Guest Opinion: Dr. Tim Ball
They are physically cleaning up after the “Blizzard of 2016” in the northeastern US. The job is not as onerous as anticipated and is going slowly because the government is in charge. However, it is time for an intellectual clean-up because of what went on. The entire sequence of events is a classic example of environmental and climatic exploitation that parallels the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) deception. [That same sequence] shows what is wrong with weather and climate forecasts, and how it is all amplified and perpetuated by people who don’t know what they are talking about, or, worse, want to know.
The underlying objective was to hype the potential for catastrophe against a backdrop of implications that the event is unnatural. The actors on the stage were the weather office bureaucrats at National Weather Service (NWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) who are key players in the global climate deception that is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Mainstream media TV meteorologists were seeking sensationalism under the guise of warning and protecting the people and supported them as usual. Regular mainstream media ambulance-chasing reporters, looking for extremes and creating them when necessary followed them on stage. They later produced stories explaining how the storm was evidence of climate change and global warming. They did this as they ignored the physical evidence, reality, the historical context, and the actual mechanisms of climate change.
The Buildup
The Slate headline threatened,
“This “Blizzard for the Ages” Headed for the East Coast Is Very Much the Real Deal.”
“Since early Saturday, nearly every single run of every major model has shown the potential for a foot or two of snowfall on a track to hit somewhere between Northern Virginia and Boston. What’s amazing—perhaps even more so than the impressive potential snow totals—is that all the major weather models are already locked in so far in advance. Simply put: There’s definitely a big storm coming, it’s just the details that are still being worked out.”
Notice it is ‘definite’ because all the models agree. In another speculative report, the rhetoric and hyperbole all heightened the anticipation.
“Winter storm Jonas is set to affect almost 76 million people as several feet of snow hit the north-east US, causing travel chaos for millions as internal flights are grounded and international flights under threat of cancellation.
The storm is expected to bring heavy snowfall to 15 states, with blizzard warnings, plunging temperatures and coastal flood warnings in place from 22 to 24 January.”
As usual, in today’s PR controlled and directed media, they produced slogans including Snow-mageddon and Snow-pocalypse and Snowzilla.
The Basis For the Hype
I am sure many skeptics reading the Slate quote immediately ignored what it said when they read the phrase “every major model.” Once again they are justified as the failed predictions attest. In this case, it is not just a single model failure but all of them. There is one interesting difference from previous failures that may reflect a growing awareness in the weather agencies that a credibility gap is growing. In an article titled “Snowstorms forecasters under fire as ‘historic’ accumulation failed to materialize” the spokesperson for the US National Weather Service said,
“My deepest apologies to many key decision-makers and so many members of the public,” wrote Gary Szatkowski, the meteorologist in charge of the organization’s office in Mount Holly, N.J. “You made a lot of tough decisions expecting us to get it right, and we didn’t. Once again, I’m sorry.”
Does he make the same apology for the failed IPCC predictions his agency promotes?
The spokesperson for the Canadian weather office was more defensive in his remarks.
“There is still a lot of complexity and it is still an imperfect science,” said Peter Kimbell, warning preparedness meteorologist at Environment Canada. However, he rejected the notion that forecasters get the weather wrong most of the time. “We actually get it right a lot of the time,” he said. “And it all depends on your perspective of what getting it right is. If we say we’re going to get 15 centimetres of snow and we get 12, is that good or not good?”
The claim of a 3-centimeter error is clever because it puts it within a tolerable range, but that is not what happened. Besides his agency doesn’t acknowledge the imperfect science when it makes global warming predictions for the next few decades.
While Philadelphia, New York and New Jersey had braced for 30 to 60 centimetres of snow, they got far less than that. New York City received about 20 centimetres, Philadelphia a mere 2.5 centimetres or so. New Jersey got up to 20 centimetres.
This is not a surprise because New Scientist reported that Tim Palmer, a leading climate modeller at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts in Reading England said:
I don’t want to undermine the IPCC, but the forecasts, especially for regional climate change, are immensely uncertain.
What people overlook is that these are the same agencies, the NWS, NOAA, and EC, who are the IPCC. They are the same agencies telling political leaders and the public that the IPCC forecasts are accurate and must form the basis of political action. In the case of the snowstorm forecast, the political leaders are left without options. They believe they must over respond because a failure to prepare is political suicide. The politicians are in no position to challenge their weather bureaucrats, as Maurice Strong knew when he set up the IPCC through the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
Historical Context
The storm of 2016 was a standard “Nor’easter”. They are so normal that there is a separate entry in Wikipedia. These storms develop as low-pressure systems along the Polar Front, the boundary between the cold polar air and the warmer subtropical air. They begin in the lee of the Rocky Mountains and are often called Alberta or Canadian Clippers. In the interior of the continent, the circulation brings moisture from the Gulf of Mexico to create legendary blizzards. When the Cold Front pushes toward the Atlantic coast, it tends to run parallel to the coast and the low-pressure system circulation means moisture is picked up from the Atlantic Ocean, and the prevailing northeast winds provide both the name “nor’easter” and the heavy snow conditions.
Lack of knowledge of the mechanisms and failure to check the history of such storms didn’t only hamper politicians.
False Attribution To Global Warming.
In a Business Insider article about “The Blizzard of 2016 (aka Winter Storm Jonas)” Tanya Lewis argues, “Massive snowstorms don’t disprove global warming – in fact, quite the opposite.” This statement is wrong for two major reasons.
1. Meteorologically, because the IPCC claim that greater warming will occur in the polar air than the tropical air. If true, this decreases the temperature difference across the Polar Front. The intensity of storms is determined by that temperature difference, known as the Zonal Index.
2. Historically, because there was a much greater storm in 1888 that followed the same path as the storm of 2016. Global temperatures were lower at that time.
The details and impact of “The Blizzard of’88” are described in a 1976 publication by the US Depart of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Environmental Data Service written by Patrick Hughes and titled “American Weather Stories” (see image). Here is what one report outlined.
The blizzard cutoff and immobilized Washington, D. C., Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston. Snowfall averaged 40 to 50 inches over southeastern New York State and southern New England, with drifts to 30 and 40 feet. In Middletown New York, snowdrifts were reported to have covered houses three stories high. The townspeople had to tunnel through the snow like miners, even shoring up the passageways with timber. For two days, frequent gale force to near hurricane winds accompanied below freezing temperatures which ranged from near zero to the low 20s over much of the area.
Men, women, and children died in city streets, in country fields and on ice-choked ships and boats. Over 400 died, 200 in New York City alone. Thousands more suffer everything from exhaustion to amputation of frostbitten limbs.
The great storm buried trains all over the northeast, marooning passengers for days in some cases for a week or more. The blizzard was a marine disaster from Chesapeake Bay through New England. Some 200 vessels were sunk, grounded, or wrecked and abandoned. At least 100 seamen died in the storm they called the Great White Hurricane. Of 40 vessels in Philadelphia’s Harbor, only 13 escaped destruction or disabling damage, and at least 30 crew members perished.
Maximum wind velocities recorded range from 48 mph at New York City to 60 mph at Atlantic City and 70 mph at Block Island.
Ironically, the report notes,
“The Blizzard of ’88 was not the most violent storm to visit the northeast.”
Summary
Michael Crichton identified the overall challenges in analysing the events preceding, during, and following the Blizzard of 2016.
The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance.
As a finale and evidence of unwillingness to face facts the NWS claim
‘This storm ranks up there with the great blizzards of the past 100 years in terms of amount of snowfall, size of impacted areas and population affected,’
A very unhelpful, unscientific, statement that reveals the political hyperbole that drives the story. Not to be outdone NOAA report,
Last weekend’s historic blizzard has been revealed as the fourth most largest snowstorm ever to hit the Northeast, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
It is nice to learn that NOAA has records covering the entire multi-billion-year history of the region as the word “ever” indicates. Maybe they could use these to put their claims about the record warm in 2015 in perspective.
The Blizzard is a classic example of how those with a political agenda took a normal, natural, event and turned it into a potential catastrophe. They gave their claims legitimacy with computer models. The compliant sensation-seeking media repeated and amplified the story until politicians were left with no choice but to overreact. In fact, this is a self-inflicted wound because the politicians lead people to expect the government to look after them.
The final fiasco is that disciples of the false story about human-caused global warming saw an opportunity to further their agenda. They ignore the fact that the models were wrong about the blizzard and make claims that are scientifically inaccurate. Of course, they will never give up as long as they ignore reality and their jobs and careers are dependent on maintaining the deception. The storm of 2016 shows how the deceptions are occurring at the local and global scale.
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UPDATE:
The Washington Post reported that airport weather observers lost their snow-measuring device in the blizzard. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration spokeswoman Susan Buchanan would say only that “questions were raised about the reading.”
As a result, she said the National Weather Service would assemble an internal review team to assess how snow measurements are taken at Reagan National and other locations.
Uh, “centimetres” [sic]? I think you mean inches. 20 centimeters (5″) is just a basic winter snowfall in New York, Pennsylvania, or Jersey.
We got 16″ (~40cm) in north Richmond VA. My son in Winchester measured 24″ (~60cm). DC got upwards of 20″ (~50cm).
“A centimetre (international spelling as used by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures; symbol cm) or centimeter (American spelling)”
Sigh…
Well, here in merica, we use inch, feet and Fahrenheit. We don’t need none of those fancy French metric system units here.
“We don’t need none of those fancy French metric system units…”
Except for when we buy giant bottles of soda. Small sodas we buy by the ounce, bigguns by the liter. Not litre.
“Except for when we buy giant bottles of soda.”
Hah, I knew it… It’s a conspiracy to makes us all fat!
Officlal Canadian Government spelling as issued in the 70’s when we went metric is metre for length and meter for a device that measures flow like in a water meter or gas meter.
Thing is, the Canadian Federal, Provincial, and Municipal governments can’t read their own standards but when we first went “Metric” the government bureaucrats made sure all Engineering Consultants followed the rules so the spelling is completely ingrained in those of us who went through the Metrication in the 1970’s. The indoctrination was so complete that I actually have to think about the difference between mm and cm because on Engineering Drawings we used only mm and metres. Building drawings, for example, were almost always in mm so 3 feet became 900 mm, 2 feet was 600 mm, 4 inches was 100 mm – pipe sizes all went to mm in general – 50, 100, 150, 200, 300, 600. Pipeline right of ways and roadways were typically in metres – 10 metre R/W; 20 metre R/W – and long distances of course in km. When I see ski reports in cm, I automatically convert to mm because I worked in those units for 40 years even though we all know there are 2.54 cm to an inch. Course I measure my horses heights in hands – which is to the top of the wither. One hand is 4 inches or roughly 100 mm. Then again, how many Firkins in a Hogshead? The Brits will know.
The human mind is an interesting place.
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/metric-conversion/
“Wayne Delbeke says: January 31, 2016 at 5:54 pm”
It’s even worce than that. Engineering drawings I had to read in metric, and the machine I had to use was in imperial!
I prefer the hand-stone-fortnight system.
” by the liter. Not litre”
It comes from the French, so it is written according to French rules. But what can you expect about a country so ignorant they can’t even write aluminium right. Only pig-ignorant Americans would misspell litre, but what can you expect. Actors on American TV shows pronounce “solder” as “sodder”. Amazing that they can rule the free world. But not for long. The IPCC will fix you bad-spelling lot up quick smart.
And why does this site have an American spell-checker. It keeps marking perfectly good words with a little red squiggle underneath.
5 cm is 2 inches. 30 cm is 1 foot. 100 cm is 1 meter. 3 meters is 10 feet. approx.
The metric system is hopeless for navigation. It is a decimalized distance from the equator to the north pole. Metric maps for navigation are a disaster.
The nautical mile in contrast is a unit of time, based on the earth’s rotation, dividing the earth into 360 degrees.
This gives us present day latitude and longitude. 1 degree of latitude is 60 nautical miles. 1 degree of longitude is 60 nautical miles cos latitude. 360 degrees * 60 nautical miles/degree = 21600 nautical miles = circumference of the earth. 1 knot = 1 nautical mile per hour.
This allows onboard navigators to directly determine ship or aircraft position using a clock and the position of celestial bodies in the sky, using the “equation of time”. The equation of time is the difference between mechanical clocks and a sundial. Electronic navigation such as GPS replaces celestial bodies with satellites.
“Metre” would be pronounce “Met” – “Tree”. Clearly the wrong spelling.
20cm is 8ins.
20cm =~8 inches, sorry.
Tim…..shouldn’t this be “don’t” want to know?
“who don’t know what they are talking about, or, worse, (don’t) want to know.”
“We actually get it right a lot of the time,” he said.
…I can do the same thing with a coin
““We actually get it right a lot of the time,” he said.
…I can do the same thing with a coin”
But your “coin” wouldn’t tell us the area the storm affected. The strength of the storm, or the depth of the snow or it’s start/end.
Now would it?
The usual “they always get it wrong” knee-jerk comment. … To which the answer is of course.
That’s just as impossible as always getting it right.
Clue: coz it’s a forecast – (with and inherent probability of being correct).
The answer lies in between and increasingly towards the correct end – even, as in this case as much as a week beforehand.
Unless you want to specific ridiculous detail.
Yes the article is confused and wrong as people have pointed out.
Some of that material relates to a storm forecast in early 2015, not 2016.
Tim should consider whether that should be made clearer.
I have to disagree with some snow fall amount you gave for New York area. Central Park received 26 inches just shy of the 26.4 they received in 1947. I skied in New Jersey at that time. Here in Westchester we had 17 inches and my nephew in Landsdale, Pa said he had 18. North of us was much less. It really varied all over the place but we coped fine. New York City had every one get off the roads by 2:30 pm so they’d could be cleaned. Sunday every thing was pretty much back to normal. Washington can not handle snow. They couldn’t when I lived there in the early 1960s and they can’t now.
The snow data were “adjusted”, just like global temperature data. As Dr. Ball says, the models were all wrong and there was hardly any snowfall at all.
/sarc?
Except for the 37″ in a north west suburb of Baltimore. The article is garbage.
Thanks Dr. Ball: In question and answer period in the House of Commons Canada last week the MP’s are use the term Greenhouse Gases much more. And in my opinion are backing away from the term Climate Change. Justin Trudeau I believe he is using a subliminal messages try to lump Co2 as pollution. PS their was nothing more silly then Oct 24, 2015 – An enhanced satellite image showing Category 5 Hurricane Patricia at landfall near Cuixmala, Mexico at 6:15 p.m. CDT, Oct. 23, 2015. CNN had egg all over their face with that one.
Yes, Patricia’s eye seemed to suddenly disappear Just before landfall !!
What has COBALT – Co on the table of elements – have to do with your comment?
Do you mean Carbon Dioxide? – CO2?
NASA, NWS and NOAA need a lot more than just a clean up, they require a complete fumigation to rid us of all those Glo.Bull Warming Alarmist cockroaches !
Easy Nellie !!
You ever had to predict a storm that might affect 10’s of millions ?
The media is gonna write what they’re gonna write.
Yeah, well, people are actually beginning to laugh at alarmists, if they don’t just ignore them. Scientists are quietly distancing themselves from the worst of the rhetoric, too.
Not the end, not even the beginning of the end, buy the end of the beginning
I don’t “buy the end”. Still $$ on the march.
There is always going to be a lot of hoopla and hubbub as a storm brews. It is actually part of the fun. Don’t let the Global Warming Alarmists ruin the joy of a good storm.
In New Hampshire we didn’t see a flake of the last nor’easter, but I had great fun scanning through the web and seeing the ruckus down south. We taxpayers up here get a sort of relish (a bit mean-minded I fear) when Washington DC gets clouted and we don’t.
A couple of images made me chuckle. First was the mayor of Washington hunkered down in the Homeland security emergency management bunker, basically telling everyone to stay inside, and the second was pictures of crowds sledding down the hill the US Capital is on. Apparently it was the first time sledding was allowed there in a hundred years, which likely got some official in trouble, but he probably figured terrorists don’t go out in the snow.
I’d hate to be the guy who has to forecast such storms, because there’s always places that get less than expected, and always places that get more.
Alarmists get their fun by making up excuses for snow further south than last year, and I get my fun by shooting their excuses full of holes, which is easy to do. Usually it only takes a history book.
The best way to enjoy a storm is to get your driving done before it starts.
Former NH resident; now in FL – Caleb’s last line is truth.
I hadn’t heard anyone mention it here this year, so I guess I have to take on the task. Ah – someone did elsewhere. When I saw all those sledders in DC, I said to myself “RFK Jr is wrong.”
http://donsurber.blogspot.com/2016/01/dc-suffers-curse-of-rfk-jr.html reminds us of his regretable impression of David Viner from 2008:
Surber closes with:
Gaia seems to have an ear out for absolute statements regarding weather trends, particularly from warmistas.
They seem to have almost perfect timing in declaring droughts to be permanent just before record and epic rains return, calling for an end to cold winters or snow just before frigid winters and record blizzards, etc.
This record of failed predictions must be added to the rest of their record of wrong predictions and alarmist warnings.
The other thing I find noteworthy about this tendency toward epic fail predictions is a near perfect record in acknowledging their errors: It is always terrible things predicted that we must all wring our hands over, but never come the sighs of relief or all clear signals when the predictions prove completely wrong.
Who has ever heard a warmista thank their lucky stars that the grave catastrophe of a less frozen Arctic wasteland proved unfounded?
Another great picture I saw was of a man in Virginia who “did not own a sled”, but made one to tow his toddler about in, by attaching a rope to two holes punched in a large, trimmed, disposable diaper box.
Where there’s a will there’s a way.
Philadelphia got a lot more than a few centimeters. About two feet all around Center City and South Philly, about 30 inches on the Main Line in many of my friends’ back yards…
Anyone does not believe it I have a ton of pics sent by friends. Several people heard thunder and saw lightning during the storm. And winds were near or at 35mph for many hours, although the buildings tend to keep snow from blowing into blinding whiteouts in built up areas, so blizzard conditions are had to get.
Joe Bastardi called this storm months before on his weekly Saturday update.
+10
I’m 100% certain that it was the worst winter storm since last winter, and if I shred my records it will be worst storm since records began.
“I’m 100% certain that it was the worst winter storm since last winter…”
Only in the east.
Out west has had some humdingers already, including one that killed cattle by the tens of thousands in Texas and New Mexico, mostly by suffocation under giant drifts, one early season one that was unusually heavy, across the northern plains, and several in the Sierras and Rockies.
+1!
Do you mean 97% certain?
“False Attribution To Global Warming.”
I think people must be getting PhDs in “False attribution to global warming” at may universities worldwide.
Dad: Hey, what are you going to major in?
Kid: False attribution in climatology. If I can’t get in on the bandwagon, it will be good for politics as a fallback.
Dad: Great. You always had a good head on you.
If we believe their rubbish about all the disasters to come because of so called CAGW, we also know that it will not change through any mitigation efforts from the OECD countries.
Even their icon Hansen called COP 21 BS and a fra-d, because he knows that at least 90% of new co2 emissions until 2040 will come from developing countries like China, India etc. Also Lomborg’s PR study tells us that we can expect no measurable difference to temp by 2100, even if the COP 21 idiocy was followed to the letter.
Saw a great cartoon recently.
It was a picture of St. John’s, Newfoundland buried in snow. The caption read something like, “You call it the greatest blizzard ever, we call it Wednesday.”
Storms like this are by no means unprecedented, and media has been hyping and people overreacting to big snowstorms since I was a child. The run on stores in advance of even a few inches of snow is legenday in the Philadelphia area. Mainly because people hate to run out of the staples when everyone will be mostly inside for several days in a row, and everyone understands that one must take predictions with a grain of salt.
One other minor disagreement with the lead post…nor’easters are, as far as I have ever heard, distinct from Alberta Clippers.
Clippers are typically fast moving secondary lows which move southeastward out of Canada on the northwesterly winds behind a big storm or Arctic front. They are usually moisture starved, small, and fast moving, and almost never drop snow after crossing the Appalachian mountains. Nor’easters come up the coast, and there is often a transfer of energy to an induced low off the Carolina coast which then bombs out, meaning that air pressure drops rapidly and snow intensifies suddenly and winds pick up dramatically. These are notoriously difficult to forecast accurately, as the transfer of energy may happen slightly east or west of the anticipated location, and then the track may take the storm more offshore or more hugging the coast. A small difference in position and track can be the difference between a rain event in the major cities, a big snow storm, or nothing if it tracks out to sea.
This storm had no energy transfer, as the surface low and the upper low merged over land, and that was one reason for the unusually long duration, heavy snowfalls farther south than is common, and the prediction several days in advance.
As far as I could tell, models pick up on the correct storm track and heavy snow while the low was still out over the Gulf of Alaska. Trying doing that by eyeballing synoptic charts.
From AccuWeather.com
“An Alberta Clipper, or clipper for short, is a low-pressure system that develops on the lee side of the Canadian Rockies (in Alberta), gets caught up in the jet stream and travels southeastward into the northern Plains, on through the Great Lakes and eventually off the mid-Atlantic coast into the Atlantic Ocean.
A clipper will usually bring smaller amounts of snow (generally 1-3 inches) because of its speed and lack of deep moisture, but higher amounts are certainly possible. Along with the quick burst of snow, a clipper generally brings colder temperatures and often times gusty winds.”
http://vortex.accuweather.com/adc2004/pub/includes/columns/newsstory/2013/590x422_02041505_map_640w_590.jpg
I have been a forecast meteorologist and research scientist in Alberta for many many years. You are exactly correct in your description of Alberta Clippers. Nor’easters are not Alberta Clippers. The formation and movement of the two are quite separate, as you point out. Any competent meteorologist in Canada would know this.
There is no way a meteorologist would have been able to forecast this storm well in advance without the use of models.
Another poor scientific statement made by Mr. Ball is “They ignore the fact that the models were wrong about the blizzard…”. What is meant by “wrong”? Was the position of the snow wrong, were the snow amounts all wrong, was the track of the low center wrong, were the winds too high/low, etc? A good scientist would never make such a broad statement without a detailed analysis and discussion.
All in all, a poor summation of the storm by Mr. Ball. I hope his other climate analysis is on a much more scientific basis.
Northeasters can be especially destructive to the coastlines of the Mid Atlantic states. Imagine one that lasts three days. Google “The Great Atlantic Storm of 1962.”
This post was intended for Menicholas.
Don’t forget WUWT has search function too. It’ll suggest my http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/06/50-years-ago-the-great-atlantic-storm-of-1962/
Good article. Thanks.
Very true Richard. Nor’easters have shaped the coastlines in many places to their present configuration.
There was terrible flooding from this storm along the New Jersey coast. I have friends and family living there, and owning vacation homes. Cape May had what was reported to be worst flooding on record.
Other shore towns nearby were cut off during the high tides which occurred.
I saw it coming, and warned friends, via social media, to expect bad flooding days before the storm hit, knowing that the full moon and proximity to perihelion would enhance tides and hence flooding.
@Ric, re the article about the ’62 storm, that was a great read, enjoyed it immensely the writing was great and precise none the wishy washy baloney you see today!
Accuweather, who tells me it’s raining when it’s not, and tells me it isn’t raining when it is. Entrails are more accurate.
N. N. Tales notes the correlation in weather prognosticators of academic-like tenure and their lack of skin in the game, doxastic commitment. They don’t get fired for lying or screwing up.
Well, parts of the northeast and mid-Atlantic. Northern New England (Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine) got essentially nothing to go along with the paltry less than a foot (30 cm) we’ve had the rest of the season. From home, just north of Concord NH:
http://wermenh.com/images/snow_stake_20160131.jpg
The stuff on the ground is really sintered sleet from a “mixed precip” storm
a month ago. However, it will probably succumb to a warm spell and rain on Wednesday.
While I was really in the mood for a good blizzard, any storm that misses us
and hits Washington DC is still a win in my book. 🙂
That’s a cool measuring gauge. I’ll have to find one for my back yard. 🙂
It is cool, thanks. It does have an extra two foot section that will stack under this section with the arrow. Problem is, I can’t add it mid-season. I suppose I could start with the low section, but most seasons one section is fine.
It is copper, so it does melt more nearby snow than I’d like, so I have to get down with the snow to read the depth well.
Ric, I’m just north of you near Laconia. It appears we have less snow than the Capital Area and even less after this weekend. Winnipesaukee isn’t frozen over so the Ice Fishing Derby may not happen. I have heard more than a few folks say it’s all the fault of AGW, but I reminded them what the previous two winters were like and they shut up and went away.
I did enjoy watching the snowy ‘meltdown’ in the affected areas and commented more than once on various forums that what they call a calamity we call normal up here.
Dude, spend some time driving with these people and you wouldn’t say that. The lack of skill is horrendous when it’s 60 and sunny. Put any of that white stuff on the road and it’s carmaggedon. A day before the big storm hit a light dusting came through. No measurable accumulation to speak of, but the entire region of engulfed in car wrecks. Trust me, when it snows in the Baltimore/Washington area you do NOT want to be driving!
The article in CBCNews quoted here is dated 27 Jan 2015, and had nothing to do with the Jan 2016 storm, which did yield very large totals including at Washington D.C (B/W airport 29.2 in/74 cm)., Philadelphia (airport 19.4 in/49 cm)and New York (airport 30.5 in/77 cm), and which seem more-or-less in line with the forecasts of 30 – 70 cm.
For the failed 2015 storm, Philadelphia never had forecasts by well-known credible weather forecasting outfits past 20 inches (51 cm). Where did 60 cm for Philadelphia come from?
‘They are physically cleaning up after the “Blizzard of 2016” in the northeastern US. The job is not as onerous as anticipated and is going slowly because the government is in charge.’
“…and is going slowly because the government is in charge.”
Thank you very very much for a good chuckle. That line still brings a smile to my face as I type this. Oh, and how true.
Why are we calling it “The Blizzard of 2016” ? Seems a bit premature to assume it will be the worst storm of the year.
Maybe “The First Blizzard of 2016″ would not sell as much advertising?
Generally there’s only one “worst” storm that people remember. Things get really confused when there are multiple storms. Someone really ought to name them – Oh wait – I take that back. I hate the weather.com names for reasons I haven’t figured out completely.
Hurricanes have names because, well, they are hurricanes. Strong weather systems in themselves regardless of whether they hit land or not.
Winter storms of the past have earned a name. (Blizzard(s) of ’78?)
The Storm Channel names systems that produce snowfall to promote their own importance?
Maybe to give the impression that a winter storm is unusual?
Maybe hoping that this winter storm is worse than last year’s?
OK. I don’t know either.
(Someone tell me when they start naming thunderstorms.)
“(Someone tell me when they start naming thunderstorms.)”
I understand they are already naming dust devils.
Yes, there’s one that goes by the name “Taz”.
And naming water spouts as hurricanes…Naw that wouldn’t happen would it? Although I remember something in the way of a disaster reported: Insy winsy spider went up the water spout….
One reason it makes sense to have names for tropical cyclones is multiple cyclones can be out there simultaneously. Distinguishing them as “the storm that formed last week” or “the storm that destroyed the Honduran banana crop” just doesn’t work.
OTOH, I’ve been explaining the difference between the midwest and New England blizzards of 1978 since before I wrote my web page on the latter.
Let us hope we never get to the point that we are retiring the names of winter storms.
Cold really is worse that warmth.
Have to jump in for my namesake here. In any case late 80’s several nor’easters retrograded south. Took years to fix the beach erosion. I’ll get interested in named storms when I see the criteria for retiring a particular name.
And who got to name the storm and why Jonas? At least if you go alphabetically the name gives a relative reading of when in th season
So now ‘predictions’ are called ‘models’ and ‘weather’ is called ‘climate’. The only difference is the level of hype, half truths, and blatant misdirection being spewed by the MSM at the behest of organizations driven by ideology. Temperature, precipitation, and historical records are no longer important to adjust our daily living preparations by as they are for political agenda. “They’ll tax the air you breath” used to be a joke.
Science has become a political tool. The way to control the masses is to control information and knowledge.
” Propaganda is a form of communication, often biased or misleading in nature aimed at influencing and altering the attitude of a population toward some cause, position or political agenda in an effort to form a consensus to a standard set of belief patterns” Here’s some law history http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2877&context=californialawreview
There’s a lot to critique in here. Most doesn’t matter all that much to a lot of people, but it’s all important to us New England snow freaks.
First, the recent storm was not an Alberta Clipper. It came ashore in California and trekked across the country. I’m not sure what it brought to the Gulf states, perhaps someone has the time to fill that in. These southern storms pick up a lot of Gulf moisture and with the storm track south, there’s cold air to the north, and after making the transition to a coastal storm they can clobber the mid-Atlantic states.
The blizzard that hit at the end of the Copenhagen CoP that forced President Obama to bail a day early may have been one of these, the 1993 “Storm of the Century” formed in the western Gulf of Mexico and spun up quickly there.
Alberta Clippers start out moisture starved, travel across the northern US, transfer their energy to the coast around southern New England and may “bomb out” in the Gulf of Maine. They generally bring me just a few inches of nuisance snow.
The best storms for me generally bring rain to Boston. They come up the coast, but come inland west of Boston and east of me. However, they miss out on some of the moisture feed off the Atlantic and it turns out the biggest snow storms here are smaller than the NWS records in Portland ME, Boston MA, Worcester, MA, and Hartford CT. We just keep the snow longer than they do.
Here are some good notes on the 1993 storm – http://www.srh.noaa.gov/tlh/?n=march1993_superstorm
I seem to remember a few nor’easter’s that bombed out and then just stalled, where it took days for the snow to stop. I think “The Hundred Hour Snow” might have been in 1969.
The 1997 Super Storm didn’t stall. It was just a monster, and came roaring up the coast.
I meant the 1993 Superstorm. 1997 Was the April Fool’s Storm.