Saturday, February 13, 2010

The snowy 49 states....


AP’s Seth Borenstein is running a story titled “49 states dusted with snow; Hawaii’s the holdout“. As shown in the map below, every state in the Continental US has snow someplace. As pointed out in the article, this is a rare occurrence:

The idea of 50 states with snow is so strange that the federal office that collects weather statistics doesn’t keep track of that number and can’t say whether it has ever happened. The office can’t even say whether 49 out of 50 has ever taken place before.

Image from: National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center - click to enlarge

It’s been a very busy week for snow and also for lowest max temperature, thanks to our El Nino induced weather patterns, while the Pacific Northwest is seeing warmer conditions, the southeast and eastern US gets lots of snow thanks to the pattern.

click for interactive source

Record Events for Sat Feb 6, 2010 through Fri Feb 12, 2010
Total Records: 2182
Rainfall: 662
Snowfall: 1180
High Temperatures: 9
Low Temperatures: 31
Lowest Max Temperatures: 220
Highest Min Temperatures: 80

Continuing the pattern of top ten Northern Hemisphere snow extent rankings from October, December and January, it looks like February may also be headed for the record books.


North America, Europe and Asia are all showing large positive anomalies in snow cover.

Daily Departure – February 11, 2010

http://128.6.226.99/~njwxnet/png/daily_dn/2010042.png

Source: Rutgers University Global Snow Lab

The record February snow extent occurred in 1978 with an anomaly of more than 5 million square miles. That may be tough to beat, but from the map above it may have already happened. February will definitely be ranked in the top two.

http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/png/monthlyanom/nhland02.png

Source: Rutgers University Global Snow Lab

WUWT reader Marcia pointed to this interesting link

NORMAN, Oklahoma — A University of Oklahoma student is taking an extra interest in this week’s snow storms in the south and northeast and is working to document the events in a very unique way. Patrick Marsh said it’s likely by the end of the week snow will be on the ground in all 50 states

Ten years ago we were told that “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past” Alarmists are now attempting to rewrite history and claim that they predicted record snow and cold all along – but it simply isn’t true. Everyone from Hansen on down was predicting the demise of snow in the temperate zones, until they realized they were wrong.

People should know when they are conquered.” – Quintus from the movie Gladiator.

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