After big snow and ice events in the Southeast, Plains, and Midwest this week, 49 out of the 50 states currently have snow on the ground – yes, even Hawaii, where snow falls in Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea all winter.
The only state that has avoided this icy blast is Florida. Does that make you want to go on a nice, warm vacation to the Sunshine State? You're not alone.
Put another way, that means snow is present in 69.4 percent of the lower 48, which is more than double than December. This is extremely unusual, though it's hard to put a date on when this last happened because records aren't kept on this kind of event.
The National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center combines ground reports and images from satellites in space to determine how much of the country is covered in snow. That's what you see in the image above. The images tell how deep and widespread the snow is, and that's important not only for images like this one, but also for computer weather models, which use the data to generate accurate forecasts. Such forecasts were very useful in predicting this week's winter storms.
Earlier this week, two storms began to churn: one in the northern Plains and Midwest, and one in Texas. The southern winter storm took a track across the Gulf Coast, pulling warm, moist air over an extreme arctic blast that set up over the eastern half of the United States late last week. This provided fuel for the storm to carve a path of snow, sleet, and freezing rain from Texas to the Carolinas.
Here in Atlanta, we're still coated in snow and ice and probably will be for the next couple of days. No one in the Southeast escaped the wrath except, of course, Florida.
But it's not over. Now that the southern-track storm has moved into the Atlantic and is moving north, the other Midwest storm is going to merge with it, creating a Nor'easter event that could dump up to two feet of snow in the Northeast. Winter storm warnings and advisories have been posted for the event - 32 states have winter storm advisories issued, by the way.
Here's how the snow forecast breaks down for some major cities:
Washington DC: 2-4 inches
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: 4-6 inches
New York, N.Y.: 6-12 inches
Hartford, Connecticut: 15-20 inches
Boston, Massachusetts: 12-16 inches
The snow and cold started early this winter and has been extreme for most of the country. Usually the Southeast avoids the blast, but not in 2011. We're all feeling a little "snowed in" this winter.
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While this article may be somewhat true but its not 100%. I live in Florida and a town over DID get some snow flurries but i guess not enough.
Global warming occurs with or without human intervention. The earth heats up over thousands of years, weather patterns change, ice caps melt, oceans rise, and then it cools off over thousands of years, weather patterns change, ice caps freeze, oceans lower. What is hard to identify is how much human intervention/interference/pollution contributes to that fact. It is possible that human beings could make it warmer, faster, causing more violent weather patterns, causing more ice to melt, causing oceans to rise, MORE than the Earth would do by itself. That's what is hard to measure. Are we having an effect? Of course we are, but is it measurable and detrimental? That's the argument.
It's not a matter of global warming being a hoax or if it exists or not, it exists, but its cyclical, as far as we know. If you did some scientific research, you will see that the earth heats and cools by itself with variations from the heat from our sun and our orbit around it. I just hope we aren't making it worse where it takes much longer for that normal cycle to occur, impacting life on this planet much more than it should be naturally...
It exists, the argument is how much we affect it.
I forgot to include: look up "paleoclimatology" and you will see from various scientific sources, that the earth has heated up, cooled, rinse and repeat, over thousands/millions of years, the question is are we making it heat up too much too fast where it will hurt us. I'm repeating myself because I'm tired. Good night!
Birds are falling out of the sky, fresh water and salt water are dead(millions)and there's nothing going on with our climate. The scientist can't give us a sensible explanation, and we don't question anything because some of us are to busy worrying about left and right issues. Global Warming is a natural effect that the Earth goes through, we have helped the process speed up.
Dead fish typo
49 of 50 U.S. states have snow... hide the phucking.. decline....
Dead fish
Ya..how's that global warmin' workin' out for y'all???
I admit, they should've chosen a different name instead of "Global Warming." Perhaps "Global Climate Change" would've been a better choice. Maybe then fewer trolls would be confused.
You are about to become one of the most educated of trolls about this subject. Global Warming refers to consistent average global temperature increase over time. Even 1 degree Celsius increase can have significant consequences to global weather patterns. These global patterns become unstable, and shift, causing unusually cold weather in normally warm places, unusually warm weather in cold places. I would explain to you how large amounts of snow can be associated with warm fronts, but I don't want your troll head to explode.
Just kidding. You're not really a troll. But your comment was extremely ignorant, and arrogant. Do some research before you make a comment. Have a nice day.
How's that education working out for you?
I don't understand why people keep harping on this "Solely from Human ... " like we are trying to attribute fault. Does it matter if a problem is 25, 50, 75 or 100% from human activity. We can only control human activity, the fact that some (probably large) percent is beyond our control is no reason not to control what we can. Justhefacts' dissertation is well put together and well written as an exercise in the abstract, but the assumptions upon which it rests are neither universally accepted nor relevant. There are many people eminently more able to measure and determine these things and, despite the occasional nut scientist the naysayers produce, ever major independent scientific organization in the world is firmly on the side that we have a real problem that we must address. I think it rather more logical to bow to their collective scientific expertise than indulge in little ad hominem logic exercises to show that they are all wrong. What I don't understand is why so many people choose to believe the politicians instead of the scientists on matters scientific. Besides the fact that politicians don't know jack about science, they all have another agenda and almost all of them or pathological liars.
Ya don't say. Maybe it really doesn't belong to man to direct his own steps. Like the blind guide leading the blind man, they both fall into the hole.
dear americans: ha ha!!
with love from: your canadian neighbour....
Smell you later.
Hey, Southern Style is having a lot of fun with all of us, but don't buy into it. It's phony. Language and spelling errors are predictable, linguistically, and this person's style is totally random. Probably watched "Beverly Hillbillies" one too many times.
But it's true, friends, that we have a problem. Rich agricultural regions all over the planet are drying up and blowing away. The underground water that has made irrigation possible is disappearing, Warmer summers mean that cool-weather crops are more difficult to grow.
Snow in Atlanta is just the least of it. I recall as a third-grader in Atlanta, a wonderful day when school was cancelled for a quarter-inch of snow. As an adult in Boston, I laughed myself silly about that!
Whether or not these changes are due to human activity is... well, interesting. But the most important question is: How do we respond to them? You and I, and our beloved children, and grandchildren, et al., are going to have to live in a globally changed environment. (Even if you think Jesus might save all of us, you might recall the parable about the ten maidens – those who fell asleep vs. those who were alert.)
Do we respond in the most primitive ways – by protecting our genetic relatives (our "people" or our "tribe" or our "in-group") – as wealthy societies are so inclined to do, blaming the losing groups for their perceived biological or sociological or political deficiencies – or are we going to courageously look towards the survival of our remarkable (though flawed) species as a whole and the survival of the amazing (though severely stressed) ecosystem that supports us?
Bend over and kiss it good bye.
Since when does global warming affect the jet stream? You guys are so Fin gullible.
Its been going into global cooling since the 1970's. The sun is going hot again -solor maximus- an 11 year cycle approx., this one is a little late... The fast heat up will be blamed on manmade global warming, a money scam.
Nawapa is a huge water project. 6 million people employed almost overnight! It goes from Alaska to Mexico. Rescues most farmland that is sitting idle in the US.
A law called GLASS STEAGALL restarts/reboots the US economy. It must be restored fast. Or no work and no farmland.
Thank you
I'm sooper serial!!! =)
About the only thing we can be certain about with these weather extremes is that the simplified version that it is all to do with manmade carbon dioxide is a gross oversimplification. We have past ice ages and warm periods to explain. We have a misbehaving Sun which is not at a fixed distant from Earth. We have stuff in the atmosphere that causes clouds to form including cosmic particles. We have a Galaxy with spiral arms we wander across, we have meteor showers, human pollution, ocean currents, carbon cycles, volcanoes (and I have just started) Check out my essay on the science of global warming at http://billpeddie.wordpress.com and see why I think the oversimplification is totally unjustified. Happy reading. Bill Peddie