Wake Up and Schuss the Powder

From today's Seattle Times:

The last time Seattle-area residents contended with snow this late in the season was more than three decades ago, when Seattle-Tacoma International Airport reported snow on April 17, 1972, said Johnny Burg, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

[...]

"We've had powdery snow practically the whole season," said Duncan Howat, general manager at Mount Baker. "This is a great end for what's already been a record season for us."

[...]

Years ago, Mount Baker used to operate well into May — and even went until July 4 once during the 1970s, Howat said. But now its season concludes in late April, ending this year on April 27.

Eastern Washington will also be faced with snowy conditions this weekend.

It's interesting to note that the last time we had a winter this bad was in the Seventies. It was almost 33 years ago exactly, April 28, 1975, that Newsweek ran a story titled "The Cooling World."

Notice the graph in the Newsweek article of average temperature change from 1880 to 1970. It's a classic sine wave. Since then, the average temperature change swung back up again, peaking in 1998. It has remained stable since then, declining slightly. Could we be at the beginning of another downturn in temperature like in the Seventies? Who knows? The weather and climate are constantly changing. The only thing that is consistent is man's alarm and overreaction at the various trends.


One thing that does not exhibit sinusoid behavior is the amount of global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fules. It is steadily increasing. The level of atmospheric CO2 is now nearly twice that in the Seventies. But we still have a winter like this one? I'm skeptical that one climatological phenomenon (La Nina) could override all that CO2 if that truly was causing the planet to warm so dramatically.