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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"There are climate-science deniers mostly because there are powerful groups whose interest it is to deny the science. The same is true for biological evolution," Caldeira wrote in an e-mail to LiveScience. "The rejection of climate science in some quarters of our political establishment saddens me, because it diminishes hope that our government can solve any important problem where understanding reality matters."
Huh?
Maybe I am misunderstanding, but did you actually say that cycles are irrelevant to climate?
Well my high in my WND protected area (too many trees) only got to 45.7F. Currently at 43.5F and dropping steadily. Given that the DWPT has been hovering around 25F and WNDs have remain breeze to windy at times... I'll say that mid 20s is a safe number. 24 to 26F for the low tonight. At my location at least.
Those "scientific papers" in the article come from the AMS, a society so bias that they don't certify any meteorologist who doesn't believe in Global Warming. Its the same arrogant domination complex the occurred during the Middle Ages Catholic Church. In which you were considered a heretic for actually using a Bible to disprove the Churches authority. Likewise the Church would lie to the public and try and claim the Bible supported their dogma.
Of course, you people will claim you are above "religious fallacy". No sir, that is just part of the human nature to control, to lie, and arrogantly refuse their hypothesis and beliefs to be wrong. Unfortunately authority does frequently corrupt.
But looking at the 18z model for a potential wintry mix type of a storm.. It seems the models are trending for more cold air and L more south then other models are saying.. This is the upcoming weekend.. this is going to get interesting even though its already been wacky..
Your post brings up an interesting point, though not directly. And it is a point that is almost always missed entirely in the maelstrom of debate on this subject.
The point is as follows, if I can possibly detail it without too much text..
This thing that we call climate is really too complex for us to even fully understand or comprehend, let alone measure with pinpoint accuracy.
Yes, we can see trends and yes we can get a general grasp of what is happening. However.. we DO NOT yet fully know anything close to all of the reasons why climate does what it does. We don't yet understand what caused the Ice Ages or what caused them to come to an end. What we do know though is that these processes, whatever they were, certainly could be correctly classified as "climate change." And when the Ice Ages were in the process of coming to an end, this certainly was global warming.
Now let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that indeed most if not nearly all of the observed intermediate term warming on this planet that has occurred for the past two centuries or so is the result of human activities, most especially emissions that have been put into the atmosphere as a result of the burning of carbon-based fuels.
Fine. One BIG problem though. This does not tell us what will happen if and when nature ultimately runs its course or "does its thing," whatever that may be and however all of that may play out eventually.
For instance, will a volcanic super-eruption negate all of the human-caused impacts upon the Earth's climate, should one occur? Or what will happen if an asteroid or comet strikes the Earth? Obviously, this will happen (again) sooner or later. And clearly it would have a drastic impact on the planet's climate. But no one mentions this in the debate about manmade global warming or so-called "climate change." Why not? I think it should be a part of the larger debate, but that is just my opinion.
And what about the ocean currents and how they possibly affect climate on this Earth? We know a little bit about that but there is much about that specific aspect that is yet to be discovered and is thus not well understood. How do perturbations in the Earth's magnetic field change the climate, if at all?
Most importantly of all, what role does the Sun play in the Earth's changing climate? Do sunspot cycles really have a significant effect and if so, to what extent and just what effect do these cycles have? Is the Sun perhaps the single most important "driver" of the Earth's climate, in spite of some of the rhetoric that we have heard in recent years, or is it not? That is actually a good question but it is often ignored, especially by the most ardent proponents of the AGW hypothesis.
And that brings up my final point here. After one sifts through all of the vast array of data and all of the questions, all of the arguments and everything else relating to the concept of climate change or global warming or whatever one wishes to call it, soon it becomes clear to the most objective observer that what all of the endless argument really comes down to is politics, not science! There may also be a hidden socioeconomic agenda lurking in the background somewhere but whether or not this is the case, up front and at the center of the stage is a political debate.
Hence, those who are the strongest proponents of the AGW hypothesis and who appear on this blog and countless other places, trying to educate others to accept their point of view, almost always are those who are on the political left of center. As such, they also would like to have restrictions placed on industry in order to stop or reduce pollution, on consumers and commercial activity in general and to accomplish the same result.
On the other hand, those who are arguing most strongly against the AGW belief system tend to be to the right of center in their personal political ideological placement. They tend to view any restrictions placed upon business, commerce or consumer activity of any kind with great suspicion. In their minds either pollution is not as big a problem as the AGW proponents claim that it is or perhaps it is a big problem but it can be solved most efficiently by allowing free market forces to function without restriction. In the minds of those who are anti-AGW, any restrictions placed upon the marketplace, no matter how helpful they could conceivably be in other ways, will ultimately wreck the economy, or reduce the quality of life, thus making the reduction of pollution almost a moot issue.
And there you have it. Just as you see here, it is a political debate and an ideological battle that is taking place here, with a significant though secondary economic component. But again, it is NOT science, even though some scientists have gotten fully caught up within the political fight and have been influenced by the non-scientific forces driving the debate.
I personally think that is unfortunate. If things were the way they should be, in my humble opinion, the questions about climate would be kept strictly within the confines of the study of science, at least until science could -- as objectively or in as unbiased a way as possible -- come to a meaningful conclusion about just what is happening to our climate and more importantly, to just what extent are we humans affecting this process. Then and only then could we know precisely how to govern ourselves accordingly with respect to our planet's climate.
Can you or anyone else show a graph with the earth cooling in the past decade compared to a 1950-2000 baseline? I'd be really interested in one.
I'm just trying to point out why the people championing climate change (not global warming, that's not politically correct anymore) sometimes get irate, which is a shame because it confuses issues.
Basically everyone on this blog is hopefully human, but only the people interested in preventing climate change are the ones presenting evidence, the defendants of there being no climate change just present the same non-fact based denials. Which are some of them good points but are like beating a dead donkey.
Well, we only have sat data since 1979, so hard to say.
Really doesn't matter what the baseline is. The trend is the trend over a period of time and does not change with the baseline.
Ahh.. found one to illustrate my observation that I still have on photobucket. This is the annual mean, which is the only thing I use. One trip around the sun.
Shows a trend of about +0,14C / decade, correct? Also the flatness after 98 - 2010 coincides with the greatest solar minimum measured. As the sun is the earth's heater, it's amazing temperatures have not plummeted.
Not true at all. And that highlights the problem that one finds when confronting rigid opinions on this subject.
Both the left and the right claim that the science is on their side. Both of them also claim that the other side is subverting the science.
In recent years, the weight of the political debate was heavily in favor of the argument most strongly proposed by the political left; that global warming was a fact and that the science proved that it was caused by human beings. When that was the case, most on the right either ignored the subject altogether or in some cases, reluctantly agreed with the stance.
But more recently, new data have come in which suggests that this long-held position is not as solid as previously thought. And more and more climate scientists are now speaking out and dissenting with the so-called consensus.
The political right points this out continuously and claims that it proves that AGW is a hoax. The political left either says that such claims do not exist and such scientists are imaginary and don't exist or they are just rogues who are refusing the get with the program, like the "flat earthers" of another era.
When one has a rigid position on this subject, they see all the data through the filter of their own viewpoint. For instance, they claim that the science is on their side, as I mentioned previously.
But the truth is that arguments are strong on both sides. No one needs to "subvert" anything in order to present a reasonable and strong argument in favor of their position.
But as usual, those who have made up their minds.. on either side.. are not going to listen to what the other side has to say. In other words, a classic political tug-of-war and NOT science, which is completely apolitical, when it is being practiced legitimately.
TROUGH EXTENDING WELL S TO E CUBA/CENTRAL BAHAMAS...WILL ROTATE NE
INTO NEW ENGLAND OVER THE NEXT 2 DAYS WITH THE TROUGH MOVING FURTHER
E INTO THE ATLC WHILE FILLING/WEAKENING. A LARGE UPPER RIDGE OVER
THE ROCKIES MOVES INTO THE GREAT PLAINS AND MOVES INTO THE UPPER
MIDWEST. WITHIN THAT 2 DAY PERIOD...S FLA IS IN STORE FOR A NEARLY
UNPRECEDENTED COLD PERIOD.
Actually That is pretty normal temperatures for Fairbanks...I lived there for 3 years and lived with those temps every winter. Actually I live in a little town called North Pole(kid you not) Saw many days in the 60 belows.
while science and politics pursue their discourses, there is empiricism. when faced with our observations, we must process the political and scientific elements to determine what happened, what's happening, what will happen, and what we should do about it.
i don't think such a lengthy underscoring was necessary, nor is it a missed point. in the end, both science and politics utilize empiricism, which is by definition not beyond grasp or comprehension. in the subtlety of that statement, i counter your viewpoint that in lacking, via the complexity of climate science, the ability to accurately nail down all the science thus removes the science from the debate. to the best of my ability, that's what i took to be your point; i hope i'm not off base in that reading.
this debate cannot be boiled down to strictly politics. empiricism alone defies that, and science as a pool of existing data refutes it. as i stated, science and politics do not exist in a vacuum, nor are they independent of one another. both exist, both are important, both seek to manage the results of empiricism.
For the entire period, yes, about that. The data is the data and that is what it shows for the entire period.
Why I am excited to see if there really is a cycle present. I am fascinated by it, regardless of what the end result shows.
Heck, I might even become a true believer. :)
Just don't know yet. We don't have sat temps during a cold PDO yet. Am very interested to see how that affects global temps, if any. AO (which we are experiencing right now with a vengeance), too.
Will be very interesting, to me at least, how observed global temps play out. Again, don't have sat temps during a cold PDO cycle (20-30 year cycle).
It's exciting to me to be able to observe something that is completely new.
It is true that nothing exists in a vacuum. And I also agree that it is inevitable that politics will enter into the debate. I did not mean to suggest that the failure of science to nail down the details nullifies science from the debate.
What I have noticed however is that it is politics which has dominated the debate over the past two decades or so. And as such, this has, in my opinion, corrupted the science, to some degree.
In this era, politics inevitably means money, which is why I also mentioned that there is an economic component to all of this. When the weight of the debate is on one side, either deservingly so or otherwise, this will inevitably mean that the money is going to go in the same direction. And that, in short is what threatens to corrupt objective scientific analysis.
If for example, one is a scientist and studying the climate, one must think carefully before openly hypothesizing one way or another, if in fact it is clear that research dollars in the form of government-backed grants are weighted on one side of the issue or the other. And since a great many scientists in fact depend on research grant money, this does corrupt the overall research process. And that is just one example to highlight my point about politics and science when it comes to the study of climate change.
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