Heavy snow collapses Minneapolis Metrodome roof
A raging December blizzard buried Minneapolis, Minnesota under 17 inches of snow over the weekend, triggering the collapse early this morning of the air-inflated roof of the Minneapolis Metrodome, home of the Minnesota Vikings football team. The storm roared out of Canada on Friday morning, bringing heavy snow, sustained winds of 25 – 35 mph, and blizzard conditions through Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. The heaviest snows occurred near Osceola, Wisconsin, where 23 inches fell. The storm also dumped 21" at Noisy Basin, Montana, 14" in Williston, ND, and 14" in Negaunee, MI. Officially, 17.1” of snow fell at the Minneapolis airport; 16.3” of it on Saturday. Saturday's snow amounted to 1.75” of melted precipitation, for a snow-to-water equivalent ratio of 9:1. For those of you who've ever shoveled snow know, that's a very wet, heavy snow, and its no wonder the roof of the Metrodome had trouble with such a huge weight of snow.

Figure 1. Amount of precipitation for the 24 hours ending at 1am EST Sunday, in melted snow equivalent. Up to two inches of precipitation fell (brown colors) near the Minnesota-Wisconsin border. Image credit: NOAA /NOHRSC.
In the wake of the storm, bitterly cold air from Canada will sweep southwards into the U.S., and high temperatures near 0°F are expected for Minneapolis on Monday. Lows near -30°F are expected in northern Minnesota near International Falls on Monday night. The cold will penetrate into Florida's orange groves Monday night, with lows in the mid-20s expected in Orlando.
Jeff Masters
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How does GW become $$?
you know.... the MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF MONEY climate scientists make, a well know top 2% earning demographic... what, you've never seen all their McMansions and fraternizations with political and celebrity elites????
heck, i just spotted Dr. M with Brad Pitt riding elephants down the golden streets from My mcmansion window....
The "money grubbing AGW crowd". Hmmm.
Profits--not revenue, but profits--for just the five largest oil companies for the years 2000-2008 were $656 billion. During that same span, profits for all renewable / clean / green / alternative energy companies--that is, every one on the planet--were an estimated $47 billion.
Any questions?
point being, there are no shills here. just a bunch of people with rampant opinions, and a few supported facts.
Sure, there are lots of ways to make money: the United States (and any other country) could make money by consuming less foreign energy sources, lighter cars mean less road and car repairs, solar panels and micro turbines mean less energy infrastructure, local sources like pellet stoves mean less transportation costs, biking means less health costs, using clotheslines means less HVAC costs, etc.. There are also money to be made investing in new sources. Note that the people doing the research however are not the ones making the profit (as far as i know).
Anyway, you sent me on a search regarding grant money and the best link i found was wikipedia. Points on both sides but best read for yourself.
Are you aware that the taxes paid for aid to the poor actually translates to pennies on the dollar by the time it reaches the people for whom it was intended.
Do you actually think that the taxes and money collected for Carbon Offset will even remotely equal what is actually spent. Pennies on the dollar is what it will amount to after middle men galore take their share before it gets to who need it most.
Not to mention the fact that when you compare how long the oil companies have been in existence to the time that the Greenie crowd has captured almost 10 percent in less than eight years. Thats a pretty astounding growth rate by any measure.
And you have the temerity to suggest it is not about the money?
Like I said earlier...stop being a shill for Greenies (not all Greenies, just the AGW Greenies) and their money grubber counter-parts in the AGW crowd.
I am a Greenie who thinks AGW is an out and out lie.
BTW...How does it feel to be labeled as a crackpot like you have done to those who disagree with you? Doesn't feel good, does it? Maybe you should stop.
To chime in on that point. Grant money, and especially Fed. grant money, that is awarded for research purposes, is tightly controlled and distributed. Scientists that apply for and win these grants don't profit from them other than to perform the research they are interested in.
Profit and Income there is a wee bit of a difference between the two.
I'm going to profit from GW by growing citrus here in Idaho although the harvest for next year is looking kinda' bleak...:^(
I think you should stop as well.
Just presenting data and information. Some may find it to be a meaningful observation, some may not. It is simply an observation.
There was a jump in temps in 1998.
Simply as a relative number, the most recent IPCC prediction is +0.30C per decade.
From 1979-1997, the trend was about +0.05C per decade. Flat, for all practical purposes.
Then there was a jump.
From 1998-2009, the trend was about -0.03C per decade. Again, flat.
First is the full satellite temp record through 2009 with a trend line and my inserted average temp line (not a trend line) for 1979-1997 and 1998-2009.
That is followed by the 1979-1997 and 1998-2009 temp record separately.
Are oil companies allowed to make a profit? If so, how much and at what rate of return is acceptable to you?
Why not push ahead on home-grown technologies as alternative energy sources so we don't have to station young men and women in politically unstable kingdoms in the Middle East where human rights violations are the norm?
How much does it cost every day to keep one carrier group on station in the Persian Gulf? What is one soldier/sailor/Marine/airman's life worth?
I'm in favor of getting out from under the thumb of these petty potentates...
When did development of new technologies become a bad thing? Why not become the leader in alternative energy? This country has always been a leader in technological innovation and it has served us well. Why are thing different now?
Of course they are. But that wasn't the point. The point was this: before anyone tries to "prove" that AGW adherents are "money grubbers" (and, thus, the AGW theory is false), they might want to consider that profits for the fossil fuel industry are quite literally dozens of times larger than those for the renewable energy industry. If there's any "grubbing" going on, then, it appears to be somewhat lopsided, no?
Don't start complicating things with all those numbers and statistics. Facts don't fit in the conversation. I think a bunch of eyes just glossed over. You really think you'll get thru THIS time? It hasn't worked the other 3,472 times, what makes you think those thick skulls are penetrable?
Anyone who cares about the environment is money grubbing but anyone who likes to pollute isn't. It makes total sense, doesn't it? LOL!
It's a laughable debate that I can't stomach. You can't argue with lead bricks.
Keep going brother! Hopefully someday people will become rational...
I guess what I should stop is spending any more time on you; the way you keep moving the "point" of the conversation makes it hard to keep up with you. To summarize: you accused the "AGW crowd" of being money grubbers, but when I provided numbers to show that just the top five oil companies in the world have made ten times as much profit in the past eight years as all renewable energy companies combined, you responded with a complaint about tax aid to the poor.
Huh?
At any rate, if those in the anti-science crowd choose to label me a "crackpot", I know I'm on the right track. So, you know, thanks for further validating my beliefs. ;-)
Hey PI, how have you been? It's OK as long as it's sports talk. No problem there...
Makes no sense at all what you said. Explain how greenies are greedy while those who pollute aren't?
I had a low temperature this morning of 20.3 degrees registered on my thermometer, the coldest of the season thus far.
The National Weather Service office at Jacksonville International Airport, about five miles from where I live, confirmed 20 degrees also this morning to establish a new record low temperature for this date, breaking the old mark of 24 degrees set back in 1960.
A very impressive arctic airmass to say the least. Currently as we approach the 12 noon hour, it has only warmed to 36.6 degrees. Dewpoint temperatures are in the single digits currently. Wow! Don't see that too often down here that's for sure.
Winds will get lighter as the day progresses as the cold arctic dome of High pressure settles in closer on top of the SE US region. This will set the stage for prime radiational cooling conditions tonight and the mercury is going to drop like a rock in most areas. I expect the coldest readings in most places by sunrise tomorrow morning, even more colder than this morning. Temps should drop down into the teens in my area of Jax, as well as the other interior portions of North Florida.
Central Florida looks to have temps possibly into the low-mid 20s in the colder regions in that part of the state, and it looks as though the freezing line is going to drop down all the way to the Alligator Alley corridor in the Everglades. A very impressive cold air mass indeed.
The warm-up commences beginning Thursday into Saturday for the peninsula as we get the flow to veer back to the south-southwest ahead of the next cold front due to arrive across the state on Sunday. It appears that the models are showing that although it will be turning colder again on Sunday, this next cold air mass coming will not be nearly as severe as this current cold outbreak.
what happened to data in 1998 that we should throw out the connection to any year before it? also, start in 1999 and work through 2009 data, is there not a warming trend? do you know what outlier means in statistics, and how to treat it?
climate science is not about what happens discretely from one year to the next; it is about trends. when discussing trends, discrete values need to be combined wherever possible. you are mistakenly isolating 1998 to make a point that the globe has cooled since then. *it hasn't cooled according to the data you yourself posted, which i cite here http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.C.lrg.gif
this is why you were accused of cherry picking. for my imaginary week of example temps, there were two days prior to the hottest day of the week, so in that sample, one would state the week progressively warmed from start to finish. only when throwing out the first two days would one be able to say the week cooled. still, even from that point when 4 out of 5 days experience warming from one to the next, even a layman should be able to see that cooling is not the trend there.
you really need to stop breaking time in half at '98 so that you can understand the reason why people state there has been continued warming since then. if, and only if, time began at the hottest measurement in '98 would you come close to accuracy. however, just like my made up example, you still have to deal with the fact that the period following that outlier year also indicates a warming trend.
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