Across the Northeast, Midwest, and Plains, it has been one of the coldest and snowiest starts to the winter season on record.
“Winter has gotten off to a fast start across a majority of the United States, particularly across the Northeast. Early season snow plagued I-95 in mid-November, bringing New York City it’s earliest 6” snowfall on record. Record cold blanketed the region on Thanksgiving, partly causing a rapid spike in natural gas prices. Cold also likely played a role in retail performance over the holiday weekend. While most see a reprieve from cold over the next 7 days, another blast of arctic air is expected later in the first week of December across the eastern U.S., which may further complicate energy market movement going forward,” said Ed Vallee, head meteorologist at Vallee Weather Consulting.
Central New York, the Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area, and much of the Rust Belt have already reported one of the snowiest starts to November in decades.
According to the Accumulated Winter Season Severity Index (AWSSI) also known as the “Winter Misery Index” from the Midwest Regional Climate Center, 74 metro areas from New England to the Plains and Rockies have experienced cold and snow that generally would not occur until January.
AWSSI index computes the “intensity and persistence of cold weather, the frequency and amount of snow and the amount and persistence of snow on the ground (wind and mixed precipitation are not a part of the index),” the Midwest Regional Climate Center said.
The weather index uses five categories – mild, moderate, average, severe and extreme – to assess the severity of winter weather in a particular region.
The exact start date of the winter season is defined by the first snowfall (at least 0.1 inches) or when temps dip below 32 degrees or lower, otherwise, the start date is Dec. 01.
“The spread among the categories is very narrow this early in the season,” said Dr. Barbara Mayes Boustead, a co-creator of the index and an instructor at the National Weather Service’s Warning Decision Training Division in Norman, Oklahoma.
Metro areas classified as having an extreme winter, so far, ranked in the 99th percentile of the index for Nov. 27, said The Weather Channel, adding that a combination of persistent cold from the Northeast to the Plains and a pair of expansive winter storms, Avery and then Bruce, gave this winter season a fast start.
The Weather Channel provides five cities in the Northeast that have had a record extreme start to winter:
- Berlin, New Hampshire: This northern New Hampshire town crushed its previous record-to-date index by picking up 18.6 inches of snow – more than six times its average snow-to-date of only 2.9 inches – and logging six days in which highs did not rise above freezing.
- Burlington, Vermont: Burlington picked up almost triple its average season-to-date snowfall and had seven days during which temperatures did not rise above freezing.
- Caribou, Maine: This town in northern Maine already picked up roughly one-quarter of its average seasonal snow even before winter officially arrived. Snow from Winter Storm Bruce was still falling as of publication. Add 11 days which the daytime high didn’t rise above freezing, and you can see why the index is at a season-to-date record.
- Jackman, Maine: Similar to Berlin, Jackman’s 14 days of freezing or colder high temperatures and more than double its average season-to-date snowfall – almost 20 inches, as of Nov. 26 – put it on a record early-season pace.
- New York City: This is primarily due to Winter Storm Avery dumping Central Park’s second-heaviest November calendar-day snow on record – 6.4 inches – as well as a pair of days that failed to rise above freezing: Thanksgiving and Black Friday.
AWSSI shows extreme weather also occurred in Washington DC, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Des Moines, Omaha, Kansas City, Little Rock, and Oklahoma City.
More than two dozen cities registered on the index as severe winter-to-date, which is one notch below extreme on the AWSSI scale. Among these cities are Buffalo, New York; Louisville, Kentucky; Minneapolis; Pierre, South Dakota; and Flagstaff, Arizona.
“We can’t judge much about the upcoming winter season based on the early-season AWSSI,” Mayes Boustead said. “It isn’t until maybe January that we can start to get a feel for the character of the winter.
“That said, it’s certainly striking to see a lot of cold and snowy early-season winter conditions across a wide swath of the country.
With a 75-80% chance of the weather phenomenon El Niño, a “naturally occurring phenomenon involving fluctuations of ocean surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific,” for the winter 2018/19, more extreme weather conditions could be in store for the months ahead.
First cave man to 2nd cave man: “I don’t care what you say. We never had such unusual weather before they started using bows and arrows.”
People are overwrought again. And since no discussion of weather can be had without the psychotics baying about climate change…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pBbvehbomrY
That was fantastic. Thanks for sharing… Chip
An aside: what the fuck sex was that thing asking the question at the beginning of that clip?
This is great!
I’ve been saying this for a long time – whether the climate debate is real or not, there’s not a fucking thing that anyone can do about it.
We should clean out DC and Ottawa and make this guy our King.
“The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.”
― George Orwell
As global atmospheric temperatures measured by satellites decrease and early winter and record breaking cold temperatures stalk the land causing crop failure, governmental agencies, the IPCC and the corporate-controlled Fake News MSM double down and crank our stores of runaway global warming and impending doom. The huge effort going into controlling the global warming narrative despite evidence to the contrary all around us truly boggles the mind. I sometimes joke that one day not far into the future when the northern half of Canada is cover by a giant ice sheet a mile thick, the Fools on Parliament Hill will still be promoting the AGW theory and of course carbon taxes. But seriously, this massive promotion of lies as far as the eye can see is causing cognitive dissonance that is leading to serious mental problems. Perhaps Jordan Peterson might weigh in on the psychological damage caused by a steady diet of self-evident lies.
I think he has. Since I can’t convince people that global warming is bullshit, I shut them up by saying “who fucking cares?”
They have spent billions propagandizing AGW in order to have a Carbon Exchange which will put a fee on utility bills which goes directly into their pockets. The greatest scam of all time. Climate feudalism with the elites owning the exchange and charging us based on weather changes. Everyone would be a climate serf. They’ll come take your house because you can’t pay the huge increase “justified” by an earthquake is Western Bufoostan.
The goal post constantly shifts. As I have pointed out repeatedly there has been no measurable rise in sea level since the Renaissance despite repeated assurance that most of our coastlines would be underwater by now. In order to account for that easily observable falsehood they had to come up with something, so, this-
https://www.sciencealert.com/bottom-ocean-literally-sinking-under-weight-melting-glaciers-climate-change
That’s right, the sea level isn’t rising because the sea bed is sinking.
They keep saying New York City will be underwater like that’s a bad thing.
So what you’re saying is that either:
A. They’re completely full of shit and need to shut the fuck up.
–OR–
B. It’s not a problem anymore anyway so they should shut the fuck up.
Did I get that right?
That’s like saying that my basement doesn’t have low ceilings, it’s just that the floor is too high. Idiocy.
It’s not idiocy, it’s the starting point for a multi-million dollar grant proposal to study the effects of traditional Christian floor levels on modern basement ceilings’ relational altitude perceptions from a perspective of gender-fluid construction techniques. And of course whether the floor and/or ceilings have any residual feeeeewingz of vertical inadequacy due to implied bullying by white Christian male builders during their formative years which are probably also legally actionable in the 9th Circuit.
I saw that when the data was originally put forth. I about died laughing, and linked it on facebook with the words, “So global warming is not only causing the skies to fall, but the ground to fall too!”
A few people took me up on the challenge, but most stayed out of it. This is such an obvious bid for more grant money that only a True Believer could ever take it as truth.
Ever notice they try to pretend the water we have here is the only water there will ever be? It is a scientific fact that large quantities of ice enters the atmosphere from space and water also leaves daily.
They blackballed the scientist who discovered that for thirty years!
The sea floor is falling !! The sea floor is falling !!
It would appear the real ‘weather’ problem is in Europe. The Rhine and Danube rivers are so low fuel cannot get to gas stations as it is sent by river tankers and those Viking river tour boats have to bus their unfortunate guests from one boat to another to create a simulation of a river tour.
If low river water starts to affect France look out. They may have to shut down their nuclear power plants and that means no electricity.
Climate change fanatics point to every heat wave, hurricane, wildfire, etc. as proof of global warming, but discount the record breaking cold as just weather.
Just wondering if the record cold in the east did not begin as smoke from California?
Our cold started long before the fires.
There was just about no autumn in Minnesocold. Very cold October. Leaves fell off the trees late, and froze to the ground, what a mess.
I’m on more or less a straight line south of you, northern Missouri.
Our October was hot as hell up until the mid point, I mean mid 90s in October kinds of hot. Then over a 10 day stretch the temperature dropped to low 40s, low 30s. We’ve had multiple snows, with two measureable snowfalls in October.
I think we only had two days of pleasant mid-70s weather. 🙁
We are already over 10″ of snow for the season. My little suburb is at 11″. Our average is 18″. Our “record snowfalls” typically fall in the 35-38″ area.
But that is nothing compared to the cold. Don’t get me wrong, I like the cold. You will never catch me willfully moving south of the I-70 corridor, but this is intense.
Over the next week we are scheduled to have one day at average temps, and the rest all 5-10 degrees below.
Over the next week we are slated to get severe downpours that will be miserable because it will be 35 degrees out, and also another snowstorm that will drop several more inches on top of us.
We see this sort of weather all the time here, but typically not until January, rarely in December, and damned NEVER in November.
The weather patterns would have to completely invert for us to miss being above average for cold and snow for the season, its been THAT extreme.
Wait until the heating bills come in. People are going to choke on them. If this extreme cold continues through the winter we are going to read about many deaths. Many people will not be able to afford heating their homes and apartments. Especially old people on fixed incomes.
Bad trouble ahead.
Apparently we are at the beginning of a solar minimum severe enough to usher in a Mini Ice Age. I’m on my way to town where I can use my laptop. I love try to dig up the article I forwarded to a friend. My cell phone news feed had an article this morning about it but there was no link to the original.
Super Grand Solar Minimum.
SOTT.NET Tue Nov 6 2018 posted an excellent article about the Mini Ice Age beginning in the spring of 2019.
Super Grand Solar Minimum by Valentina Zharkova Tue. 6, Nov 2018 at sott.net.
The gist of it is we have extra low sun spot activity that hasn’t happened since the last Mini Ice Age from 1645 to 1715.
The site is also a good news aggregation site.
Those promoting global warming show us all kinds of graphs showing us that the temperature is rising. They have reasoned from all their findings that this is bad for our planet. They have also reasoned that by cutting back on our use of fossil fuels we can reverse or slow down green house gasses that they say is the cause of global warming. They support the call of politicians for carbon taxes that would force the people to cut back on the use of carbon based fuels.
Conversely, their are those who are saying we are going into a global cooling trend that will result in a mini ice age. They point to a solar minimum of sun spots that is causing the upper atmosphere to cool down and consequently causing the weather to get cooler and the cause of low atmosphere clouds which further causes cooling of the earth. They present records of past grand solar minimums lasting several cycles during which crops failed due to the extreme cooling. They predict that the current solar minimum will extend into the next two solar cycles which will bring about the coming mini ice age. They say according to the record of past occurrences the coming mini ice age is due.
These two opposing views are causing cognitive dissonance among the population of readers of these scientists who stand under their views.
One thing for sure that we can note is that November 2018 has been an unusually cold one. If this winter turns out to be a bitter cold one and the spring is an unusually cool one then we can begin to look for a pattern of cooling temperatures. But not quite. If the solar minimum continues along with cooler temperatures then we can begin to consider that those who are saying we are heading for a mini ice age have credibility.
I tend to consider the views of those who are saying we are going into a cooling cycle because no politicians are involved. Politicians tend to be the dumbest people on earth because they are too busy socializing for votes; than to read and inform themselves about science; economics, social issues or anything else; except money and power.
On the other side there has been no sea level rise and plants love to feed on CO2 and make oxygen. They should be more interested in ways to increase plant life to solve their CO2 fixation than wanting to impose taxes on all of us for wanting to use these fossil fuels to better our life condition.
T Bird..
I’m not sold on either one myself. Just thought it made a good counter weight to the Warmists.
The Farmers Almanac uses sunspots in their forecasts and they called for an early very cold winter.
A 1,ooo words from the Farmers
According to the book “Cold Times” after the winter of 2019/20 there will be no doubt on what’s coming. Its an excellent Prepper book for the subject.