NC Media Watch

Southern hemisphere is getting hammered - are we next?

Russ Steele

I have been tracking the weather in the southern hemisphere at Next Ice Age Now. Here are some high lights:

• Traffic chaos in South Africa - Heaviest snowfall in 20 yrs
• Christchurch snowed in - Worse to come
• Chile - 'White earthquake' - 9 ft of snow in 4 days

More details here.

Joe says no El Nino, at least till 2012

Russ Steele

Now did you like our last La Niña winter? While it is warm and toasty you might spend a few hours getting ready for another La Niña winter according to Joe Bastardi.  Get in some extra wood, buy a snowblower and sign a contract to get the drive way plowed. Another La Niña winter is on the way!

The SST will fall, as it did in the cold event of 08-09 back to levels  that will spur even a greater global temp drop. The forecast for a return to normal for the spring of last year was right, there was a bounce up, that will also end, and the forecast now is for global temps as measured by objective sats to fall as low as -.25 C  by March.   And the models are now showing it,  both the fall of ENSO3.4 temps and global temps.

More details at WUWT.

Our near record snow fall may have started in Iceland, Russia, and Alaska

Russ Steele

The snow on Mt. Baker Washington is still five stories tall in the pass, the Going to the Sun Road in Glacier National Park had the lastest opening ever, and record snow fall on Mt. Shasta have the glaciers moving again.

Northern hemisphere volcanos have been very active in Iceland, Russia, and Alaska over the last two years.  These volcanos may have had more of an impact on our climate than we originally thought.

New studies show that volcanic eruptions can eject up to 100 million times more ash than previously thought. One million times! The ash seeds cloud formation, leading to more rain and snow.

A team of researchers in France monitored Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano, which, beginning on March 20, 2010, ejected an enormous plume of ash into the atmosphere that soon spread across Europe.

The researchers then analyzed how many secondary particles this ash generated as it reacted chemically with other components of the atmosphere.

Their new data showed that when sulphuric acid particles become large enough, they can behave as seeds for cloud formation, thereby increasing the amount of precipitation.

In addition, such seeding particles can form at lower altitudes and farther away from volcanoes than past studies had suggested, causing changes in local and regional weather.

The findings, published online on July 11 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, here, point to the potentially broader climate influence that volcanoes could have.

It was a combination of low solar activity in 1800 and long series of eruptions by Mount Tambora in 1815, that created a year without a summer in 1916 in the Northern hemisphere.  Now the question, is could a series of seperate volcanos across the hemisphere produce enough ash and secondary particles to produce a future year without a summer?  We live in interesting times.

Thirty two inches of snow in one of the driest places on earth

Russ Steele

My mother and father lived for two years in Iquiqe Chile. My dad was supervising the building of sardine fishing boats in the early 60s. They visited the Atacama Desert, where the average rain fall is less than .004 inches per year, often going without rainfall for years. Some places in the Atacama Desert have not had rainfall for over 400 years. According to my mother,  "the air sucked the moisture from your skin."

A recent cold wave in Chile brought 32 inches of snow to the Atacama desert. The region has not seen this amount of snow in close to 20 years.

Yes, this was weather but it may be a precursor to climate change over the next 20 years. Stay Tuned.

Not unprecedented, but certainly odd last week in June

Russ Steele

Here is a satellite view from Watts Up With That


URGENT – WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SACRAMENTO CA
233 PM PDT MON JUN 27 2011

..UNSEASONABLY COOL AND SHOWERY WEATHER SYSTEM TUESDAY AND
WEDNESDAY.

.A VERY DYNAMIC AND COOL LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM CONTINUES TO APPROACH NORTHERN CALIFORNIA FROM THE GULF OF ALASKA AND WILL MOVE OVER THE SIERRA NEVADA TUESDAY AFTERNOON INTO WEDNESDAY. THIS SYSTEM IS PROJECTED TO BRING WELL ABOVE NORMAL PRECIPITATION AMOUNTS FOR THIS TIME OF YEAR ALONG WITH CHANCES OF THUNDERSTORMS.

The other unusual end of June event is the lack of sunspots.  Detail at spaceweather.com

QUIET SUN: June is going to end on a quiet note. Solar activity is very low with only a few small scattered sunspots posing no threat for strong flares.

One has to wonder is the unusual June weather and lack of sunspots during Cycle 24 connected? 

Yes it has been a cold wet May, but how cold was it

Russ Steele

As many readers know, I have been tracking Grass Valley temperatures at the local national weather station since 2005. The average May Temperature in Grass Valley for the last 43 years has been 58.22 ºF.  This last month the average temperature was 53.33 ºF, almost five degrees cooler than the long term average.

If we look a longer period from 1909 to 1966, when the Grass Valley station was not located at the wastewater plant, the average was 54.29 ºF  It is interesting that the current month is much closer to the longer term 58 year record, than the shorter 43 year record.

The difference in the two long term records could be due siting issues, or the PDO shift that took place in 1977 and lasted to about 2003, or both.  For many years the weather station was at the Empire Mine. Neither location was the best for taking accurate local temperatures, except maybe in the 1960s when it was in Ray Stein’s backyard in Grass Valley.

Later today, I will see if I can find a graph of Grass Valley temperatures.

Snow in Truckee this weekend?

Russ Steele

There is a lot of Global Warming on the ground through out the west.  A guest post on Watts Up With That has a rundown on the the western snow pack.  "May snow depths are deeper than anything we have seen in the last 45 years" in the Tetons. Here is a link to a report on the Washington/Cascade Snow Pack.

 Is snow in May at Lake Tahoe unusual?   Looking at the 107 year record it snowed an inch or more in May 44 years out of 107, or 41 percent of the time. The average depth is 3.7 inches, how ever there were some block buster springs:
1912 - 20 in 
1933 - 16.5 in
1950 - 21 in
1953 - 16 in
1964 - 33.5 in
1977 - 16.5 in

 

Yes, it is weather, but record setting weather

Russ Steele

Several readers have written asking about May temperatures, and the month is not over yet.

So far 800 new May Low Temperatures have been set across the country. More details here.

Southern California is setting record lows:

• 17 May 11 - Long Beach Airport bottomed out at 49 degrees, breaking the 50-degree record set in 1964, according to the  National Weather Service.

UCLA recorded a low of 47 degrees, breaking the old record of 48 degrees set in 1953.
• At 42 degrees,  Lancaster tied a record set 1955, while Big Bear dropped to 25 degrees, breaking the previous record of 26 degrees set in 1995.
• In Ventura County, Camarillo dropped to 42 degrees, breaking the previous record of 43, a record that has stood since 1955.

Anthony Watts has the latest on the Western Snow Pack in this post: Western snow pack is well above normal, Squaw Valley sets new all time snow record

Stay Tuned

Amgen Stage I Cancelled

Russ Steele

KVMR is reporting that Stage 1 has been canceled. Now we are looking forward to State II, but there is still more snow to come on the pass.  Stage II starts at Tahoe City to Sacreamento over Donner Pass.  Will CALTRANS have the road clear, or will they have to chain up the bikes?

An Inch of Global Warming (Updated)

Russ Steele

Update (05-15-11, 30:30) Anthony Watts has an ongoing discussion here: Late, low, May snow in California.  Be sure and click on the radar/satellite map and see what is coming our way. The comments are also interesting.

We have 3 inches of wet slush on our deck. It has stopped snowing the we are being bombed with snow chunks as they fall from the trees.  Temperature is 37 degrees and light rain falling. 

We woke to an inch of global warming on the deck this morning and it continues to snow.

Lights are blinking, we may lose power. Wet snow on trees full of spring leaves will result in more broken limbs and down trees if this keeps up. Stay Tuned.