2017 is ending with a series of Arctic blasts impacting holiday travelers across the American heartland.
One storm that has dumped more than 65 inches of snow in Pennsylvania, creating travel chaos and forcing one of the state’s counties to declare an emergency.
“This is a crippling snow event,” said Zach Sefcovic, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Cleveland.”They are no strangers to snow in that part of the state, but this much snow in that short a time is just unprecedented,” he said in a telephone interview….The storm broke a 59-year-old record for a two-day snowfall in Pennsylvania, topping the 44 inches that fell in 1958. Erie County Executive Kathy Dahlkemper issued a temporary disaster emergency declaration that mobilized resources to help the area.
Reports of freezing conditions and historically low temperatures are coming from areas that stretch from Montana to Maine.
International Falls, Minnesota woke up to a temperature of -36F at 6 a.m. Wednesday morning breaking the previous record low for Dec. 27 of -32F set in 1924, according to the National Weather Service office in Duluth. That -36 is the actual temperature, not a wind chill!
In the Great Lakes, people are capturing videos of pancake ice formation, a feature that is most common in the frigid oceans such as the Baltic Sea and around Antarctica.
Another bout of arctic air is on its way to open 2018, too! Those who are planning to attend the famous Times Square celebration in New York City should prepare for some seriously cold conditions.
New Year’s Eve, the temperature is expected to drop to around 12 degrees, about 12 degrees below normal and one of the coldest on record. High temperatures leading to the holiday are expected to be colder than the typical low temperatures for those days.
In fact, places in Siberia and the Antarctic are projected to be warmer than parts of New Hampshire.
Across the Atlantic, Great Britain is also slated to be slammed with polar winds. Perhaps that is why some British scientists are rethinking “global warming“.
In a little over a decade the world could be plunged into a ‘mini ice age’, scientists have warned.Temperatures will start dropping in 2021, according to a mathematical model of the Sun’s magnetic energy.This, they say, will lead to a phenomenon known as the ‘Maunder minimum’ – which has previously been known as a mini ice age when it hit between 1646 and 1715, even causing London’s River Thames to freeze over.The model of the Sun’s solar cycle is producing unprecedentedly accurate predictions of irregularities within the Sun’s 11-year heartbeat.
Interestingly, solar scientists are reporting that solar activity appears weak. There were no sunspots on the solar surface this fall and there were very few observed this month, which is usually indicative of reduced solar activity.
The less heat we get from the sun, the colder the Earth gets. It is heartening to see some scientists finally appreciating the role the sun plays in our weather!
Sadly, however, the study’s scientists won’t let go of the global warming bone.
Valentina Zharkova, a maths professor at Northumbria University built on previous work done in Moscow to make the predictions….”I hope global warning will be overridden by this effect, giving humankind and the Earth 30 years to sort out our pollution,” she told Sky News.
I will make my first prediction for 2018: After the first week of 2018 concludes, many Americans and Brits would welcome continued global warming.
Meanwhile, I will kick back in California’s 70-degree bliss as my reward for being right about “climate change”. It is one of the few perks I enjoy.
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