Here is something you don’t see every day, a satellite image showing a sizable amount of snow cover on the big island of Hawaii.
While snowfall on the big island is nothing new, commonly seen on the mountains on Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, (top and bottom arrows respectively in the photo) seeing snow this early in the season on the mounatins is somewhat rare.
McIDAS images of GOES-15 (GOES-West) 6.5 µm water vapor channel data (above; click image to play animation) showed an upper-level low that moved from east to west over the Hawaiian Islands during the 13 October – 14 October 2014 period. This low forced the development of widespread showers and thunderstorms, especially over the Big Island of Hawai’i — and even produced some snowfall in the highest elevations around the summits of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. Some excerpts from Area Forecast Discussions issued by the National Weather Service at Honolulu on 13 October:
FXHW60 PHFO 131350
AFDHFO
AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HONOLULU HI
400 AM HST MON OCT 13 2014
[…]
FORECAST MODELS HAVE BEEN CONSISTENTLY CALLING FOR 500 MB TEMPERATURES BETWEEN -12 AND -13C WITHIN THE CORE OF THE COMPACT UPPER LOW. THIS IS EXCEPTIONALLY COLD FOR OCTOBER
[…]
FORECAST MODELS SHOW THAT THIS FEATURE WILL HOLD AS IT MOVES OVER THE BIG ISLAND LATER TODAY INTO TONIGHT…LIKELY PRODUCING ACCUMULATING SNOW OVER THE SUMMITS ABOVE 12000 FT. AS A RESULT…A WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY HAS BEEN ISSUED.
[…]
=====
FXHW60 PHFO 140152
AFDHFO
AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HONOLULU HI
330 PM HST MON OCT 13 2014
[…]
THE SUMMITS OF THE BIG ISLAND HAVE BEGUN TO REPORT SNOWFALL ACCUMULATION…AND THIS WILL CONTINUE WITH A COUPLE OF INCHES POSSIBLE OVERNIGHT.
[…]
Source: the CIMSS Satellite Blog
Snow in southern Sweden yesterday too.
Time to fire up the new mantra…
ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL COOLING
The models clearly show that humans are uniquely reonsible for snow in Hawaii. Time to invest in ski lifts for Mauna Loa. And we have a new figurehead to replace the hockey stick team – Santa and his band of dwarfs,,, err, elves. I understand they run their climate models on a bank of Commodore 64s left over from some Christmas past.
The PDO clearly rules Hawaii’s weather patterns. Every winter there is at least a dusting of snow at the top of Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa and even Haleakala (10,000 feet high) on Maui. But the last time that I could ski Mauna Kea was in the mid 1980s. The snow was 10 feet deep. The snow storms started in November and lasted to June back then. That last ski trip was in late April and the snow was from a big storm in mid April. On schedule, 30 years later the snow storms are returning. Here is the view from the ground during the last storm and then the following day.
http://louxeng.com/r/Mauna%20Kea%20composit.jpg
Very nice montage, James Loux. Thank you for sharing.
And, lol, no, An-th-ony, I am not trying for the #3 poster spot again, here…. heh.
But
I
could
try!
#(:))
Maybe its due to Inadvertent Climate Modification. Should about cover ANYTHING the climate (or weather) throws our way.
I guess we can chalk this up to “Inasvertent Climate Modification”? Should about cover anything.
Inadvertent Climate Modification. Darn keyboard
It even affects our tuiping!!1 🙂
We had snow here last week in Australia during our mid Spring. On the Northern Tablelands particularly Armidale, last week our temps plummeted and I rushed to bring in my tropical and sub tropical bonsai back inside. (We are 3,500 ft absl) 27C during the day and minus at night, and frost expected. Where is this global warming eh? I personally watch the weather forecasts on the net all the time. I suspect the Northern Hemisphere will get another cold winter, but Hawaii? Here (on the inland regions) of course we find the low temps do not produce rain. Can’t win, eh.
I couldn’t reply to that Phil. fellow on the Ben Santer thread because its closed. Basically what he said was that were it not for the fact that we have pumped in massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere the Earth would have cooled around 0.16 C in the last decade due to natural variation. Apparently he thinks that a cooling of 0.16C would have been good and the fact it didn’t take place is bad. What an …..
Mauna Kea is the top arrow, not the bottom, as in the text.