The winter that wasn't!

Man, I wanna move there (where ever there is)! We (Alaska) have had an amazing record setting winter,,, SC had an amazingly cold Jan with an average monthly temp of 3F. We have tied the all time snowfall record and we are in the heaviest snowfall month now. Sheezz.

 

It is still winter here. Very unusual for mid March, I was snowed on yesterday on the Burke-Gilman trail, elevation 30 feet, and again this morning at the house, elevation 500 feet. Season total snow here at the house was well above normal. The local passes are still having avalanche closures from multiple feet of new snow. The mountain snowpack started very well in November, ran short December to mid January, then caught up to normal.

As usual, the Pacific Northwest's weather is different than the bulk of the U.S. Due to the typical wavelength of the north-south undulations of the jet stream, we are almost always on the opposite side of the stream than is the other coast.

 

You're right, its the weather.Cold as hell in Europe this year.

 

In Washington DC, no winter...80F today 25F over normal 55F average.
Cherry blossoms to start in just a couple days Mar 18 (earliest in 20 years or so).
Now then we deserved a mild winter, it's been colder than average and heavy snows last 3-4 winters before this.

 

Icarus, if you're going to write a novel about the weather where you are, don't you think it would be more meaningful to the PriusChat community if you gave us some idea where you are? Your profile location says "earth". You also mention Sub-Arctic, and perhaps by you unit of measure (Celsius, not Fahrenheit), we may be able to rule out a few locations like Alaska.

My location (New York State) has also seen a warm winter, and warm weather this week, forecast to be warmer next. But Europe has had a very hard winter, showing how much difference there is between changes in weather and global climate change.

 

Let's call it what it is: global warming. "Climate change" is a dishwater term attempting to appease the reactionaries, deniers, and other flat-Earth types. And these are its hallmarks: greater increase in low temperatures than high, greatest warming in polar regions, and more severe weather most places.

I hate to say "get used to it" but it is already too late to prevent further disruption. We still need to act because it is not to late to prevent the catastrophe of the melting of the East Antarctic ice sheet.

 

In Philadelphia the mild winter had us all on edge, since it was so warm in January and February we all said we had to have a huge snow storm just so Mother Nature could get back at us for having it so easy but Monday and Tuesday the weather was absolutely beautiful. So I guess winter is over, just in time to open the moonroof on my new Prius C!

 

Personally, I think climate change IS more accurate, and yes it does help to demonstrate what's happening to the Neanderthals who scream "WHERE'S YOUR GLOBAL WARMING NOW" after each snowfall.
We have to be able to get through to these fools too. Just pay attention to the current primary going on in the G(as) O(il) P(etrochem) party. Now, they're fighting about birth control as the population exceeds 7 Billion.
Unfortunately, these morons vote.

 

I like "Climate Change" because the planet getting warmer is just one thing that happens.

As for the deniers, I'm seriously wondering if ANY of them have ever been outdoors in the past year or so.

Let me see if I can <reverb>THINK LIKE A DENIER</reverb>

If it snows one day - "So much for Global Warming! Al Gore [insert random ad hominum here]!"

When we have a few years of record highs and freak record-breaking storms - "That don't prove nothin'!"

 

When the weathers warm ,that's climate change.
When the weathers cold, that's only weather.Unless its also climate change because any variation is due to global warming.
Heads I win ,tails you lose.

 

Just couldn't wait to make this political could you. No wonder why nothing gets done.

 

While we had a nice winter here, Europe was treated to near record cold!

 

Cold is weather, not climate.
Let us know when its unseasonably hot.That will be good anecdotal evidence of climate change .

 

Heres USA temperatures from Feb 1930 compared to Feb 2012

 

In my region of the country, they could have spent that entire time fully immersed in outdoor recreation and not run into anything that challenged their position. Over that time the weather here has been cooler than normal, but not by enough to shout out any trend.

Humans have extremely powerful memory selection biases, confirmation biases, and ability to see patterns in truly random noise. Because of this, I have to discount all these weather anecdotes from all sides. The frequent pointers to increasingly wild weather don't fit my own memory of plenty of wild weather in my region of the country over my entire conscience life, nor the similar written accounts of wild events in the same region over the whole time white man has occupied it.

For those reasons I give far more weight to the instrument records. While not perfect, they are far less biased than human perception and memory.

 

It seems pretty clear someone is confusing climate with weather

There is plenty of evidence of climate change but this is not it.

+1

 

We already had an "is the weather getting more extreme?" thread, I know. But just in case anyone wants to look at some retrospective studies of temperature and precipitation extremes:

N Amer
Changes in North American extremes derived from daily weather data
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 113, D07113, doi:10.1029/2007JD009453, 2008

Europe
European Seasonal and Annual Temperature Variability, Trends, and Extremes Since 1500
Jürg Luterbacher, et al.
Science 303, 1499 (2004);
DOI: 10.1126/science.1093877

Global
Global observed changes in daily climate extremes of temperature and precipitation
L. V. Alexander et al.
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 111, D05109, doi:10.1029/2005JD006290, 2006

I remember a more recent US-only study, but I don't know where I put it. From these publication dates, you might conclude (as I did) that there is room for updating. So should anyone want to perform their own analysis along these lines, hop in. Most daily data cost $$ but you can get 'em.

But please, don't just pick one year to compare to another year. That may be OK for our web chatting, but journal reviewers chew that stuff up and spit it out.

edit: I am inclined to use cyclo's aw jeez as an avatar. Seems to fit my current assumed role at PC. That image copyrighted?