By Ed Hiserodt
In 1970, I recall New Orleans schoolchildren taking a 185-mile field trip to Jackson, Mississippi, so students might experience something they had never seen before: snow. This year they didn’t have to bother, as Southern Louisiana was blanketed with four inches of the white stuff, the first major snow in 45 years, and only two inches shy of the all-time record of six inches set in 1895. It was also the earliest snow since record keeping began in 1850.
Not to be outdone, Las Vegas checked in with what local meteorologist Jerome Jacquest said was the most snow since 1979. With no snow removal or de-icing equipment, the airport was closed along with most roads. Gambling, however, was not affected.
Snow wasn’t the only problem. Freezing temperatures in Denver set a new low of minus 18, eclipsing a record from 1901. White Sulfur Springs, Montana, reported 29 below, shredding the previous record mark of minus 17, set in 1922. For the week of December 15, 2008 alone, HAM Weather Service reports 1,537 record low temperatures in the United States and 1,110 record snowfalls — not exactly what one would expect while on the way to climate catastrophe owing to global warming.
Weather watchers know this isn’t just an anomaly or freak occurrence. For the past 10 years, the summers have been cooler and the winters more severe. In Little Rock, for example, a chart in the newspaper shows there have been five consecutive months with average temperatures below normal. Since Little Rock is situated near the geographical center of the country, one would suspect that this is not an unusual condition, and indeed, such a suspicion is borne out by satellite measurements that cover the entire globe and are not subject to the “urban heat island” effect that has been shown to add as much as 10°F to recording stations in urban areas as compared to rural counterparts. An NBC crew sent out to show the Northwest Passage was ice free had their icebreaker stranded for three weeks because of thick ice.
With such obvious disputations of “global warming,” one might also suspect that the convictions of some honest, objective members of the weather establishment would begin to waver — after seeing the victim alive and sitting in the courtroom.
Filed under: Global Warming
