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Some of those American snow pictures on there are incredible - how many miles of lake is the air generally crossing to get to the really snowy places like Syracuse or Buffalo?
I've been following Britan's recent weather closely. 10°F, let alone 1°F would unusually cold for where I live (where the winters much colder than England) for early December. Even in depths of winter we don't get 1°F nights all that many days.
I used to live in a place in Upstate New York that was close enough to Lake Ontario to be affected by lake-effect snow but far away enough that it was rarely very heavy. Being on the edge of the lake effect meant you got light snow very often (maybe 50% of the time) and an awful nearly constant gray cloud. As the wikipedia article mentioned:
the southeastern shores of the lakes are almost constantly overcast, leading to the use of the term The Great Gray Funk as a synonym for winter.[citation needed] These areas allegedly contain populations that suffer from high rates of seasonal affective disorder, a type of psychological depression thought to be caused by lack of light.
Still had higher sunshine percentages than the UK, but barely. And much colder. The lake is 50 miles wide, so my guess is that the winds go over 50-80 miles depending on the angle. I didn't know the North Sea was so mild, should help produce more snow.
the southeastern shores of the lakes are almost constantly overcast, leading to the use of the term The Great Gray Funk as a synonym for winter.[citation needed] These areas allegedly contain populations that suffer from high rates of seasonal affective disorder, a type of psychological depression thought to be caused by lack of light.
Still had higher sunshine percentages than the UK, but barely. And much colder. The lake is 50 miles wide, so my guess is that the winds go over 50-80 miles depending on the angle. I didn't know the North Sea was so mild, should help produce more snow.
The problem is that at the latitude of Newcastle/Scotland the North Sea is too mild and wide (300-400 miles to Denmark) that it warms the air up to the point where it is often rain and cloud rather than snow. A classic example I can remember is January 2006, where Berlin/Warsaw had completely clear skies and highs around -10 or -15C, but we were picking up the grey skies and couldn't quite tap into that cold air and so had about two weeks of gloom and day/night temperatures about 3C. A pure, potent easterly will often give colder weather to the south than the north because the sea track is much less. The January 1987 cold snap mentioned on Wikipedia is a classic example of that, giving the coldest day of the 20th century to the south of England but unremarkably cold weather to Scotland:
It's been unusually cold only in the UK and parts of NW Europe. Winter here has been on the mild side so far. And if you read the other thread, they talk about parts of Greenland being unusually warm while the UK freezes.
Mild? I know in our areas November was average, but it looks like these first couple weeks of December will be well below average here and in much of the eastern US.
I am not pushing any particular point of view as regards to future climate. One or two cold winters in a small corner of the world no more portends an ice age than the record hot summer in Moscow (and New York) is a symptom of Global Warming gone mad.....
....But the climate boffins at NOAA claim that 2010 will end up being the warmest to third warmest year of record and given our anemic sunspot activity, that doesn't reassure me much that momentous changes are not, in fact, taking place and we could be in for some very unpleasant surprises a few years down the road.
Excellent points. One or two extreme heat or cold events doesn't prove or disprove global warming, however global warming alarmists for some reason downplay any significant cold events, yet hype the extreme heat events. Just a peculiar observation.
Your cold snap really is crazy -- to have nearly an entire month continually below average if that prediction is right.
Yep, there's a strong chance of a below-freezing Central England average for this month, which would be the first time since February 1986, and the first in my lifetime, as I was born a month later. I think the last time it happened in December was way back in 1890 (the month London recorded 0 sunshine hours), so pretty crazy indeed in amongst warm records being set everywhere else.
Feels like an ice age in Buxton alright, this December will be the second month to have a below freezing mean temperature this year here, after January's -0.2°C. Mean temp for December so far running at -3.3°C up to 7th, crazy gettin off the train from work at 7:00pm with temps around -6 / -7°C every day. The solution: pop into Aldi and buy 100's of grams of chocolate and shove it down me gullet. And not a calorie goes wasted, when it's that frackin' cold outside aaah tell yer.
Edit: It will be interesting to see if this month ends with a below freezing average maximum, too. So far we are at -1.2°C.
Last edited by Weatherfan2; 12-08-2010 at 12:03 PM..
Feels like an ice age in Buxton alright, this December will be the second month to have a below freezing mean temperature this year here, after January's -0.2°C. Mean temp for December so far running at -3.3°C up to 7th, crazy gettin off the train from work at 7:00pm with temps around -6 / -7°C every day. The solution: pop into Aldi and buy 100's of grams of chocolate and shove it down me gullet. And not a calorie goes wasted, when it's that frackin' cold outside aaah tell yer.
Edit: It will be interesting to see if this month ends with a below freezing average maximum, too. So far we are at -1.2°C.
That's interesting. A mean of -0.2C in Jan seems to be at or around NYC's average.
It's also bit colder than the warmest January here (2006) since record-keeping began (I think), with a 0.2 C mean (avg. high was 3.8 C and low -3.4 C then).
Buxton seems to be giving Toronto a run for its money so far in terms of the November/December weather up to now.
Mild? I know in our areas November was average, but it looks like these first couple weeks of December will be well below average here and in much of the eastern US.
yea, i hadn't checked the forecast and at the time we had had only a few slightly colder than average days, which seemed like they were just balancing the mild days we had. It got really cold all of a sudden. 2°F (-17°C). England doesn't seem so cold anymore.
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