State College, Pa. -- 11 February 2011 -- AccuWeather reports
following relentless shots of record cold in December, January and now early February, a much-anticipated warm-up is coming to much of the eastern two-thirds of the country over the next week or so.Temperatures in a few areas are set to jump as much as 90 or 100 degrees from this week's frigid levels.
In the process, much of the nation's snowcover will be wiped out toward the end of next week.
As of Feb. 10, 2011, roughly 65 percent of the contiguous U.S. was covered with snow, according to the National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center.
Also, 49 of 50 states had snow on the ground Thursday and Friday morning. This includes even Hawaii, with some snow atop Mauna Kea. The only state without any snow on the ground was Florida.
AccuWeather.com Senior Meteorologist Henry Margusity expects the warm-up to reduce the nation's snowcover to about 25 percent toward the end of next week. Areas where it will likely be wiped out include the southern and central Plains, interior Southeast, Ohio Valley and parts of the mid-Atlantic.
Details on the Warm-Up for Select Cities
Temperatures are already starting to rebound across the Plains, after some of the coldest air on record invaded parts of the region Thursday.
Bartlesville, Okla., is expected to hit a high in the upper 30s today, which will be more than 60 degrees warmer than their low of 28° below zero F Thursday morning. Toward the end of next week, temperatures in this same area could make a run for the 70° mark, which would be nearly a 100-degree jump from Thursday's low.
Temperatures in Dallas and Houston will rise into the 60s this weekend and 70s next week.
By the end of this weekend, people from New Orleans to Atlanta, Charlotte and Richmond, will see highs rise back into the 60s. Temperatures in some of these same places will also hit 70° late next week or next weekend.
Temperatures will also moderate in areas farther north through the Midwest, mid-Atlantic and Northeast. However, in areas that still have a good deal of snow and ice on the ground, the warming will take longer to kick in.
Highs at least in the 50s are forecast for New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Kansas City late next week. Some of these cities will end up in the 60s.
Why the Change?
A break in the overall weather pattern that has kept the eastern two-thirds of the country colder than normal the last couple of months is allowing the warm-up to occur.
The jet stream, an area of strong winds high above the ground that acts as a barrier between cold air to its north and warmer air to its south, is shifting farther north across the eastern part of the U.S.
As a result, milder air will continue surging into the Plains this weekend. While temperatures will also rebound across parts of the East over the next couple of days, it will not be until later next week that the warm-up becomes significant.
By Heather Buchman, Meteorologist for AccuWeather.com
CLIMATEGATE AUTHOR: WEATHER ISN'T GETTING WEIRDER
Conducting interviews on this topic is the author of Climategate: A Meteorologist Exposes the Global Warming Scam, Brian Sussman.
Guest Profile and Information Click Here: http://superstore.wnd.com/store/item.asp?DEPARTMENT_ID=6&SUBDEPARTMENT_ID=20&ITEM_ID=3672
By ANNE JOLIS
Wall Street Journal
Last week a severe storm froze Dallas under a sheet of ice, just in time to disrupt the plans of the tens of thousands of (American) football fans descending on the city for the Super Bowl. On the other side of the globe, Cyclone Yasi slammed northeastern Australia, destroying homes and crops and displacing hundreds of thousands of people.
Some climate alarmists would have us believe that these storms are yet another baleful consequence of man-made CO2 emissions. In addition to the latest weather events, they also point to recent cyclones in Burma, last winter's fatal chills in Nepal and Bangladesh, December's blizzards in Britain, and every other drought, typhoon and unseasonable heat wave around the world.
But is it true? To answer that question, you need to understand whether recent weather trends are extreme by historical standards. The Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project is the latest attempt to find out, using super-computers to generate a dataset of global atmospheric circulation from 1871 to the present.
As it happens, the project's initial findings, published last month, show no evidence of an intensifying weather trend. "In the climate models, the extremes get more extreme as we move into a doubled CO2 world in 100 years," atmospheric scientist Gilbert Compo, one of the researchers on the project, tells me from his office at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "So we were surprised that none of the three major indices of climate variability that we used show a trend of increased circulation going back to 1871."
In other words, researchers have yet to find evidence of more-extreme weather patterns over the period, contrary to what the models predict. "There's no data-driven answer yet to the question of how human activity has affected extreme weather," adds Roger Pielke Jr., another University of Colorado climate researcher.
We do know that carbon dioxide and other gases trap and re-radiate heat. We also know that humans have emitted ever-more of these gases since the Industrial Revolution. What we don't know is exactly how sensitive the climate is to increases in these gases versus other possible factors-solar variability, oceanic currents, Pacific heating and cooling cycles, planets' gravitational and magnetic oscillations, and so on.
Given the unknowns, it's possible that even if we spend trillions of dollars, and forgo trillions more in future economic growth, to cut carbon emissions to pre-industrial levels, the climate will continue to change-as it always has.
That's not to say we're helpless. There is at least one climate lesson that we can draw from the recent weather: Whatever happens, prosperity and preparedness help. North Texas's ice storm wreaked havoc and left hundreds of football fans stranded, cold, and angry. But thanks to modern infrastructure, 21st century health care, and stockpiles of magnesium chloride and snow plows, the storm caused no reported deaths and Dallas managed to host the big game on Sunday.
Compare that outcome to the 55 people who reportedly died of pneumonia, respiratory problems and other cold-related illnesses in Bangladesh and Nepal when temperatures dropped to just above freezing last winter. Even rich countries can be caught off guard: Witness the thousands stranded when Heathrow skimped on de-icing supplies and let five inches of snow ground flights for two days before Christmas. Britain's GDP shrank by 0.5% in the fourth quarter of 2010, for which the Office of National Statistics mostly blames "the bad weather."
Arguably, global warming was a factor in that case. Or at least the idea of global warming was. The London-based Global Warming Policy Foundation charges that British authorities are so committed to the notion that Britain's future will be warmer that they have failed to plan for winter storms that have hit the country three years running.
A sliver of the billions that British taxpayers spend on trying to control their climes could have bought them more of the supplies that helped Dallas recover more quickly. And, with a fraction of that sliver of prosperity, more Bangladeshis and Nepalis could have acquired the antibiotics and respirators to survive their cold spell.
A comparison of cyclones Yasi and Nargis tells a similar story: As devastating as Yasi has been, Australia's infrastructure, medicine, and emergency protocols meant the Category 5 storm has killed only one person so far. Australians are now mulling all the ways they could have better protected their property and economy.
But if they feel like counting their blessings, they need only look to the similar cyclone that hit the Irrawaddy Delta in 2008. Burma's military regime hadn't allowed for much of an economy before the cyclone, but Nargis destroyed nearly all the Delta had. Afterwards, the junta blocked foreign aid workers from delivering needed water purification and medical supplies. In the end, the government let Nargis kill more than 130,000 people.
Global-warming alarmists insist that economic activity is the problem, when the available evidence show it to be part of the solution. We may not be able to do anything about the weather, extreme or otherwise. But we can make sure we have the resources to deal with it when it comes.
Read More: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704422204576130300992126630.html
ABOUT YOUR GUEST: For more than 20 years Brian Sussman served as the Bay Area's most celebrated television science reporter and meteorologist, having earned honors from The Associated Press, the Radio-Television News Directors Association, the National Education Association, and the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
He's now the new morning man at KSFO (560 AM)the highest rated talk show in the San Francisco Bay Area and the fourth largest radio market in the country. A husband and father of four, Sussman is also well known for founding Brian[s Kids, an adoption advocacy organization that utilized the Bay Area television airwaves to introduce the public to foster children awaiting adoption. During the course of 12 years, Brian's Kids assisted in the placement of more than 400 children in permanent, adoptive homes an accomplishment that gives Sussman, an adoptive father himself, a special sense of joy and fulfillment.
In 2001, Brian shocked the television community by daring to leave for a career in conservative talk radio. Joining the line-up on San Francisco's KSFO-AM, Sussman has achieved huge ratings success with his program, Right Thinking from the Left Coast a steady source of irritation to the Bay Area's liberal establishment.
ABOUT THE BOOK: Climategate is a godsend for anyone who has ever expressed skepticism about the environmentalist that claim that the Earth is in peril because of mankind's appetite for carbon-based fuels.
A distinguished, award-winning television weatherman in San Francisco, Brian Sussman deftly melds easy-to-understand scientific facts with provocative commentary. Sick of twisted "facts" mass-marketed to manipulate basic living decisions and common-sense energy consumption, Sussman indicts a cabal of elitist politicians, bureaucrats and activists who front the environmental movement to push intrusive, Marxist-derived policies in a quest to become filthy rich.
By tracing the origins of the current climate scare, Sussman guides the reader from the diabolical minds of Marx and Engels in the 1800s, to the global governance machinations of the United Nations today. Climategate is a call to action, warning Americans that their future is being undermined by a phony pseudo-science aimed at altering every aspect of life in the United States.
Conducting interviews on this topic is the author of Climategate: A Meteorologist Exposes the Global Warming Scam, Brian Sussman.
Guest Profile and Information Click Here: http://superstore.wnd.com/store/item.asp?DEPARTMENT_ID=6&SUBDEPARTMENT_ID=20&ITEM_ID=3672
By ANNE JOLIS
Wall Street Journal
Last week a severe storm froze Dallas under a sheet of ice, just in time to disrupt the plans of the tens of thousands of (American) football fans descending on the city for the Super Bowl. On the other side of the globe, Cyclone Yasi slammed northeastern Australia, destroying homes and crops and displacing hundreds of thousands of people.
Some climate alarmists would have us believe that these storms are yet another baleful consequence of man-made CO2 emissions. In addition to the latest weather events, they also point to recent cyclones in Burma, last winter's fatal chills in Nepal and Bangladesh, December's blizzards in Britain, and every other drought, typhoon and unseasonable heat wave around the world.
But is it true? To answer that question, you need to understand whether recent weather trends are extreme by historical standards. The Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project is the latest attempt to find out, using super-computers to generate a dataset of global atmospheric circulation from 1871 to the present.
As it happens, the project's initial findings, published last month, show no evidence of an intensifying weather trend. "In the climate models, the extremes get more extreme as we move into a doubled CO2 world in 100 years," atmospheric scientist Gilbert Compo, one of the researchers on the project, tells me from his office at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "So we were surprised that none of the three major indices of climate variability that we used show a trend of increased circulation going back to 1871."
In other words, researchers have yet to find evidence of more-extreme weather patterns over the period, contrary to what the models predict. "There's no data-driven answer yet to the question of how human activity has affected extreme weather," adds Roger Pielke Jr., another University of Colorado climate researcher.
We do know that carbon dioxide and other gases trap and re-radiate heat. We also know that humans have emitted ever-more of these gases since the Industrial Revolution. What we don't know is exactly how sensitive the climate is to increases in these gases versus other possible factors-solar variability, oceanic currents, Pacific heating and cooling cycles, planets' gravitational and magnetic oscillations, and so on.
Given the unknowns, it's possible that even if we spend trillions of dollars, and forgo trillions more in future economic growth, to cut carbon emissions to pre-industrial levels, the climate will continue to change-as it always has.
That's not to say we're helpless. There is at least one climate lesson that we can draw from the recent weather: Whatever happens, prosperity and preparedness help. North Texas's ice storm wreaked havoc and left hundreds of football fans stranded, cold, and angry. But thanks to modern infrastructure, 21st century health care, and stockpiles of magnesium chloride and snow plows, the storm caused no reported deaths and Dallas managed to host the big game on Sunday.
Compare that outcome to the 55 people who reportedly died of pneumonia, respiratory problems and other cold-related illnesses in Bangladesh and Nepal when temperatures dropped to just above freezing last winter. Even rich countries can be caught off guard: Witness the thousands stranded when Heathrow skimped on de-icing supplies and let five inches of snow ground flights for two days before Christmas. Britain's GDP shrank by 0.5% in the fourth quarter of 2010, for which the Office of National Statistics mostly blames "the bad weather."
Arguably, global warming was a factor in that case. Or at least the idea of global warming was. The London-based Global Warming Policy Foundation charges that British authorities are so committed to the notion that Britain's future will be warmer that they have failed to plan for winter storms that have hit the country three years running.
A sliver of the billions that British taxpayers spend on trying to control their climes could have bought them more of the supplies that helped Dallas recover more quickly. And, with a fraction of that sliver of prosperity, more Bangladeshis and Nepalis could have acquired the antibiotics and respirators to survive their cold spell.
A comparison of cyclones Yasi and Nargis tells a similar story: As devastating as Yasi has been, Australia's infrastructure, medicine, and emergency protocols meant the Category 5 storm has killed only one person so far. Australians are now mulling all the ways they could have better protected their property and economy.
But if they feel like counting their blessings, they need only look to the similar cyclone that hit the Irrawaddy Delta in 2008. Burma's military regime hadn't allowed for much of an economy before the cyclone, but Nargis destroyed nearly all the Delta had. Afterwards, the junta blocked foreign aid workers from delivering needed water purification and medical supplies. In the end, the government let Nargis kill more than 130,000 people.
Global-warming alarmists insist that economic activity is the problem, when the available evidence show it to be part of the solution. We may not be able to do anything about the weather, extreme or otherwise. But we can make sure we have the resources to deal with it when it comes.
Read More: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704422204576130300992126630.html
ABOUT YOUR GUEST: For more than 20 years Brian Sussman served as the Bay Area's most celebrated television science reporter and meteorologist, having earned honors from The Associated Press, the Radio-Television News Directors Association, the National Education Association, and the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
He's now the new morning man at KSFO (560 AM)the highest rated talk show in the San Francisco Bay Area and the fourth largest radio market in the country. A husband and father of four, Sussman is also well known for founding Brian[s Kids, an adoption advocacy organization that utilized the Bay Area television airwaves to introduce the public to foster children awaiting adoption. During the course of 12 years, Brian's Kids assisted in the placement of more than 400 children in permanent, adoptive homes an accomplishment that gives Sussman, an adoptive father himself, a special sense of joy and fulfillment.
In 2001, Brian shocked the television community by daring to leave for a career in conservative talk radio. Joining the line-up on San Francisco's KSFO-AM, Sussman has achieved huge ratings success with his program, Right Thinking from the Left Coast a steady source of irritation to the Bay Area's liberal establishment.
ABOUT THE BOOK: Climategate is a godsend for anyone who has ever expressed skepticism about the environmentalist that claim that the Earth is in peril because of mankind's appetite for carbon-based fuels.
A distinguished, award-winning television weatherman in San Francisco, Brian Sussman deftly melds easy-to-understand scientific facts with provocative commentary. Sick of twisted "facts" mass-marketed to manipulate basic living decisions and common-sense energy consumption, Sussman indicts a cabal of elitist politicians, bureaucrats and activists who front the environmental movement to push intrusive, Marxist-derived policies in a quest to become filthy rich.
By tracing the origins of the current climate scare, Sussman guides the reader from the diabolical minds of Marx and Engels in the 1800s, to the global governance machinations of the United Nations today. Climategate is a call to action, warning Americans that their future is being undermined by a phony pseudo-science aimed at altering every aspect of life in the United States.
