Amazing Cold
January 6th, 2010 at 1:58 pm by Bill Steffen under Bill's Blog, Weather
<–frozen birdbath in Orlando. 3 AM Thursday – It’s already 20 at Tallahassee and Crestview Fl, 22 at Gainesville, 23 at Brooksville, FL. It’s 27 way down at Everglades City!! It’s in the 50s at CANCUN, Mexico. No one in Florida made it to 60 on Wednesday! Unusually cold and snowy weather continues over much of the globe. Preliminary data shows that relative to average, the Earth cooled by about 1/4 of one degree in December and that trend looks to be continuing in January. The numbers have been extraordinary. As of this AM (and the number is growing) we’ve set 171 record cold temperatures and tied another 71 in the U.S. since Jan. 1. The high temperatures in Orlando for the 3rd-4th-5th were 47°-53°-47°. It was warmer in Annette, Alaska yesterday than it was in Orlando, Florida! There are reports of fish kills due to cold water in Florida, and that other fish are so lethargic that pelicans are just swooping down and just picking them up. Farm crops have been in jeopardy due to freezing temperatures and growers have used everything from high pressure hoses to get the frost off strawberries, to wind machines to large “blankets”. Florida Governor Charlie Crist has signed an Emergency Order to deal with the unusual cold. Boothville, Louisiana at the mouth of the Mississippi River south of New Orleans had a high of 40° yesterday, 23° cooler than average and they had a hard freeze this morning. Freeport in the Bahamas has had high temperatures in the low to mid 60s five days in a row and Havana, Cuba hasn’t been warmer than 70° the past five days! Farther north, Spencer Iowa dipped to -37°. That’s 42° colder than average. Nashville, Tennessee could set a record for the coldest 10-day period ever. Accumulating snow is likely tonight all the way down into Louisiana and Mississippi. Unseasonably cold weather and/or snow has occurred in the U.S., Europe, China, Korea and India.
I can’t honestly believe that man is the cause of this weather pattern
This syndrome of man made global warming/ climate change is likened to the old High Priest..that wrongly concluded that we the people were somehow responsible for earthquakes, and volcanoes.. they solved their problems via the virginal sacrifice..we are just as asinine in this fantasy of ours…we like to feel relevant….the truth is… we are ants.. we should do our best to be as efficient as the free market allows for, as it is through innovation that we will prevail..I think this weather pattern we have found ourselves dealing with is a fitting slap in the face to the pushers of man made climate change.
Wow, Don you are a joke. Everybody here knows it
Now Now….hehe! a joke…there is a pondering of thought when an opposing point of view resorts to a shut down insult, its as if there is no proper rebuttal…
If you knew that there is a growing group of individuals, such as myself out there, that fully grasped the motives behind these Ideals that are contaminating free will and free flow of thoughts and Ideas, in an attempt to control what they see as mindless chaos…How would you react if I told you that I will inoculate as many of these as I can, also dear friend I have news for you… it is those who fight against the free market, and free flow of Ideas that are fighting against perfection, chaos is the framework what we were designed to operate in, the fools that think they can control everything are deluded.. Chaos is the most perfect form of order…we are to childish to see it, and those who rail against it …well they are actually what they hate the most… silly fools.. serendipity…. this is a simple philosophy I live by… if we all did, well… there would be no needs for these little jabs… I hope you have a wonderful weekend.. and know that I will have forgotten about what i just typed here, after my next sip of Diet Mountain Dew!!!
I totally agree with you Don… well said!
record highs in alaska and washington state this week!!!
a cold spell does not disprove global warming just as a heat wave does not prove global warming. it’s the average temperature over a long period of time and it has increased!
The average temperature of the globe actually decreased a little from the 1940s to the 1970s and then increased from the 1980s to about 2002. Since then it has leveled off. The increase in temperature is part natural (solar output and the natural cycles of the PDO, AMO, etc. plus events such as volcanoes) and part man made (urbanization, the increase of water vapor through sprinkling, irrigation, etc.). The rise of temperature in Michigan has been about one degree and that’s curiously almost all nighttime temperatures on the coldest nights in winter. The warmest decade in Grand Rapids was the 1930s and it’s cooler now than it was then (hardly sounds like a catastrophe requiring us to see “skyrocketing” utility bills like our President has said that he wants: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqHL404zhcU. And that plan causes a lot of concern among the lower and middle class who would have to pay these bills, but also to members of his own Democratic Party: http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1009/Disunited_front_on_energy_legislation.html
Ya hit the nail right on the HEAD!
noaa and world meteorlogical report 2000-2009 hottest decade on record
http://climateprogress.org/2009/12/08/world-meteorological-organization-wmo-2000s-warmest-hottest-decade-on-record/
We are even more excited to watch the sunspot minimum this year than last to further compare to Dalton and Maunder and watch if this temperature crash accelerates.
Anthony Watts is making some more progress this week on the urbanization effect on sensors:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/07/cru-3b-%E2%80%93-urban-warm-bias-in-ghcn/
It is getting harder all the time to hide the decline from him and his massive audience.
compare the quantity of Co2 emitted my say… Mt. SaintHelens in one event, against say…100 years of humane living… I think you’ll start to see yourself a little smaller..
Consider multiple volcanoes spewing co2 every day it happens undersea all the time, and the invisible gasses rise to the surface…
When lakes sit.. and decomposed vegetation at the bottom … the lake burps.co2, and methane in vast quantities(turn over) its as if the earth telling you…pay attention I am in charge… core samples, and speculation can only pontificate totalities from the time “we started taking records of temps”
You do know we are but a speck of dust on the time line of history,and still the unwise, claim the power of the earth is in their grasp… we adapt… the earth changes.. we adapt.. or the earth kills, we are part of nature..a part of earth.. when we no longer fit in, we will cease to be..there is no bending the earth to our will, we take what we are givin…or we die
All I can say is that despite all of the lake effect snow I am thankful for its “warming” effect on the air. It keeps us from getting TOO cold (until it freezes over like last year that is).
Wow this is insanely cold!! Not to bad here today though (24F), only feels worse because I now have a cold… yuck.
I’ve been chatting with a number of friends I have across the nation and they haven’t been very happy with this cold, especially all of them in the south. They blame me.. LOL
Interesting graph there, what is even more interesting is this data only goes back to 1979. I hope the crops in the south turn out ok, this is very unusual for them. Thanks for the info Bill
Hey Charles, got any friends in Cali? I have a buddy that loves to brag how much warmer it is there than here!
If you have stats prove me wrong. I know San Fran has temps in the 50’s in winter more often than not.
My daughter lives in West Palm Beach, Florida and she said it was so cold that it was raining lizards from the trees. They have a lot of tiny lizards that live in the trees, and the cold temperatures are either putting them into hibernation or killing them so they are just falling in large numbers. My other daughter lives near Nashville, TN and our temperature today was warmer than they were! They are in a state of emergency with 2″ of snow predicted which will close down the schools and everything else!!!!
It was 29 degrees here in Auburndale FL (central Florida, 10 miles east of Lakeland) and also 29 degrees in Nashville MI. I told my daughter if she wanted to know how warm it is in Florida to step outside her front door! The only difference is my lawn is ugly brown and hers’ is white.
Bill, I work as a dispatcher. One of my drivers delivered in Tampa, FL this morning. He watched 20 grown men in the parking lot of the factory he was delievring at slide around on the ice on some frozen puddles. He said it was like watching little kids on a playground.
Fun for us Michiganders but not true.
Bill, I enjoy reading your blogs. We moved from GR to the Shoals in 1997 to escape the cold and snow. We live in Sheffield which is directly across the Tennessee River from Florence where the Lakers played football last month. We enjoyed seeing so many Laker fans at the game. The first winter was beautiful and mild with one half inch of snow which melted after a couple hours. Last winter was colder and we had two snowfalls of about a half inch each which quickly melted. This year has been extremely cold here like every place else. It hasn’t been above freezing for the last four days, and we had a low this morning of 11!!
It’s currently 26 and the clouds are rolling in. We have a winter weather warning for tomorrow, with snow moving in around 6AM. They’re predicting 1-3 inches by tomorrow afternoon. All the schools across northern Alabama are closed tomorrow and some for Friday. The good news is that it won’t last long. We should be back to a high of 50 (49 is average this time of year) by next Wednesday, and the daffodils and camellias will be blooming by the third week in February!
Does the entire state of Michigan have snow cover right now? I dont think the extreme southern part has snow but I could be wrong.
Tyler when I returned my son to college on Sunday at EMU I saw green grass! Just a dusting on the ground here and there.
In a way, I miss the warming efect Lake MI had on the area. We hit a low of -16 this morning out by the airport (DIA). I guess the trade off is the sunshine out here, but it still COOOLLLDDDD. We’re supposed to get back into the 40’s starting Sat and possibly 50 sometime next week, which would be closer to average. However, I think the word “average” should be used very loosly when comparing predicted temps to what they ought to be. Like Bill mentioned above, we could have a cold winter, then a warm spring/summer and it would all average out.
With regard to “average,” you have to be careful because you could have one foot in ice water and one foot in boiling water, and on “average,” you should be comfortable.
I talked to fam in Florida… they said on the news fire depts are getting lots of calls because of the “dust” on the heating systems that haven’t been used in years. Fam said their smoke detectors were going off because of the dust (haven’t been turned on in 2-3 yrs)!!!
We got some in Escanaba but it seems to have settled alot. We had one big storm early on and that was 14 inches. Marquette has been getting pounded up there but the storms always miss us and go to the North or even to the South. I would say we have maybe 5 inches on the ground. It wont melt since we have been below freezing now since early December. When it gets cold we seem to be the warmest spot as downstate Michigan is too alot in the midwest. When it gets warm though we seem to be the coolest spot in the midwest so thats why the snow stays all winter.
Hey Bill is this cold weather pattern going to last for the rest of the winter. I for one hope it does. I want to see a wild winter even for the banana belt of the U.P. I know we will get a thaw sometime soon. I just feel it happening in the next month. We usually see one or two thaws a winter but a thaw to us is in the upper 30’s to Mid 40’s. We usually dont see 50 degrees till well into March.
Bill, I had a discussion with a friend the other day about frost events in southern Florida. I have read that the Florida Keys are the only area of the state that have no frost events on record. Do you have any data on hard freeze events in the southern portion of peninsular Florida?
consensus is global warming is real
“A major international analysis of climate change due Friday will conclude that humankind’s reliance on fossil fuels — coal, fuel oil and natural gas — is to blame for global warming, according to three scientists familiar with the research on which it is based.
The gold-standard Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report represents “a real convergence happening here, a consensus that this is a total global no-brainer,” says U.S. climate scientist Jerry Mahlman, former director of the federal government’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in New Jersey.”
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2007-01-30-ipcc-report_x.htm
You are typing on a solar-powered pc, right? If not then you are part of the problem, son.
Glad to hear you admit there is a problem.
i’ve cut my electricity consumption by 30%, but you probably haven’t.
duh,everyone but you knows grand rapids is too cloudy for solar panels.I’m waiting on the grand valley designed wind turbine you can roof mount.it’s about the size of a bicycle wheel and can work in 3mph winds. it cost about $2000 and reduces energy costs up to 20%.
the real problem is the growing world population.the quickest and easiest fix for global warming, overcrowding, pollution,and starving is birth control. this of course would be voluntary.
if the world population could stabilize and everyone cut back on there energy consumption by 10% i think the world would be alot better place.
oops their not there
please remember that all the carbon that is emitted, already exists here, it is not created by mankind, it may be used by mankind, but it already exist, this world was and is based on carbon, we ourselves are carbon based, I have no doubt in my mind that those who seek to control us have realized that to control the substance that we all are dependant on, and are made of , is to control us, it is the sickest of humanity that seeks to rule the lives of other human beings, as freedom is the only solution to the human condition, to be the thumb on the necks of society, is to be the problem, as one of the greatest Americans ever once said
Government is not the answer to your problems
Government is the problem
Little jr,you gonna hand out birth control pills? Im not falling for this warming crap at all. I am understanding the Government is gonna bankrupt this country!! I do try to cut back on cost for electric and gas. I’ve got 3/4 of the house changed over to those new funny curly fries light bulbs. I car pool to work. Been doing it for 4 years now. I have’nt used my furnace once yet this fall/winter. Had the fore thought when i built the place 13 yrs ago to put a woodstove in the livingroom. If the earth warms up much more this winter i mite have to turn on the furnace for a few nites,or get a bigger woodstove. Plus if this big ball called earth is warming,i’ve found a fix all. Have your truck window break and stop working in the down position. Everything cools right down. C-Ya Little jr.
I hope this area is not to cloudy for solar heat panels. Im still in the early stage of figuring it out,but im going to be working on building some solar heat boxes next to my driveway. Im hopeing i can run pipes under the drive from the box to help melt the snow off. Mite not work,but maybe it will. I have a wide open slope on the south side and below the drive. With the concept of heat rising it should work. A couple sunny days and snow gone. Im not gonna wait for this so called climate change to get here and melt it for me.
SO MUCH FOR GLOBAL WARMING!