It’s Mid February and no snow yet – that might change tomorrow
The server is in Texas, so it won’t be affected, but if ice pulls down power, I’ll have fewer options for Internet access. At least this isn’t Boston. The high Tuesday will be 47, so every bit of this will melt. But don’t move here, OK?
A few Willow Oaks may meet their maker
http://wfae.org/post/episode-5-charlottes-tree-obsession
We were supposed to get 4 inches of snow and so far just a little rain that is freezing…
It’s two AM here – the plan is it might continue to snow/rain until 4 AM. I would guess there is a quarter inch of snow/ice/sleet on the ground. I looked out my front door to see if anyone was silly enough to be driving – I live near the intersection of two relatively important residential streets. Two of the three cars that went by were police.
By Noon Tuesday, it should be up to 43 degrees. The dirty little secret is that snow only generally falls within a couple degrees of 32 degrees. Really cold air causes the water vapor to precipitate out. Once there are no clouds, then it gets even colder and even less likely to snow. Snow reflects sunlight so snow on the ground keeps the air above it colder.
The point of this is that the idea that “global warming causes blizzards” is not totally wrong. If it was normally 15 degrees in Boston at this time of year, it wouldn’t be snowing there. If its 29 degrees, and the warmer ocean is pumping more moisture over the coastal areas, the result will be massive snow, where in the past there would have been none.
I’m not on the global warning bandwagon yet, but I don’t ignore facts just because my religion tells me I should. The bigger question for me is – if it is true, why is that a bad thing and why would be arrogant enough to think we can stop it? Change happens.
The oceans used to be 1200 feet lower than they are now. At the end of the last ice age, the oceans rose 350 feet. Look in Google Earth at the ocean depth – it is really apparent if you open your mind that the continental shelf was where the oceans and shore used to meet. The same depth occurs all around the earth.
The Mediterranean Sea was a landlocked inland sea similar to the Dead Sea today. Eventually as the oceans rose, the ocean flooded and did so very quickly – the best guess is water levels rose many feet per hour as the water came in past Gibraltar. If you were Noah, having a boat handy would have saved your life. Probably not so for the kangaroos in Australia who would not have noticed nor cared.
The BBC just realized that Al Gore was wrong – that ocean warming causes CO2 levels to rise – the college dropout had cause and effect backward.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31424597
One of the lessons learned from the Fukishima earthquake now that science has started to catch up was the mystery of why the coastal defenses failed to defend against the tidal wave when they were engineered to survive a wave as high as the one that struck. The answer is both awesome and also stunning. The reason is the tectonic plate under Japan *fell* during the quake – making the island sink relative to sea level by four feet.
http://asiancorrespondent.com/54103/japan-sinks-after-quake-towns-now-flood-at-high-tide/
We need to believe the Earth is unchanging and can be relied on, but we’re just living in a relatively calm period. The meteor over Russia was a wake up call that nature really doesn’t much care if humans are here or not.