I apologise up front for the title of this post, but it aptly describes the impact of this snowy spring on Britain’s hill farms. The point of this post is to show the severity of this weather event…..
At the time I did think we were saved by the temperature. One or two degrees lower – dry fluffy snow lying from the start – and we’d have been buried at low levels.
On high ground it was a different matter. There were reports of drifts – 5ft, 10ft, 15ft, even 30ft – across the country. Islands were not exempt. It took a week for all homes on the Scottish island of Arran to have power restored, and the Isle of Man experienced the worst snow since 1963.
A friend who lives on the Antrim Plateau in Northern Ireland tells me they were cut off for days and those who (eventually) came to their rescue could only dig tunnels in the drifts; there was no access initially for mechanical snow clearing equipment. Older people with long memories are saying it is worse than 1962/63….
In Wales, lambs were found ‘frozen to the ground’ under the snow:
“With the massive snowfall and winds, it’s just been horrendous.”
The sheep are trapped under the drifts, some of which are 15ft in some places. We’ve dug 70 out in the last three days.”Some lambs have been born frozen to the ground. It’s heartbreaking.”
From Cumbria – Whitehaven News:
As the thaw continues, farmers are discovering heartbreaking numbers of animals which have succumbed to the nightmare conditions on the fells.
Losses are such that for some of the county’s rare sheep breeds, the battle for survival is likely to be as great as it was in the aftermath of the 2001 foot and mouth crisis.
In Scotland one farmer found sheep in a drift alive after being buried for eleven days….
From The Telegraph:
The Met Office confirmed on Tuesday that the average UK temperature in March was just 2.2C, making it the coldest since 1962 (1.9C) and the joint-second coldest since records began in 1910.
Temperatures were 3.3C below the monthly average of 5.5C….
One commenter at Ice Age Now just said the snow in Scotland’s mountains last winter was 50 feet. This led to ~ 300 snow patches lasting through summer.
The only way the Liars get away with claiming “The warmest year Evah!” is because of the news blackout of events like this throughout the world. Mongolia lost up to half its herd in 2010. More than 25 000 animals were killed in Peru with 739 homes made uninhabitable due to snow on September 1 2013. Bolivia lost 70,000 animals a day or two before. South Dakota lost up to 100,000 cattle from massive blizzard that buried cattle in mid October 2013. (Usual H/T to Ice Age Now for keeping this documentation that is wiped by the Winston Smith’s of the internet.)
I can attest to that, it was effin brass monkeys round here for 6 [bitter wind chill] weeks but 2013 won’t be as cold – as it’s gonna get here in the next few days.
For the theory of CAGW to proven, the Arctic and Antarctic and the middle/upper Troposphere have to warm at an accelerated rate as compared to the middle latitudes. To reinforce the faux CAGW meme, these areas have to warm. Got that? They have to warm faster than where we live. If they don’t warm at an accelerated rate, then the CAGW theory is busted. So guess where the greatest fudging is going to take place. And with no thermometers in the Arctic and not willing to use satellite readings, the alarmist scientists are free to fudge to reinforce the theory. We have a proxy for temperature in the Arctic; it’s called …….ice. And the sea ice is about normal. Meaning…no accelerated warming. They can only fudge these areas for a few more years before there is going to be an obvious disconnect between sea ice and what the climate scientists at GISS and NOAA are claiming for Arctic/Antarctic temperatures.
January and February will be cold right now but hot in hindsight when the temperatures are analysed by climate experts. This will also mean the hottest year ever will start to cool over time to
Open up space for the next hottest year ever. Meanwhile on planet Earth: close to 19 yrs without warming. Funny, isnt it?
The EPA is set to ban most Wood Burning Stoves that do not meet their new stringent requirements in February 2015. Additionally, coal fired power plants are being shut down to protect the air,
And riots will happen as the inner city Blacks, well primed by the race baiting Obummer and MSM, suffer from the loss of power. New York City has been well primed by its communist mayor. GEE, If I did not know better I would thing the USA is being setup for an ‘Arab Spring’ type Coup d’état.
As the Alarmists continue to spread their Gospel, many parts of the globe have actually warmed during the last 10-15 years. Nowadays, the Alarmists must scurry and perform a plethora of adjustments just to get to a .01 or .02 warm variation in some convoluted data set. The truth be known, even during periods when the globe cooled (such as the LIA), many regions in fact saw temporary warming for a decade or so. Thankfully, the earth’s atmosphere is anything but homogenous. This year, while portions of Austrailia saw heatwaves, the lee-side of the Urals saw major snowfalls in August which destroyed their wheat crop. And Canada saw late summer snows, which destroyed their barely crop. Ice flows remained in Lake Superior while portions of Southern Europe saw a mild to hot early summer. Drought plagued the Far West of the US, while serious rainfall plagued Eastern Europe. An anomalously warm pool of water sat off the Pacific Northwest during late summer, while northeast Europe saw an early winter with snows in October. The Pope is about to give an encyclical on Global Warming while thousands of Syrian Catholics freeze to death in refugee camps.
Two winters don’t make a trend, but the US is about to experience two consecutively frigid winters. Yes, Alaska is warm; but that is what you get when the Arctic is sending all of its cold air southward towards the subtropics. If in fact we’re having climate influenced by AGW, the polar air masses in Winter would remain near the poles and people in the mid-latitudes would wax nostalgic about those harsh winters from the 1970s. That is not the case.
What people forget is the Wisconsin Ice Age glaciers did not cover the entire Northern Hemisphere. The past configuration of the ice sheets follows the ‘polar vortex’ pattern we are now seeing. A warm Alaska and California therefore mean nothing. In other words the current weather patterns are the same as were seen during glaciation aka COLD.
For Eurasia during most extreme part of full glacial conditions (17,000-15,000 14C y.a.). Ice masses are light gray.
“… The Great Blue Norther… established a set of weather records that arguably are unique in modern weather history. On November 11, 1911 (remembered easily for now as “11/11/11″), the afternoon temperature in Oklahoma City reached a record high for the date of 83, before plunging 66 degrees to a record low of 17 at midnight that evening. Both daily temperature records remain unbroken and untied since 1911.”
Woolly mammoths needed a varied diet to support their growth, like modern elephants. An adult of six tonnes would need to eat 180 kg (397 lb) daily, and may have foraged as long as twenty hours every day.
It disappeared from its mainland range at the end of the Pleistocene 10,000 years ago, most likely through climate change and consequent shrinkage of its habitat, hunting by humans, or a combination of the two. Isolated populations survived on St. Paul Island until 6,400 years ago and Wrangel Island until 4,000 years ago.
Wrangel Island has a severe polar climate. The region is blanketed by dry and cold Arctic air masses for most of the year. Warmer and more humid air can reach the island from the south-east during summer. Dry and heated air from Siberia comes to the island periodically.
Winters are prolonged and are characterized by steady frosty weather and high northerly winds. During this period the temperatures usually stay well below freezing for months. In February and March there are frequent snow-storms with wind speeds of 140 km/h (87 mph) or above.
The short summers are cool but comparatively mild as the polar day generally keeps temperatures above 0 °C (32 °F). Some frosts and snowfalls occur, and fog is common. Warmer and drier weather is experienced in the center of the island because the interior’s topography encourages foehn winds. As of 2003, the frost-free period on the island was very short, usually not more than 20-to-25 days, and more often only two weeks. Average relative humidity is about 83%.
So like the reindeer and the musk ox the Woolly mammoths were able to survive the polar night or there was an annual migration across the ice to the mainland where temperature too would be damn cold. What an amazing animal.
Think five feet of snow in Buffalo New York, Greek islands in the Mediterranean buried under 6½ ft (2 m) of snow and 2 to 3 meters (6 to 10 feet) of snow in Norway. All from one snow event.
We know there was a sharp dividing line in the case of Buffalo where some areas got next to no snow.
Here is the Mammoth story:
…the famous Beresovka mammoth carcass was discovered in Siberia. Nearly intact, the animal was found buried in silty gravel sitting in the upright position. The mammoth had a broken foreleg, evidently caused by a fall from a nearby cliff 10,000 years ago. The remains of its stomach were intact and there were grasses and buttercups lodged between its teeth. The flesh was still edible, but reportedly not tasty.
No one has ever satisfactorily explained how the Beresovka mammoth and other animals found frozen in the subarctic could have been frozen before being consumed by predators of the time. Some have proposed a sudden change in climate, but this hardly seems a likely explanation. The scientist who uncovered the Beresovka mammoth conjectured that the animal fell into a snow-filled ravine that protected the body until it was perhaps covered by gravel during a summer flood….. http://www2.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF1/122.html
Here is what happened last year to the cattle in South Dakota that suggests what easily could have happened to the Beresovka mammoth.
….It’s so early in the season that the animals hadn’t yet grown their heavier winter coats, leaving them unprotected.
“The cattle were soaked to the bone,” said Silvia Christen, executive director of the South Dakota Stockgrowers Association. “Then the wind and really heavy snow started — it just clung to them and weighed them down.”
Comment:
Judy Goodson says:
You will see horses and buffalo face away from the wind with heads down and walk the direction the wind is going. This is to keep the warmth of movement, herd unity and generally as the wind pushes the snow in drifts it will uncover forage they don’t have to paw down through the snow. If they find shelter to buffer the wind they will use it – some times not the best places either – i.e. watering holes that will over top in a heavy rain event link
So a possible scenario for the Beresovka mammoth is a sudden blinding blizzard in the autumn and the animal walking along grabbing mouthfuls of vegetation. It falls off a cliff into mud. It is then further buried in water/mud from flash flooding.
Predators are not going to be out hunting in a blinding blizzard. They are not stupid enough to go after a carcass in the water in the mud at the bottom of a cliff when there are probably plenty of other victims of the storm around to eat possibly stuck in the mud in a more accessible area. (Ask Niel and I about the D*^%m mud. We just spent a day digging out the tractor that was stuck up to its axles in front of my hay barn. )
Real Science 
Looks as though DC is the target for the cold?
Looking at the trends for Jan and Feb, it would be more surprising to see a record warm winter for that part of the US
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/nmaps.cgi?sat=4&sst=3&type=trends&mean_gen=01&year1=1990&year2=2014&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=250&pol=rob
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/nmaps.cgi?sat=4&sst=3&type=trends&mean_gen=02&year1=1990&year2=2014&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=250&pol=rob
Even using 2012 as the end date, the trend is obviously cooling.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/nmaps.cgi?sat=4&sst=0&type=trends&mean_gen=02&year1=2000&year2=2012&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=250&pol=rob
Science!
Did anyone happen to see this little item? They sure don’t portray things as described within this document do they?
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2014/13/supplemental/page-1
on Jonova, the Griss points out that any major warming since 2001 is in the Arctic and Antarctic (maybe).. Do they even have thermometers here ?
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/nmaps.cgi?sat=4&sst=1&type=trends&mean_gen=0112&year1=2001&year2=2014&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=rob
And that the Arctic warming is only in winter, a jump from around 243K average to 255K peaks
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Andy says “…the Griss points out that any major warming since 2001 is in the Arctic and Antarctic (maybe).. Do they even have thermometers here ?”
See my comment at :
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/01/17/eric-steig-gets-27-million-pinocchios/#comment-482612
The S.O.Bs got rid of all but a couple of Canadian stations north of latitude 60N
The diamonds are the only stations they used after 2009. Most of the circles were in use in the 1975 data set.
The Liars rank 2013 as one of the “most probable warmest years”
I think sheperds in Scotland might have a problem with that.
Silence of the lambs — April 4, 2013 by Verity Jones
One commenter at Ice Age Now just said the snow in Scotland’s mountains last winter was 50 feet. This led to ~ 300 snow patches lasting through summer.
The only way the Liars get away with claiming “The warmest year Evah!” is because of the news blackout of events like this throughout the world. Mongolia lost up to half its herd in 2010. More than 25 000 animals were killed in Peru with 739 homes made uninhabitable due to snow on September 1 2013. Bolivia lost 70,000 animals a day or two before. South Dakota lost up to 100,000 cattle from massive blizzard that buried cattle in mid October 2013. (Usual H/T to Ice Age Now for keeping this documentation that is wiped by the Winston Smith’s of the internet.)
I can attest to that, it was effin brass monkeys round here for 6 [bitter wind chill] weeks but 2013 won’t be as cold – as it’s gonna get here in the next few days.
For the theory of CAGW to proven, the Arctic and Antarctic and the middle/upper Troposphere have to warm at an accelerated rate as compared to the middle latitudes. To reinforce the faux CAGW meme, these areas have to warm. Got that? They have to warm faster than where we live. If they don’t warm at an accelerated rate, then the CAGW theory is busted. So guess where the greatest fudging is going to take place. And with no thermometers in the Arctic and not willing to use satellite readings, the alarmist scientists are free to fudge to reinforce the theory. We have a proxy for temperature in the Arctic; it’s called …….ice. And the sea ice is about normal. Meaning…no accelerated warming. They can only fudge these areas for a few more years before there is going to be an obvious disconnect between sea ice and what the climate scientists at GISS and NOAA are claiming for Arctic/Antarctic temperatures.
January and February will be cold right now but hot in hindsight when the temperatures are analysed by climate experts. This will also mean the hottest year ever will start to cool over time to
Open up space for the next hottest year ever. Meanwhile on planet Earth: close to 19 yrs without warming. Funny, isnt it?
But Alaska and half of Canada have a barbecue winter.
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp2.html
The EPA is set to ban most Wood Burning Stoves that do not meet their new stringent requirements in February 2015. Additionally, coal fired power plants are being shut down to protect the air,
And riots will happen as the inner city Blacks, well primed by the race baiting Obummer and MSM, suffer from the loss of power. New York City has been well primed by its communist mayor. GEE, If I did not know better I would thing the USA is being setup for an ‘Arab Spring’ type Coup d’état.
The 1977 New York City Blackout
Yes
Yup, I was there, living in the slums in 1977 and enjoyed the arson that lit up the night sky…what a catastrophe.
We may not know if God has tails, tits, horns or feathers, but God definitely has a great sense of humor!
Nasa climate scientists: We said 2014 was the warmest year on record… but we’re only 38% sure we were right
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2915061/Nasa-climate-scientists-said-2014-warmest-year-record-38-sure-right.html#ixzz3P8aZW700
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
As the Alarmists continue to spread their Gospel, many parts of the globe have actually warmed during the last 10-15 years. Nowadays, the Alarmists must scurry and perform a plethora of adjustments just to get to a .01 or .02 warm variation in some convoluted data set. The truth be known, even during periods when the globe cooled (such as the LIA), many regions in fact saw temporary warming for a decade or so. Thankfully, the earth’s atmosphere is anything but homogenous. This year, while portions of Austrailia saw heatwaves, the lee-side of the Urals saw major snowfalls in August which destroyed their wheat crop. And Canada saw late summer snows, which destroyed their barely crop. Ice flows remained in Lake Superior while portions of Southern Europe saw a mild to hot early summer. Drought plagued the Far West of the US, while serious rainfall plagued Eastern Europe. An anomalously warm pool of water sat off the Pacific Northwest during late summer, while northeast Europe saw an early winter with snows in October. The Pope is about to give an encyclical on Global Warming while thousands of Syrian Catholics freeze to death in refugee camps.
Two winters don’t make a trend, but the US is about to experience two consecutively frigid winters. Yes, Alaska is warm; but that is what you get when the Arctic is sending all of its cold air southward towards the subtropics. If in fact we’re having climate influenced by AGW, the polar air masses in Winter would remain near the poles and people in the mid-latitudes would wax nostalgic about those harsh winters from the 1970s. That is not the case.
What people forget is the Wisconsin Ice Age glaciers did not cover the entire Northern Hemisphere. The past configuration of the ice sheets follows the ‘polar vortex’ pattern we are now seeing. A warm Alaska and California therefore mean nothing. In other words the current weather patterns are the same as were seen during glaciation aka COLD.
For Eurasia during most extreme part of full glacial conditions (17,000-15,000 14C y.a.).
Ice masses are light gray.
Here is a more poar view:
Bravo.
I always wondered why those Mammoets could freeze so rapidly in Siberia.
“… The Great Blue Norther… established a set of weather records that arguably are unique in modern weather history. On November 11, 1911 (remembered easily for now as “11/11/11″), the afternoon temperature in Oklahoma City reached a record high for the date of 83, before plunging 66 degrees to a record low of 17 at midnight that evening. Both daily temperature records remain unbroken and untied since 1911.”
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/?n=events-19111111
People froze to death simply trying to walk from point A to point B, as they were not dressed for a two season change in a matter of hours.
But they stayed frozen ever since.
The frozen people in Oklahoma City would not have stayed frozen for the next 10.000 years.
That is because Oklahoma City is in Oklahoma, and not Siberia. (see world map)
Woolly mammoths needed a varied diet to support their growth, like modern elephants. An adult of six tonnes would need to eat 180 kg (397 lb) daily, and may have foraged as long as twenty hours every day.
It disappeared from its mainland range at the end of the Pleistocene 10,000 years ago, most likely through climate change and consequent shrinkage of its habitat, hunting by humans, or a combination of the two. Isolated populations survived on St. Paul Island until 6,400 years ago and Wrangel Island until 4,000 years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolly_mammoth
Wrangel Island has a severe polar climate. The region is blanketed by dry and cold Arctic air masses for most of the year. Warmer and more humid air can reach the island from the south-east during summer. Dry and heated air from Siberia comes to the island periodically.
Winters are prolonged and are characterized by steady frosty weather and high northerly winds. During this period the temperatures usually stay well below freezing for months. In February and March there are frequent snow-storms with wind speeds of 140 km/h (87 mph) or above.
The short summers are cool but comparatively mild as the polar day generally keeps temperatures above 0 °C (32 °F). Some frosts and snowfalls occur, and fog is common. Warmer and drier weather is experienced in the center of the island because the interior’s topography encourages foehn winds. As of 2003, the frost-free period on the island was very short, usually not more than 20-to-25 days, and more often only two weeks. Average relative humidity is about 83%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrangel_Island
So like the reindeer and the musk ox the Woolly mammoths were able to survive the polar night or there was an annual migration across the ice to the mainland where temperature too would be damn cold. What an amazing animal.
Yes, the frozen mammoths were grazing on flowers and grass when they suddenly died in a horrific blizzard from h*ll.
Think five feet of snow in Buffalo New York, Greek islands in the Mediterranean buried under 6½ ft (2 m) of snow and 2 to 3 meters (6 to 10 feet) of snow in Norway. All from one snow event.
We know there was a sharp dividing line in the case of Buffalo where some areas got next to no snow.
Here is the Mammoth story:
Here is what happened last year to the cattle in South Dakota that suggests what easily could have happened to the Beresovka mammoth.
Reblogged this on Globalcooler's Weblog.