According to The Daily Mail, it has never before (in recorded history) snowed this early in Austria – but it is doing so today.
In the freezing foothills of Montana, a distinctly bitter blast of revolution hangs in the air.
And while the residents of the icy city of Missoula can stave off the -10C chill with thermals and fires, there may be no easy remedy for the wintry snap’s repercussions.
The temperature has shattered a 36-year record. Further into the heartlands of America, the city of Billings registered -12C on Sunday, breaking the 1959 barrier of -5C.
Closer to home, Austria is today seeing its earliest snowfall in history with 30 to 40 centimetres already predicted in the mountains.
Such dramatic falls in temperatures provide superficial evidence for those who doubt that the world is threatened by climate change.
But most pertinent of all, of course, are the growing volume of statistics.
We here at the Crabitat have been freezing for several days now. Yesterday’s drive to work was through light snow. In October. Not yet mid-October. Accuweather is predicting potentially heavy snow for the Northeast by the weekend. Even if there is no snow, temperatures will be more like December than October.
Welcome to the the brave, new – and much colder – world.
(BCB reported a few days ago on how brutally cold it was in Montana, incidentally.)
Here in Northern California today, we had the heaviest rain I can recall in many years. We seldom see rain before November, but today the downpours began at 5AM and didn’t let up until six PM. Easily six inches of rain. Very, very unusual.
Awww, go on. It’s just a couple of weeks early. It always freezes damn hard by Halloween. Somewhat curious to see Mizzou appearing all over the news though. Earliest snow in 92 years. But remember, when Lewis and Clark came through here during the so-called “little ice age” the snow in Lost Trail Pass was 17 feet deep. No wonder they ate their horses!
“Lewis and Clark came through here during the so-called “little ice age””
And we are in the middle of the deepest solar minimum since that time. As the lag between solar input and maximal climatic effect is variously estimated at 4-10 years we’ve some cooler winters ahead. Just sayin’.
We’re still in tanktop and flipflop here in north Florida. We ain’t lit the burn barrel yet!
We kind of envy ya’ll cause ya get to wear all the cool looking clothes we see in the catalogues.
94 degrees in SW Florida today, tomorrow too if the weather girl is on target. Heck, I wish Algore would come to town and talk about global warming, that’s a surefire way to see tempeartures drop 10 to 15 degrees overnight.
Here in northeast Texas we haven’t seen the sun in days and days. We are flat getting tired of wet, muddy dogs, too.
We usually wear short pants and sleeves until mid October, this year it was long pants and sleeves in early September.
I think we’ll have snow like we did back in the latter ’70s when the idjits were screeching about the ice age.
Mockingbird have you been paying attention to the weather reports for N Fla.? I live here, too, and the prediction is for highs around 70 F and lows in the low 40s F by the weekend. Cold front is supposed to blow through the panhandle tonight. I’ve never seen the temps drop this low this early in the 20 years I’ve lived here. I’m thinking I need to stock up on my firewood.
Just imagine how cold it would be if all this warming wasn’t happening….;-)
The Medieval Warm Period ended quite abruptly in the early 14th century with what is known as The Great Famine. Some parts of Europe didn’t recover to their populations of 1300 until the 20th century.
The Great Famine was the start of a 500 year period known as the Little Ice Age (LIA) which had at least four cold periods, each coinciding with deep solar minimums (Wolfe Minimum 1280 A.D. to 1350A.D., Sporer Minimum 1420 A.D- 1570 A.D., Maunder Minimum- 1645 A.D, to 1715 A.D and the Dalton Minimum- 1790 A.D -1820 A.D. ) The LIA was the coldest period in this interglacial period since the Younger Dryas.
The point is that climate can change drastically and quickly; within a period of only a year or two. And after a “Modern Solar Maximum” we now apparently are headed into another deep minimum in solar activity.
Also, don’t look now but it appears that the Gulf Stream has greatly slowed. This greatly reduces the amount of heat transported to the poles. I hope we are not headed for another Great Famine.