Snow, ice paralyze South; Nor'easter aims at New England; deadly floods in Australia
Much of the nation's South remains paralyzed today by a major winter storm that left up to a foot of snow and dangerous ice accumulations in its wake. Six states have declared states of emergency, and travel is extremely hazardous in the affected region, including Atlanta, where at least five closures of major interstates occurred this morning due to severe icing. The storm began Sunday in northeast Texas and tracked eastward, bringing snow amounts as high as 7 - 8 inches to northeastern Texas and southern Arkansas, 9 - 11 inches to northern Mississippi, northern Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, and southern Tennessee. As of 3am CST, the heaviest snow as reported in the NOAA Storm Summary occurred at Cashiers, North Carolina, 12.5 inches. The worst freezing rain was reported in central Georgia at Wrightsville, which received 1.5" of ice. Aiken, South Carolina received 1" of ice, and numerous locations in South Carolina, Central Georgia, and Central Alabama received over 1/2" of ice. Freezing rain amounts of 1/4" were also reported in northern Louisiana, central Mississippi, and western Arkansas. Dangerous travel conditions will persist across the affected region the rest of today, as temperatures will struggle to reach 40°.
Figure 1. Snow and ice at North Carolina's Charlotte airport caused travel delays yesterday, and thousands of flights were canceled Sunday and Monday across the Southeast U.S. due to the severe winter storm that hit the region. Image credit: wunderphotographer robb04047.
Major Nor'easter expected for New York City and Boston
Today's snow storm has pushed off the coast of North Carolina, and is expected to "bomb" into a classic Nor'easter off the coast of New England tonight through Wednesday. Up to a foot of snow is possible for New York City, Boston, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. The heaviest snow--up to 16 inches--will likely fall across central Massachusetts, eastern Connecticut, western Rhode Island, and Long Island. Today's Nor'easter will not be as intense as the December 26 blizzard, however. The winds from today's storm are expected to remain less than 35 mph, resulting in only minor coastal flooding and an absence of blizzard conditions (frequent wind gusts over 35 mph or sustained winds over 35 mph, plus visibility less than 1/4 mile for at least three consecutive hours.)
Deadly flash flood hits Australia
Flood-weary Queensland, Australia suffered a new flooding disaster yesterday when freak rains of six inches fell in just 30 minutes near Toowoomba. The resulting flash flood killed nine people and left 59 missing. The flood waters poured into the Brisbane River, causing it to overflow, and significant flooding of low-lying areas in Brisbane, Australia's third largest city with some 2 million people, is expected on Thursday. As I discussed last week, Australia had its wettest spring (September - November) since records began 111 years ago, with some sections of coastal Queensland receiving over 4 feet (1200 mm) of rain. Rainfall in Queensland and all of eastern Australia in December was the greatest on record, and the year 2010 was the rainiest year on record for Queensland. The ocean waters surrounding Australia were the warmest on record during 2010, and these exceptionally warm waters allowed much higher amounts of water vapor to evaporate into the atmosphere, helping fuel the heavy rains. The record warm ocean temperatures were due to a combination of global warming and the moderate to strong La Niña event that has been in place since July. Queensland typically has its rainiest years when La Niña events occur, due to the much warmer than average ocean temperatures that occur along the coast. Beginning in December, the Queensland floods have killed at least 19, and done $5 billion in damage. Queensland has an area the size of Germany and France combined.
Figure 2. Remarkable 5-minute YouTube video showing the sad fate of a row of parked cars when a nearby small stream experiences a flash flood, sweeping away dozens of the cars. A note to the wise: Two minutes into the video, we see a man enter the flash flood to save his car. He is successful, but his actions were extremely risky--most flash flood deaths occur when cars with people inside get swept away. I would not have attempted to save my car in that situation.
Jeff Masters
Snow on Poinsett Highway in Greenville (
DevLady)
Sunny, warm South Carolina? Not! (
kemnken)
Sunny, warm South Carolina?
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Tropical Cyclone Advisory #8
TROPICAL DEPRESSION 03F
6:00 AM FST January 12 2011
======================================
At 18:00 PM UTC, Tropical Depression 03F (990 hPa) located at 19.1S 169.4E is reported as slowly moving. Position POOR based on multispectral infrared/enhanced infrared radar imagery with animation and peripheral surface observations. 10 minute sustained winds close to the center is 25-30 knots. Sea surface temperature is around 29C.
Gale Force Winds
==============
Clockwise winds 30-35 knots within 80 to 240 NM away from the center in sectors from north through east to southwest
Low level circulation center is obscured by cirrus outflow. Deep convection displaced to the north of low level circulation center. Outflow good to the north and developing elsewhere. Depression lies along a monsoonal trough and under a 250 HPA diffluent region. System lies under moderate to strong shear. TD 03F currently steered by northerly deep layer mean wind.
Dvorak analysis based on 0.40 wrap LOG10 spiral yielding DT=2.5, MET=3.0, PT=2.5 and final dvorak number based on DT.
Dvorak Intensity: T2.5/2.5/D0.5/24HRS.
Most global models have picked up the system and slowly moves it south southwest with intensification.
The potential for this tropical depression to form into a tropical cyclone remains HIGH.
The next tropical cyclone advisory from Fiji Meteorological Services will be issued at around 2:00 AM UTC..
Jon, do you jockey a 15?
8:35 PM GMT on January 11, 2011
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/on-warming-antarctica-clouds-and-peer-review/
Glad to see y'all are passionate about the truth--just keep it respectful, we are all doing the best we can!
Jeff Masters
Meteorologists Shaun and Tim will continue to keep you informed on the continuing cold, snowy Winter much of the East is having. Will it ever stop?
Also, some weird weather news has happened over the past few days, so listen to the show to understand everything! The Daily Downpour begins at 4:30 p.m. ET, 1:30 PT.
Listen here!
They will also be taking your phone calls at 415-983-2634.
Neither advance was front-page news. What’s really worth noting is that both developments are the result of that remarkable process called the scientific method, together with the relatively modern innovation called peer review.
Also, both involve something rarely seen these days: (mainly) civilized, constructive exchanges between researchers and statistics analysts whose public personae have been shaped as much through blogging and public appearances as basic science.
Baseless, regurgitated, and often-repeated nonsense. As simple as that.
"I think the latest WRF has picked up on the stronger Ohio Valley Storm. Implications, the coastal gets shoved east and develops late in the game for NJ and NYC. Still a big storm for New England."
Pulling in that exact file you mentioned into excel and plotting the graphs doesn't seem to reproduce the graph you posted. It shows a clear uptrend from 1979 to present, not a flat line. The northern hemisphere has a stronger upward trend than the southern as expected.
In addition, plotting the whole set from 1880 to present shows significant upward trends in the northern and southern hemispheres, with the northern hemisphere once again leading the way.(In fact, my graphs are the same as theirs, which shows significant upward trends.)
The other site you linked to has numerous output products available, some available and some not. Most of the time, they link back to the source sites. Some sites had graphs and others did not. Regardless, the ones that did have graphs show the same thing: upward trends in both the northern and southern hemispheres, with the southern hemisphere lagging.
The flat graph you posted is in contradiction with what's on GISS's site. In addition, this is easily verified by downloading the data from the GISS site and pulling it in to Excel or OpenOffice.
Was there any other steps involved in producing the graph you posted earlier? Perhaps some sort of adjustment algorithm taking into account other data? Following the instructions on GISS's site and the data file you mentioned does not seem to produce that graph.
Refer to post #186. The Southern hemisphere as a whole is a very different data set than just 64S southward to the pole.
Great to see you, Dr. Masters. Thank you for all your updates.
I did the same thing, and got a similar result. He may have pointed to the wrong file, as his graphs show a higher temporal resolution than the link text file does. I'd like to see what paper he got the graph from, or what files/steps he used to create the data as well. If NASA's own publicly-available GISS dataset showed a different trend than their produced graphics, then it certainly would raise questions.
Cool...
Be patient,,calamity will find you one day.
You obviously aren't adding quite as much Jameson as I Nea.
Interesting. You should read a few of the outstanding papers linked to in the article to which Dr. Masters linked in his comment a short while ago (and which had this to say: "Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama, Huntsville, whose blog is his main public face these days, along with the occasional news conference organized by foes of restrictions on greenhouse gases.") This one in particular: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/12/feedback-on-cloud-feedback/. I think you'll find it interesting.
Did you notice the disclaimer at the top?
"using elimination of outliers and homogeneity adjustment"
Isn't that the same as altered?
It does seem to suggest a mindset though, among those reporting the weather.
I agree 100%
AGW is all of that -Baseless, regurgitated, and often-repeated nonsense.
The good news is that people are slowly but surely catching on to the AGW fraud.
At long last.
No; it's called "scientific honesty". You will run across a lot of it on sites run by climate scientists. On sites run by Spencer and Watts, not so much... ;-)
Oh, so it is altered data.
That is what I thought.
Funny isn't it...how altered data can be described as scientific honesty.
That makes those types of graphs little more than 'beta demonstrations', useless until the data is real and unaltered.
About time someone handed out this award..
Wow!!!
Can I have one of those dictionary's you are using?
Change the truth any time you like and expect people believe you, hook line and sinker.
Hmmmm. Science Fiction....Fiction means it isn't true, right?
Since when did NASA become a movie critic?
They need to stay with space exploration and out of pretending to be movie critics.
My take is that they wanted to make a point by using "tropical storm conditions" because it's not quite bad enough to be called "blizzard conditions". Note also that a high wind warning was issued.
Doesn't tropical suggest a certain temperature range?
Does that mean all rain before, during or after, a snow storm is tropical?
Yeah thats the ticket. Yessireee bob.
Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more, say no more.
Re-read the last sentence in post # 234
A brief history of knowledge about Antarctic temperatures
Early 20th Century:
Scott: It’s cold here.
The media: Scott is a hero!
Scott: It’s really really cold here.
The media: Scott is a hero!
Amundsen: It’s not that cold.
The media: Scott is a hero. Oh, and Amundsen.
Public: Shackleton is a hero, but please shut up, there’s a war on.
Mid 20th Century:
Geophizzicists: Let’s find out just how cold it is.
Media: Scott is a hero!
Public: yawn…
Late 20th Century:
Scientists: It’s colder in some place than others.
Media: Antarctica is cooling.
Scientists: It’s cooling at the South Pole, but warming very fast on the Peninsula.
Media: Antarctica is cooling, but warming faster than anywhere else on earth.
Public: Huh…?
2000
Thompson and Solomon: Most of Antarctica is cooling in summer, but it is warming on the Peninsula. We think it has to do with the ozone hole.
Media: Because of ozone, Antarctica is warming faster than anywhere else on earth and we are all going to die.
Public: Huh…?
Early 21st Century:
2006
Scientists: The troposphere over Antarctica is warming significantly in winter.
Media: Even though that paper was published in Science, our readers don’t know what the troposphere is. Neither do we. Next?
2007
Scientists: The troposphere over Antarctica is warming significantly in winter and spring, especially over West Antarctica.
Media: That paper wasn’t published in Nature, so we’re not very interested.
2009
Scientists: Antarctica is cooling in fall — not summer — in some places, but warming, especially in winter and spring, especially in West Antarctica.
Media: Antarctica stops cooling! Conservative or liberal, we are ALL going to die.
Steve McIntyre: The “team” made up the data again. I don’t know what Antarctica is doing, but I think it is probably cooling.
Media: Antarctica starts cooling again, global warming is a fraud.
2010
Ryan O’Donnell: Our paper in the Journal of Climate shows a somewhat better way to look at the same data. Antarctica is warming a bit more in summer, and a bit less in winter in the Ross Sea region. In fall it is cooling a bit more too, and so the overall trends are smaller. Still, West Antarctica is definitely warming significantly, as Steig et al. found. That’s interesting.
Eric Steig: Nice paper Ryan. Thanks for sending along a pre-print.
Steve McIntyre: Hey, we got published in the Journal of Climate! Another paper showing that the “team” made up the data again! (Sotto voce): Ryan says it is warming a bit more in summer, and a bit less in winter in the Ross Sea region. In fall it is cooling a bit more. Otherwise we get the same results, though the magnitude of the trends is smaller. But West Antarctica is still warming significantly. But I really don’t care. The peer review process is broken, which is why.. umm…our paper was published in the leading climate journal.
Liberal Media: That paper wasn’t published in Nature, so we’re not very interested.
Conservative Media: Antarctica is cooling. Global warming is a fraud.
Public: zzzZZZzzz
-----------------------------
Awesome. Simply awesome.
Could be, we'll see. I sent an inquiry to the site webmaster. There was no mention of the word 'tropical' in the 3 most recent AFDs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKvYHUkuuLc&feature=related
And here is a report containing a good map of the whole region.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12158608
Very true.
Maybe I should just put Levi on ignore because he is obviously one of those eggheaded denialists who think that science fiction trumps real science.
By the way, imagine if gravity, which is a theory like global warming, ceased to exist at this moment - we'd all fly off into space at up to 1,000 mph (the rotational speed of the Earth at the equator*)!
*Of course, Levi thinks that the Earth is flat and the moon landing was the biggest hoax ever, behind global warming. And the Sun orbits the Earth.
Oh, and Dr, Masters ought to moderate comments - he doesn't have to put up with the cr@p that goes on. Including people threatening him (probably including death threats).
Wondering why I have just lowered MichaelSTL onto my least favorite people list....What the hell was that all about
all together now.... OHM..........
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