long life. That is what I would do.
What would you do, live a short life in a cave as a hunter gatherer?”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I get what you’re saying, but most of humankind is starving and life is growing shorter, cheaper and poorer, while the richest grow richer. Nature supplies us with everything we need to live fully and free, yet most industry is now corrupted, while remaining small businesses are failing one by one through crushing regulations, and that’s just in the U.S.A.
So what would I do? I’d make it genetically impossible to lie, no exceptions, not even to ourselves. Every crime starts with a lie. No lies, no crime, no injustice. Then all those things you mentioned could function as they should and every belly and life really would be full. I know it’s a pipe dream, but so is the question, so why not dream big?
OK. You have bluntly and completely rejected several direct answers from myself, and from several other knowledgeable people in the power, global climate, and local environment fields, and have responded with what you “feel” and what you “have decided” based (apparently) on these feelings about the Japanese reactors. Thus, you have shown no ability to learn nor reason from experts, and so, why would you think that you are immune to derision or comment? No one can afford to waste time addressing long and intricate physical and scientific answers to a person who who refuses to even admit that her “fears” and imagination might be wrong.
Now, pretend I am a nuclear physics major, a math major, electrci and mechanical and structural engineer, a power plant operator and maintainer who has stood under these things, touched them, felt them, worked and lived inside them and next to them for longer than you have lived. Pretend you “do have” some technical and nuclear physics and health physics knowledge and training. (Instead of just your nightmares based on your religious emotions of fear and desperation as you cling to your fear of the lightening and thunder in the heavens above.)
Now, tell me how much actual “energy” (you know, the E=mc^2 type of real energy) has been “lost” from these cold dead power plants since the earthquake. After you do that, tell me how much that energy could affect anything …. including even the local environment around the plants. Show me why you fear what cannot happen.
Remember now. Use math. Use real numbers. We do.
Oh, by the way. Do you accept your local and international democrat and liberal politicians views about global warming, CO2, and the predicted future?