Boston: Colder With More Snow (And, Global Warming, Of Course)

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This will be the coldest air of the season-to-date for New England on top of the incredible amounts of snow on the ground.

Boston has received 39.3 inches of snow so far this month.
Boston, via Twitter. 
Some of the computer models are showing another major snow storm for New England in the Friday-Saturday time frame.
If that occurs, the flood threat will go from potential to serious. I'll have more on this subject tomorrow.

And, in something even more predictable than the weather, these storms are being blamed on: Global Warming. This blog has talked -- numerous times about how the 2010's are very similar climatologically to the 1970's. That comparison was made most recently with regard to the extreme Buffalo snows in November.

So, while the current Boston snows are being blamed on global warming, let's take a look at this ranking of the worst Boston snow storms:
  1. Feb. 17-18, 2003, 27.6 inches
  2. Feb. 6-7, 1978, 27.1 inches (The Blizzard of '78)
  3. Feb. 24-27, 1969, 26.3 inches
  4. Mar. 31-Apr. 1, 1997, 25.4 inches
  5. Feb. 8-9, 2013, 24.9 inches 
  6. Jan. 26-27, 2015, 24.6 inches (The Blizzard of 2015)
  7. Jan. 22-23, 2005, 22.5 inches
  8. Jan. 20-21, 1978 21.4 inches  (this occurred two weeks before The Blizzard of '78)
Not only did two of the biggest blizzards occur in 1978, #2 and #8 occurred within two weeks of each other. The point is that there is nothing unique about clustered major snows in Boston. It is a repeat of the 1970's pattern. And, if storms that produce more snow than The Blizzard of 2015 occurred in 1978 and 1969, you don't need global warming to produce the most recent snow in Boston. 

Global warming: Is there anything it can't do? 

Comments

  1. BrianFebruary 10, 2015 at 10:46 AM

    Mike you do realize that global warming caused global warming. :)

    ReplyDelete

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