Mount Whitney in the California Sierra Nevada
Winter in April? In California?
Well, that’s “Global Warming” for you. Just heard on The Weather Channel that there is a Winter Storm Warning in effect for California. Here it is the middle of April (when we often get small showers but not much more) and we’re lined up for a Winter Storm.
We just had a winter storm warning about a week ago:
http://www.news10.net/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=78720&catid=2
Now we get ANOTHER one?
From Wunderground: http://www.wunderground.com/US/CA/069.html we have:
* Snow accumulations: two feet of snow is possible above 7000
feet by Monday afternoon… with 12 to 18 inches above 5000
feet and several inches down to 4000 feet.
* Elevation: snow levels near 4500 feet this morning… and
4000 feet Monday afternoon.
and it closes with:
A Winter Storm Warning for heavy snow means severe winter weather
conditions are expected or occurring. Significant amounts of
snow are forecast that will make travel dangerous. Only travel in
an emergency. If you must travel… keep an extra flashlight and blankets…
food… and water in your vehicle in case of an emergency.
This is April? In California?
I WANT MY WARMING! It was promised to me by Al Gore and the IPCC. I want it and I want it now. No breach of contract, please.
It’s raining and cold. My heater is running, my gas bill is headed for the roof. My feet are cold and I’m looking for the Afghan. This is NOT what it’s supposed to be like in California in April. Heck, it hasn’t been like this for 30 years. (Since the last time we had a cold PDO phase).
But worse than that:
The predictions are for up to 2 feet of snow in the higher Sierra Nevada mountains. Winds at the peaks up to 100 mph. We have major winter storm warnings all up and down the Sierras. A couple of inches of rain for the north Central Valley. (Yeah, you folks in Texas are thinking “A Light Shower? So?”. Well this is California, the land of lite beer and brie. We get 7 inches in a YEAR. So 2 inches in one “go” is a big deal. (The elevation of my home town is 32 feet. It is about 210 miles to the ocean from there. It takes a long time for water to drain away at a slope of 1 foot per 7 miles… flooding is common and easy.)
So I’m wondering: Is it time for a class action lawsuit for “breach of promise”? We were promised warming, and they didn’t deliver. I want 1/2 my heating bill paid for. Now. And some hot cocoa. And a 2 week trip to somewhere warm and dry…
California April Anomaly Graph
Musings from the Chiefio 
You have my utmost sympathy. We had rather a lot of the white kind of global warming last week too but now the jetstream has moved North and today was a perfect Spring day – warm with a clear cloudless sky with a clarity and colour you only get in Spring before the Summer haze sets in. Heating turned off (at last) and windows wide open. Wonderful.
Oh I did get the Canada thread posted: http://diggingintheclay.blogspot.com/2010/04/canada-top-of-hockey-league-part-1.html
I found so much more than I bargained for, so there will be a Part 2 (at least). That is even before I really get my head into the detail of the grid squares stuff.
They really shouldn’t call it a “winter storm” warning when it isn’t winter. Doesn’t matter if snow is in the forecast, it’s still not a winter storm. “Wintry”, perhaps, but not “winter”.
Well it sure FEELS like winter to me! Semantics aside, this is NOT the Global Warming I was promised…
In many years it is quite warm in April. The “standard” is to start putting your tomatoes in the ground about now. Yeah, sometimes a freak late frost will threaten, but this is supposed to be early “Tomato Weather” and not a snowy Winter Storm…
So whatever you call it, I want to be in short sleeves planting tomatoes, not cowering inside with the Afgan watching a cold winter rain and checking the Ski Resorts for ticket prices…
Not only is it about to snow again in California, but NOAA is attempting to hide the fact that California is colder than “average,” whatever that means. Are they also hiding the decline? What is it with these climate guys?
Warmists have selected their presentation graphics to increase the alarm over warming (red colors in the Arctic, e.g.) and now they are doing it for the map of California with respect to temperatures. They changed the color palette so that even cold temperatures show up as green — indicating not much colder than usual – unless one reads the color key. Not increasing the warming hysteria this time, but minimizing or eliminating the colder temperatures.
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/deceitful-climate-scientists-2010.html
To be fair, they did change it a bit today, so that almost the entire state is blue or purple — indicating colder than average! But, had they used the same color scheme as for the entire month of March, the state would show almost all purple — and apparently that is just too scary.
see http://www.calclim.dri.edu/, but this link gets updated daily (almost) so the effect may not be visible after today.
REPLY: [ Gee… didn’t even know about the “calclim” site. Added the graphic to this posting “for ease of reference” ;-) thanks for the pointer… -E.M.Smith ]
You’re doing great stuff, Chiefio.
I want to comment on the idea of averaging temperature data, though. Maybe this isn’t the precise thread to do it, but at least you’re likely to see it here. I think it might interest you.
First of all, the right way to analyze temporal data is by individual stations using samples taken at the same solar time of day. That way you are not introducing variations due to time of day.
This gives you data that preserves the maximum amount of information for examination. Any averaging destroys signal.
Then you subject that data to a spectrum analysis to see what frequency components exist. Any cycles will stand out hugely on the spectrum analysis. The function performed by it is Fourier Transform that extracts the frequencies that make up the signal.
Here is a graphic example of the principle being used:
The top trace is generated noise. It has a fairly random mix of all frequencies in this illustration, but if there were 100 thousand year cycles or 11 year cycles, they would show as big fat spikes on a spectrum analysis.
The middle trace is a first order band pass filter that removes frequencies with which it doesn’t harmonize.
Notice that it is hairy from higher frequency signal that it has not dampened sufficiently. The bottom trace is a second order filter that passes a narrower band, cleanly extracting the frequency of interest and rejecting most of the others.
Averaging data functions as a low-pass filter, not as a band pass filter. Averaging makes mud and destroys data.
If a studio engineer did that to music he’d be… post normally canned.
They were never trying to analyze data. That’s quite plain. What they were doing was festooning an agenda with every knick-knack, gewgaw and gimcrack they could find. There will be nothing enduring to mark this season of unreason. At least the Easter Islanders left statues.
REPLY: [ I see every thread and every comment. Usually I start by looking at the administrative “recent comments” review panel to see what’s pending. This shows ALL threads intermixed in reverse chronological order. So even long dormant 1 year old threads, if a comment happens, put it at the top…
With that said: I’m not sure what would be the better thread for your comment. A “California cold while predictions bogus” thread is probably as good as any.
FWIW, I agree more or less completely with what you said. I’ve frequently said “Averaging is used to hide things.” and pointed out that one uses averaging to hide features that are in your way (hopefully so others are more visible…). This is seen a lot in stock charts, for example, where you want to hide daily frequencies and pick out a longer term trend. So I could see a plausible reason for them to use averaging to try to pick out a 30 year signal from daily jitter ( low frequency bandpass). But it’s a darned crude technique to do it… Were it me, I’d set up a multichannel bandpass and see what frequencies had signal in them, much as you described. I’d also be looking for 176-208 year solar signal, for 22 year solar signal, for 60 year PDO signal (and all the other AMO, AO, etc), for 1470 year Bond Event signal for the proposed 5000 year signal, for 115,000 year orbital / ice age signal, for…. but that’s just me… And after ALL those known signals were allowed for, then, and only then, would I look at the residual and ask “What is it?”. And only AFTER that, would I ask: “Is it CO2?” …
Frankly: Hand this “climate science” field to ANY decent audio engineer or radio engineer and you’d get far better results. Why we have folks trained in signals intelligence and spectrum analysis sitting on the sidelines while guys who count tree rings and play with gas on Venus are on the field is beyond me…
FWIW, I mostly use the “averaging” technique as it’s what’s going to be thrown back in my face by the “warmers”, so I’m looking to demonstrate the “issues” it has. I don’t expect averaging temperatures to find truth. (As I’ve said many times. The average of an intensive variable is meaningless. It can tell you about the structure of the data itself (patterns in the data) but can tell you nothing about the real world the original intensive variable measured.) -E.M.Smith ]
:D
Be the first!
To show where problems lie, one can do no better than to show the right way along side the wrong way.
Lol- it’s a difficult abstraction to find one’s own height by measuring everybody else’s.
Somebody will do it some day. Those drunks are not going to find their keys under the lamp post ever. It won’t do any good to explain to them why.
Well, we’ve got ANOTHER one!
Winds now being forecast up to 120 mph with snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains. It’s cold and drippy in the San Francisco Bay area AGAIN. Everything is running about a month late and the winds are more ‘blustery’. This is typical late winter / early spring weather. Not what’s normal out here for late spring. This time of year is normally ‘tomatoes set out, beans and corn planted, harvesting peas” weather. I’m looking at this thinking about planting peas, turnips and kale… (all cold / wet tolerant plants – not the usual hot / drought tolerant stuff of California summers…)
We had ONE hot day, about 3 days ago. And it wasn’t really all that hot. More like ‘comfortably warm’. The added cloud cover is keeping things much cooler than usual. It’s quite clear that clouds dominate the surface temperature.
I wonder if that’s part of the satellites vs ground stations issue… The satellites are perhaps seeing more warmth from the tops of the clouds, so reporting warmth that is not making it to the surface? I know, rampant speculation…