2009.03.26
AccuWeather: 'The big loser this winter was Roanoke'
I don't often link to articles on the major weather Web sites, but this blog entry on AccuWeather.com is just too much on the money, specifically pointing out Roanoke's recent-years snow drought and noting that the Eastern snow drought is really part of an overall year-round precipitation drought -- a familiar theme of mine.
Thanks to reader Douglas Rutz for pointing this out to me.
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Wow. That's... sad.
Comment by Brandon R. — March 26, 2009 @ 5:19 pm
So how much snow where you're at, Brandon?
Comment by Kevin Myatt — March 26, 2009 @ 6:53 pm
Kevin, we ended up with about 22" total for the season in Fancy Gap at 3,000'. Lower elevations such as Galax were probably closer to 16". Half of this came at one time, and the rest came in 4-6 0-3" snows. Very spread out, and many that only lasted a day. Still a good 5-10" below normal. We usually squeak out an inch or two in April. Two years ago we actually had 6" on the 15th, it stood out to me because it was the day before the Tech tragedies, and I remember being delayed for school in the city, while the counties were closed. Let's hope for just one more snow to push us to normal.
Comment by Zach — March 26, 2009 @ 7:03 pm
lol.. I don't wanna say.. some of you might track me down and hurt me.
But.. if you insist.. that would be 11.5 inches last time I checked, Kev.
Comment by Brandon R. — March 26, 2009 @ 8:55 pm
and I'll add that it wasn't as bad as they thought it would be. That 11.5 came in a short period of time. It was expected to continue through the night but we ended up getting a downsloping effect. Which, as you can imagine, has the same results as it does in Roanoke- just with much, much taller mountains.
It was a thing of beauty, though.
Comment by Brandon R. — March 26, 2009 @ 8:57 pm
Denver gets a good upsloping effect under different circumstances ... keep in mind your on the high end of a gradual climbing shelf of land all the way from the Mississippi River to the base of the Rockies. Aids in thunderstorm development, too. In some patterns that are otherwise dead on a chase trip, we've scored supercells in eastern Colorado with the upslope action.
National Weather Service in Amarillo is warning about the possibility of drifts of 10 to 20 feet in the Texas Panhandle. FEET, I said. And there's a moderate risk of severe weather with tornado potential for parts of Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi on Friday.
Comment by Kevin Myatt — March 26, 2009 @ 9:04 pm
When will we know if Redoubt is having an effect on the global climate?
I imagine it would be a year or so.
Comment by Brandon R. — March 26, 2009 @ 9:05 pm
Kevin and the "gang:" I saw that Brent Watts had a terrific segment on the Channel 7 News at 5 on the causes of 1816's "Year without a summer." Said that there were actually 6 -- count em, 6!!! -- fairly major eruptions in the 4 years preceding 1816. Most historians point to the colossal eruption of Mt. Tambura in Indonesia in April 1815, a supervolcanic eruption that was the biggest in the world in over 1600 years that lasted for ten (!!!) days. Other big eruptions had happened on St. Vincent (Caribbean) and on another Indonesian island in 1812, in Japan in 1813, and in the Philippines in 1814, so the atmosphere was already loaded with volcanic dust even before Tambora. Add that to the fact that 1816 was during a period of abnormally low solar activity ("Dalton Minimum"), and one gets a better understanding of why there were crop failures in the US and Europe in 1816 and June snowstorms and ice on rivers in June in Penn. What if Mt. Redoubt in Alaska becomes a very big eruption? I seriously doubt that it will come anything close to Tambura, but it might rival Pinatubo in 1982. Throw in a possible El Nino year next year and a period of reduced solar activity {we just entered a new sunspot cycle that some experts think will be quieter (and therefore, cooler temps worldwide)}, and we could be looking at an extremely snowy and cold winter next year or in 2011. {P.S. I got my information after a websearch and finding info on the wikipedia website}
Comment by Doug Griggs — March 26, 2009 @ 9:14 pm
Redoubt hasn't had a "very big" eruption but it has had several moderate eruptions throwing ash very high in the atmosphere ... I think it's valid to wonder even now if there is some effect ... but, as Brandon points out, it might be a while before any possible correlations become clearer, if they exist.
Here's an article casting some doubt (pardon the pun) on Redoubt's effects:
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1203
Comment by Kevin Myatt — March 26, 2009 @ 9:24 pm
I think winter is over here in Wytheville, where I recorded a November-March snow total of 21.5".
Comment by Rick — March 27, 2009 @ 8:53 am