Another Global Warming Winter in Western NY

[Phillip Dampier]

That and El Niño (amazing I remembered ALT-164 gives you the "n" with the tilda ((~)) over it!) have managed to, so far, cancel another snowy winter here in western New York state, which typically sees over 120 inches of snow every winter.  Thus far we've had around seven... total, and it all melted within 24 hours of falling.

It's January 2nd, and around 40 degrees here, with the upcoming week featuring temps well into the 50s.  It's colder in Childress, Texas than it is in Rochester, NY!  Our weather is just a few degrees shy of theirs for the week to follow.  Riverton is at 14 right now, which would be at least closer to the weather we should be experiencing here in January.

We just had our warmest December in the history of Rochester (records kept for 130 years), and by far the least amount of snow.

We've had El Niño winters before, but nothing like this.  I'm not complaining either, because it's allowed me to do my power walking with my running shoes instead of my winter shoes which are much heavier.  No slips and falls.

[nakymaton]

There's another cycle in the Atlantic that, combined with El Nino (I could do the tilda when I was a Mac user, but I can't figure it out on Windows), might be part of the reason for the warm winter in the Northeastern US (and in northern Europe). The Atlantic goes through a 30-year (or so) ocean temperature cycle. I don't really understand it, but right now we've gone into the warmer part of the cycle. I've read that it's also a reason for the increased hurricane activity in the past decade, and for the drought in the southwestern US over the same time period.

Global warming may be part of it, too -- that's the best explanation for the worldwide retreat of glaciers and the loss of ice shelves in the Arctic and Antarctic, and it most likely affects the ocean temperature cycles -- but there are also some ocean temperature cycles that take more than a generation to go from warm to cold to warm again, and human perceptions of "normal" might not take them into account.

[Front-Ranger]

Sorry I'm hogging all your snow, it seems. If you want to see it, I posted some scenes over here:

http://72.232.132.224/forum/index.php/topic,4512.msg136286.html#msg136286

I'd be willing to have more if you'd support it.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Sorry I'm hogging all your snow, it seems.

You could sell some of it on eBay. 

[Andrew]

It's 65 degrees in Boston today.  Last evening I went walking and bats were zipping around Ward Pond catching bugs just as if it were late summer.  I'm pondering putting the houseplants outside for the day.  Nice for exercise, but quite disturbing.

[MaineWriter]

And here in Maine...it is 65 degrees. It was rainy this morning but sunny and blue sky right now. Maybe I'll put the convertible top down! Our grass is still green and crocuses are coming up in my front flower bed.

Since I don't ski or snowmobile, I don't mind the lack of snow, but many businesses around here (small and large) are hurting.

Similar to what Phillip said about Rochester, our December was the warmest on record, since they started keeping records, which was 1877 or so.

L