LibertyBell

1965-66 snowfall total for Norfolk, VA was crazy high (over 40"!) compared to NYC! The 80s were similar in that areas south of us got more snow than we did. Our Januarys were dry and cold back then. We've been catching up a lot the last couple of decades lol.

1966-67 had an exceptionally snowy Christmas too! The one winter that doesn't seem to fit anywhere is 2014-15. It really was a great winter (and historic for Boston), even though we didn't get the big hit in January. But we had a historically cold February and lots of snow and that lasted into March. I would compare that to 1933-34 except we didn't go below zero. Maybe 2004-05 is a better comparison for it? Looking at some of our other historic winters.... 2002-03 was similar to 1977-78....although one was a moderate nino and the other was a weak one, 1977-78 was a second year weak nino which made it more like a moderate.

I think 2010-11 was somewhat like 1960-61, while 1995-96 was more like 1966-67. Curiously, both 1995-96 and 2010-11 were la ninas that came after el ninos. 2009-10 was great in its own right and would have been much greater and truly historic had we not missed out on a couple of big storms.

somewhat like 1995-96! 1966-67 was close to a weak la nina too wasn't it? (and a weak la nina after a moderate el nino is supposed to be golden for snowfall!)

Indeed! During our early 90s snow drought I went to the college library and went through the NY Times microfiche collection for that very reason. I picked winter 1966-67 to "relive" (or rather, experience for the first time, since my first weather memory is from the early 80s lol) to see what a prolonged snowy winter was actually like. I loved reading their forecasts, seeing their maps and pictures and seeing their stories of cold and snow, which to that point I had never experienced. All I had were the Blizzard of April 1982 and February 1983 which I also loved to read about during our long snow drought. Then for the first time I remember getting excited for snow in 1993, because the summer and fall temp patterns seemed to mimic 1966, and I thought a big winter might be oncoming, so I started keeping a weather journal for the first time in my life.

yes yet another undermeasured storm at Central Park! the 60s were golden.....

Thanks! I saw some very interesting predictions for temp patterns going forward. Basically, we are warming from the pole "downwards" in that the greatest positive anomalies are occurring the further northward you go. Northern VT is projected to be about 10 degrees F warmer by 2070? At 40 N latitude on the east coast this is projected to be about 5.5 degrees F warmer.

what are the projections for Antarctica? They just recorded their highest temp ever recorded and accelerating ice melt.

Antarctica just saw its highest temp ever recorded- 65.1 and a rather large slab of ice just fell into the ocean there (it was about 130 ft tall.) On another issue,. I just saw a 30 min documentary on HBO about the Fukushima disaster and what they revealed was horrendous. Because of the impending 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Japan has been rushing to clean up after the fall out from Fukushima and they've done a really bad job. They hired unemployed and homeless people to do the "clean up" and since 70% of the area that is affected is forested and mountainous, it cant be cleaned properly. The workers weren't even wearing protective gear and weren't told about the dangers, they were in their street clothes. And they piled up 16 million black bags of radioactive contaminants in public areas and told people it was "safe" to come back even though the area is constantly being recontaminated whenever there is heavy rain and runoff. The Japanese government has tried to downplay the dangers and raised the maximum safe exposure 20x from 1 milliseviert like the rest of the world to 20 millisevierts, which scientists and medical researchers say represents a 30% higher risk of getting leukemia after 5 years of exposure, which compounds yearly (so it's 60% higher after 10 years.) They told their workers not to worry about the clean up and to just make the area "look good". Meanwhile children still have to go for yearly cancer checks and the food has to be regularly screened. The researchers who went there to see what was going on found some areas with up to 70 milliseviert radiation levels (areas along the path of the Olympic torch!) The former prime minister who was in charge when Fukushima melted down said that the reactor should never have been built and the tsunami changed his mind because he didn't listen to scientists who told him not to build it back in the 90s. The current government has hired propaganda people because they dont have the numbers to back up how horrendous this so-called "clean up" has been, they are just trying to show their best face for the Olympics (which might be derailed anyway because of coronavirus.) The former reactor is still contaminated and prone to further accidents and has to be doused constantly with sea water, which creates its own set of problems as the contaminated water has been mixing with the ground water and making it back into the ocean. A nuclear chemist said the area isn't safe for being in for more than 30 min or so. I guess this is why Japan has just commissioned 22 new coal plants :-( Saw a recent report showing lower life expectancy and higher rates of asthma in areas with industrial fossil fuel plants like in coastal Rhode Island. Local residents have now organized and are politically focused on moving these plants out of their neighborhoods! On a more positive note, the UK has passed a law to ban all fossil fuel powered vehicles by 2035 and NY is considering doing the same thing for 2040.

do you think February follows suit and we end up like 1989-90 on the back end?

It is lol... still I'm hoping for an early summer because my allergies get really bad in rainy/mild weather. Very warm to hot and not humid is far better for my health. We have weeds growing here and there are daffodils coming up out of the ground. So for me not to be medicated on antihistamines I have to have cold/snow or cold/dry or warm to hot and dry.

Not that different from their map for Jan 2016 ;-)

I printed this snowfall report out and put it on a plaque which I now hang on my wall lol. NYC/JFK AIRPORT 30.5 100 AM 1/24 FAA OBSERVER

when the sea ice up there is doing well our winters suck. so i vote for more sea ice loss up there so we can actually have a real winter down here.

I actually dont watch any of them for news. Since I was in grade school, all I've ever watched is PBS for news, they always provide the most in depth level of coverage from everything from politics to the environment. I find them absolutely amazing (ditto for their documentaries.) BBC America is up there too.

Hopefully a lot safer than it was in the days of Three Mile Island and Shoreham. We also need to include the possibility of nuclear reactors as military/terrorist targets. That's one reason I would not put nuclear reactors near big cities.

I originally thought that way also, but I've seen that wind and solar are both less expensive than fossil fuels now, so they should probably be transitioning over too. That would improve their air pollution problems quite a bit. I'd throw nuclear in there also if I was confident that developing countries could properly safeguard nuclear reactors.....

having loved burgers for years (and only quitting them because of my health), I can understand that sentiment!

it's more of a problem in the developing world, in the developed world we've already lowered the birth rate to around 2 per family. You said no one calls out China and India, I've already called out India and China for their reliance on coal (as well as Australia) and they definitely have a population density as well as air pollution problem.

the popularity of almond milk, coconut milk, avocado milk, etc., probably has a lot to do with it- consider how many commercials you see for those and none for dairy milk (I still remember the old days with the "Got Milk" commercials, you dont see them anymore.) Starbucks has also switched to plant-based milk.

and plastic pollution as well as the way land is used as well overfishing (for marine problems) and other factors.

right, and they are brainwashed and dont even know it.

They already stated that climate change is the greatest national security threat the world faces.

https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2011/06/13/losing-our-coral-reefs/ Many causes, most of them human “Coral bleaching is caused by global warming, full stop,” said Terry Hughes, lead author of a new studyon coral bleaching. The researchers found that bleaching events have increased from one every 25 to 30 years in the early 1980s to an average of one every six years since 2010. While coral reefs can recover from bleaching if given 10 to 15 years for their algae communities to recover, the increasing frequency of bleaching events means that many reefs may never be able to. In addition, the 22 million tons of carbon dioxide our oceans absorb every day are changing the chemistry of seawater and increasing acidification. Today, coral reefs are experiencing more acidity than they have at any time in the last 400,000 years. Acidification reduces the water’s carrying capacity for calcium carbonate that corals need to build their skeletons. Even a small decrease in the coral’s ability to construct its skeleton can leave it vulnerable to erosion. Some reefs have already begun to dissolve and it’s estimated that by 2050, only 15 percent of coral reefs will have enough calcium carbonate for adequate growth. One study showed that ocean acidification profoundly alters coral reef ecosystems. As C02 levels rise and acidification increases, the biodiversity of coral reefs drops, resulting in the elimination of key species needed for healthy reef formation. “The decline of the structurally complex corals means the reef will be much simpler and there will be less habitat for the hundreds of thousands of species we associate with today’s coral reefs,” said Katherina Fabricius, a scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science.

https://theaseanpost.com/article/coral-reefs-are-facing-extinction 90% by 2030