Puxatawney Phil did not see his shadow on February 2 nd, Ground Hog Day; hence, it prognosticated an early Spring. Indeed, last week we had Chinook weather, temperatures in the mid-50's, an aboriginal name given to a windy warm period ending winter. All the snow had melted away except the ice piles left by the snow-plows.
Today, as if to turn our lives upside down, we have a winter storm warning: beginning Sunday and lasting until Monday morning. We are to get 3 to 5 inches of wet snow. It is now 5:38 PM and we have 3 inches accumulated already. Another 12 to 18 hours from now, at this rate, we will have feet of snow, not just inches. Kathy and I went on our walk @ 1:30PM as it had just started to snow and we wanted to finish before the going became "work". I noted that the streets and sidewalks were not melting the snow, meaning that the ground was still very cold. This was expected since the ice on all the ponds and streams was intact in spite of the brief warming, the ice was very thick, frozen by 2 1/2 months of very cold temperatures including below zero for days at a time, repeated again and again. Cold days and even colder nights.
I am looking out the study window, doing my bills that the postman still brings, regularly. Our gas usage for February 2011 was 22.6 thousand cubic feet and for February 2010? 13.5 thousand cubic feet. Is there anybody claiming that the weather as viewed winter over winter is getting colder? I am. As pundits have claimed that last year 2010 was one of the 5 warmest in the last 30 years, I think there is something to be said that we have come into a cold "spell". Of course climate scientists have said that with global warming the atmosphere will hold more moisture. Al Gore spoke about warm air "scooping up moisture from the oceans", the science does not support such a mechanism: hot warm air sucking up cold ocean moisture. Warm air can hold more water, but how that water gets there is not the mechanism Al Gore mentioned. So the argument that global warming will lead to higher moisture content of air is, well, in need of a little more observation and not speculation. What is known, that more moisture will fall out of the skies with colder air temperatures. A snowy day does not prove that mankind is not heading to hell by irresponsible burning of fossil fuels. What a more than average snowfall for a winter says, and the colder winter this year vs last year says, that the observation, more snow and colder temperatures, go together and should be taken into account, as opposed to saying a warming world leads to more snow. I am not forecasting the future, just issuing a disclaimer. Pundits, and Al Gore is just a very rich pundit, don't know their science, and the people who know the science find it difficult to speak out and say: "Hey Al, you are entitled to your own opinion, just not your own facts." Another thought popped into my head: Karl Marx commenting on intellectuals championing the communist cause: "Useful idiots."
