Palin!
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Amazing day as John McCain names Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate! It came as a surprise to almost everyone, including her family, who found out while watching FOX News. As we are starting to find out more about Sarah Palin, it’s becoming clear. She is an amazing woman! She moved to Alaska when she was three months old. She led her high school basketball team to the state championship while her ankle had a stress fracture. She is on tape somewhere shooting a machine gun when she visited Iraq. Why not, she blows away moose and caribou on a regular basis. Hey. A woman’s gotta eat!
Then there are her family values. A strong Christian Conservative she stands strong for life and against corruption. She has five children, including one with child with downs. Her husband is a commercial fisherman and works on the Alaska Pipeline. He’s also a world champion in snow machine racing!
Her knowledge on energy is vast. She doesn’t believe in man-made global warming and she’s all in favor of “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less.”
Judging from the reaction, McCain made a dynamite pick! I can’ wait for the vice-presidential debates!
Summerless
in Alaska. The Anchorage Daily News reports it could be the COLDEST SUMMER EVER in Anchorage! The Weather Service says it’s La Nina’s fault and when it fades temps should return to average or above. We will see. This blog and others have been talking about a cooler Sun. If that’s true, look for a COLD Winter in a lot of places even after La Nina is gone.
Chillin’ in Alaska
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Here’s the article. It’s in the Anchorage Daily News. Seems like it’s been a cooler than normal Summer. Really? With Global Warming, shouldn’t things be getting, you know, warmer? Hmmmm.
Now the guy from the National Weather Service does explain that while below normal, this dreary cool Summer is not that far out of the ordinary. It seems more so since the last two Summers were sunny and warm compared to normal. Still, only two days above 70 so far! Normal for an Anchorage Summer is 14, so there is a long way to go. Yeah. They’re chillin’ in Anchorage.
Here’s what’s really interesting in this article to me:
He thinks the strong forces of La Nina are the culprit. La Nina, a phenomenon that causes ocean temperatures to dip below average, kicked in this year and resulted in a drop in land temperatures, Albanese said.
Another cause could be Pacific decadal oscillation, a cyclical period of lower ocean temperatures that comes every 20 to 25 years.
There’s a warm phase and a cold phase of the climate pattern, Vonderheide said.
“We were in a warm phase of the Pacific decadal oscillation in the ’80s and ’90s,” he said. “(Some forecasters) believe we may have entered into the cold phase.”
I’ve addressed that here several times. Here for example. If the Pacific Decadal Oscillation is flipping, than the warm phase we were in has been causing glacial melt and all of those things the Global Warming fear mongers have been pointing too as evidence of CO2 polluting the planet. Could it be natural cycles that we are just starting to understand that was causing the recent warming?
Since recent global cooling has wiped out the warming of the past three decades, I’d say spending trillions to combat a natural process would not be too bright.
Cold Winter Continues!
Picture from Borealis Broadband Webcam taken this afternoon.
There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that 2007 was exceptionally cold. It snowed in Baghdad for the first time in centuries, the winter in China was simply terrible and the extent of Antarctic sea ice in the austral winter was the greatest on record since James Cook discovered the place in 1770.
It is generally not possible to draw conclusions about climatic trends from events in a single year, so I would normally dismiss this cold snap as transient, pending what happens in the next few years.
This is where SOHO comes in. The sunspot number follows a cycle of somewhat variable length, averaging 11 years. The most recent minimum was in March last year. The new cycle, No.24, was supposed to start soon after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers.
It didn’t happen. The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon.
The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth’s climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.
Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon’s Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots.
That the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with the failure of cycle No.24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a causal connection but it is cause for concern.
Cause for concern if: you like normal growing seasons, you like Winter to start and end on time (rather than start early and end late like this year), you are a Global Warming true believer and are committed to raising carbon taxes and receiving grant $$.
I hate to admit it, but I am rooting for cold cold and COLDER. I’ve always liked the cold and I would really really like to see Al Gore and his followers have to admit they are wrong.
Stay tuned and we will all see what happens.
Rain! and Global Cooling.
and Mountain snow too! Although I may not have time to visit the mountain snow anytime soon :-) Here’s a shot of my hummingbird feeder from this morning. I get a lot of hummingbird traffic. Rain or Shine!
This weather pattern is a bit odd for a La Nina year. Usually when a La Nina forms in the Pacific the Desert Southwest enjoys a warm dry Winter. Same for Southern California all the way to Texas. So far this year, not so much. It has been warm at times, but also very rainy here in Arizona. West Texas had snow for Thanksgiving, which is pretty rare! San Diego is getting soaked from this storm, and boy do they need the rain even if mudslides come with the territory. This is on the heels of an unusual El Nino year last year. Yes, if Tucson is going to get snow, it’s during El Nino Winters, and there was a 3″ snowfall last year. However, El Nino’s also usually means very wet weather for Southern California. It was quite the opposite last Winter. El Nino’s are almost always very dry for the Pacific Northwest. They had a wet Winter last year. So, what’s up?I have a theory, although I need to research it. Could it be tied to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation? Scientists are just now getting a clue about it. As far as I can tell, the pattern of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation is for unusually warm water in the Northern Pacific for about 20 – 30 years, and then a sudden shift to unusually cold for 20 -30 years. Since scientists haven’t known about it that long, they don’t have a lot of data on the pattern, but that seems to be it generally this century. So, during “warm” cycles, Alaska is really warm (like the last 25 years). When it’s on the “cold” cycle, Alaska is really cold. Hmmmm. 30 years ago scientists were warning about the cooling of the Planet. For the last 20, they’ve been talking about the Planet warming up. Hmmmm.
Additionally, I wonder if El Nino and La Nina norms are affected by what phase the Pacific Decadal Oscillation is in? Maybe I should apply for a grant and get to researching! If I’m right, this global warming nonsense is about to grow cold! Cool with me :-)
I LOVE SNOW!
I really do. Always have for as long as I can remember. Maybe it’s because I’ve never lived where I had to spend all Winter shoveling it. Could be. I think my favorite thing about snow is it’s just so pretty! Next in line would be it’s slippery. I love sliding around on the snow!!! Next would probably be building snowmen and having snowball fights. I even like the way the air smells when it snows!
I have way too many snow stories to tell. Some of them are on my web site, www.mikeshaw.tv. I think my love for snow is why I was looking forward to living in Alaska when I was a teenager. I was accepted to the University of Alaska at Fairbanks! Anchorage wasn’t cold enough for me :-) I was going to study Meteorology and Communications. Unfortunately, I wasn’t mature enough to make it happen. I still ended up being a weatherman, but I took the longer, poorer, more southern route. Who knows what would have been? As much as I used to drink back then, being that far away from home in a state where the drinking age was 19 and the outside temperature in Winter is usually below zero, it could have gone badly. Perhaps God was protecting me!
I still like to visit web cams in Alaska to look at the snow. AlaskaCam is probably the most famous overlooking downtown Anchorage. I just found another with a really nice view! Here’s a capture from earlier this afternoon. Perty, huh?
So, I’ve lived in frigid places like Western Oregon where a chilly rain is much more common than a snowstorm. Roswell, NM where it does get cold and snowy some years! Most though, not so much. Lubbock like Roswell can have some snowy years, but it usually doesn’t last long. In Odessa, Texas I think it snowed once in the two years I lived there and even then it was like an inch. Here in Tucson we had snow last year! Three inches downtown, but here in Oro Valley just a dusting of slush :-)
I think for now I am resigned to visiting the snow. Mt. Lemmon is about an hour drive away. They even have a little ski area at the top! Earlier this year in March when Micheal was visiting we drove up there and they still had snow! It was cold too :-) I’m hoping to go skiing up there sometime, although I’m not optimistic about this year. La Nina is forming in the Pacific. That usually means warm and dry for the Southwest. Oh well, maybe next year :-)
