Recently in Weather Category

Watching the national news (specifically ABC News), one would think we're in the midst of a string of record breaking summers, with hot and humid temperatures across most of the US. They've attributed it to global warming all while ignoring a number of cyclical weather patterns (El Niño and La Niña) that are far more likely to be the cause of this summer's weather. We here in New England have managed to avoid much of what the rest of the nation has been dealing with (it's been warm but with mostly low humidity), but that doesn't mean we haven't noticed what's been going on. We've seen the reports from all over the nation about the never ending heat waves. But we've also been hearing about the Southern Hemisphere, which has been dealing with record cold temperatures.

This summer's weather has caused a bit of amnesia about the previous two summers, where the weather was mostly cooler and wetter than normal. During those summers, here in the northeast we didn't really experience summer weather until August. June and July were cold and very wet, seriously affecting the farm industry and the tourist trade. On the farms, crops ran late and some were drowned out altogether. And who wants to go to the beach or go hiking or boating or hit the tourist spots when it's in the 60's, cloudy, and damp?

If we have a string of summers like the one we've been experiencing this year, then we might be able to attribute it to global warming. But if it's just this summer, and the following summers are 'normal' then wouldn't we have to say it was just weather and not climate? If you're like most folks, I'd say the answer would be yes. But knowing the It's-All-The-Fault-Of-The-Evil-Humans global warming folks they will ignore the normal summer pattern and focus intently on this summer as proof of AGW. Never mind there's been a decade long cooling trend.

And then of course, there's this. But let's not let facts get in the way of our opinions, right?

Sometimes the Precautionary Principle serves us well. Other times it comes back to bite us in the butt.

Today it proved to be the latter.

The Weather Guys™ predicted snow for today, with 5 to 9 inches accumulation expected here on the south side of Lake Winnipesaukee. The local TV and radio news outlets played up the first snowfall in over a month, trying to make it sound like the Apocalypse was coming. (To those of you not familiar with northern New England winters, 5 inches of snow is usually considered not much more than a dusting.)

Towns and cities all over central and southern New Hampshire canceled school today in anticipation of heavy snowfall expected in the early afternoon. But the joke was on them because the snow didn't start falling around here until well after the time the school kids would have been home on a normal school day. (A few towns on the southeast part of the lake decided not to cancel school, planning to send kids home early if the weather started deteriorating. Their gamble paid off because they got a full day of school in, meaning they'll get out that much earlier at the end of the school year.)

Imagine my surprise (not) when Sam Champion, ABC's Good Morning America meteorologist, answered Diana Sawyer's question during her evening news broadcast about the effects of global warming on the unusually cold weather we've been experiencing. When asked if those below normal temperatures and above normal snowfalls might be attributed to global warming, Sam answered (as best I can remember):

If this were only happening in North America, it might be an indicator. But it's happening in Europe and Asia, too.

The few meteorologists I know do not believe global warming has anything to do with human activity. In fact a couple of them seem to think we're in for a prolonged period of cooling.

I'm going to read this to my students on Monday, a delightful speech given by Mark Twain, identifying 136 weathers in one twenty-four-hour period in spring--a time not to be praised, necessitating New Englanders' killing of poets who do so.

The students are heading off Wednesday to Rome for two weeks on a special trip to see members of the order be consecrated priests and meet the Pope. Yippee! No school for me.

We had just been talking about it. Some boys from Louisiana find the "sumptuous variety" (Twain's words) to be annoying. I like it.

Yes, one of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it. There is only one thing certain about it: you are certain there is going to be plenty of it.

Friday I hiked Mt. Israel between jobs in a T-shirt! One of my favorite hikes, the summit, by pure happenstance, being named for the original farmer who lived near its base, is the precise elevation of Jerusalem. That's cool

With the 15+ inches of snowfall we had here at The Manse and the need to move it, I had little opportunity to write anything, profound, witty, humorous, or otherwise.

Regular blogging goodness will resume sometime this evening.

It happened shortly after 6AM Friday morning after a long day and night of sleet and freezing rain.

The power went off.

In less than a second we were removed from the 21st Century and placed in the 19th. Or at least it seemed that way.

We still had a couple of portable radios and our cell phones (which remained in service, thank goodness).

Listening to one of the radios we discovered BeezleBub didn't have to trouble himself with getting ready for school. Like many towns in New Hampshire, schools were closed for the day due to the heavy ice coating the roads, loss of electrical power, or both. However, that did not absolve me from heading in to work. At least with BeezleBub not having school, I was able to put off my departure for another couple of hours. At one point I called work to see if the voice mail system was still operational, which would let me know if there was power there. My first check at 7AM proved the system was still up, and hence, our engineering lab still had electricity. At the urging of Deb, I called again a little before 8AM and the phone just rang and rang and rang. No voice mail. No power. No work.

A quick call to one of my co-workers, she who is the keeper of the phone list, confirmed our place of employment was closed for the day for two reasons - the treacherous roads/ice laden trees, and no electricity. I didn't need to be told twice.

Because we had no power, we also had no phone, being one of those households receiving phone service via our cable company. That's where the cell phones came in handy.

A call to the WP Parents later in the day elicited no response other than connection to voice mail. It took me a moment to remember all they had at their home were wireless phones, so no power meant no phones. (It also meant no heat, something people in their 70's shouldn't have to endure.) I finally reached them by calling their cell phone and, after confirming they had no power, invited them to join us here at The Manse since we had heat, hot water, and company.

BeezleBub did his grill master wizardry for dinner, doing a pork roast on the grill, cooking it to perfection.

Unlike so many others here in New Hampshire, our power came back on just a few minutes before 10PM Friday night. However, there were still over 350,000 households and businesses without power as of Saturday morning, and many of those will not have it restored any time soon. As New Hampshire Governor John Lynch stated, this ice storm affected almost 10 times as many residents as the last big ice storm in 1998, and it took work crews 7 days to restore power to everyone back then. Utilities crews are coming in from as far away as Michigan and Ohio as well as Canada in an effort to get power restored.

The long term power outages will certainly have a negative effect on retail sales for Christmas, with many shops and business unable to operate until power is restored. That can make for an even bleaker economic picture than had originally been predicted.

NOTE: This post was long delayed due to the lack of a connection to the 'net. My service provider, the local cable company, had quite a bit of damage to their outside plant equipment and service was restored to The Manse but moments ago.