Heavy Snow Revives New Zealand’s Ruapehu Resort; Banff, Alberta Reports First Snowfall Of The Season; + Low Sunspot Count
Heavy Snow Revives New Zealand’s Ruapehu Resort
New Zealand’s Ruapehu ski field has been blasted with healthy dumpings of snow. Record snow, in fact, has crowned the North Island mountain, according to 1news.co.nz: Ruapehu is boasting the world’s deepest snow base, at 2.55cm (8.4ft).
This is a stark turnaround from events last year when the resort was closed due to a severe bout of ‘global boiling’ — a closure which was effectively on course to liquidate the business until the NZ government stepped in with a $5 million “lifeline”.
Looking forward, Ruapehu Chief Operating Officer Travis Donaghue said the best days of the season are yet to come.
“We’ll keep rolling that title out [World’s Deepest Snow Base] for a while yet, we have a long season to come. It runs right through to Labour weekend so we’re not yet halfway,” said Donaghue.
“We tend to have great conditions later in the year when we don’t see as many frosts so this base will set us up perfectly.”
Skiers are also returning to the slopes.
Hotel owner Ben Tuck said he was booked up for the season: “Compared to last year, we were only a quarter full, and to now have every weekend full is just outstanding, very grateful,” he said of the swing between extremes.
TCB ski-shop owner Ben Wiggins said this past month has been a huge relief for Ohakune businesses: After four years of doing it tough with tourist numbers and weather, this was special,” said Wiggins. “Not only do we have the business relief, but we also have the relief of coming up and shredding on all this snow. We’re all up here enjoying it and the town is enjoying it as well.”
After the recent wobbles of Covid and the liquidation process, all mountain lovers are stoked to have things back in balance, concludes the reports1news.co.nz article.
Banff, Alberta Reports First Snowfall Of The Season
The memory of North America’s truly historic winter of 2022/23 is still fresh, yet already a myriad of mountains have received their first snows of the new season; the most recent addition being Sunshine Village Ski Area, in Banff, Alberta.
The Village uploaded the season’s first flakes to Instagram:
Banff is home to three world-class resorts: Sunshine Village, Lake Louise, and Mount Norquay, which together are known as the “Big Three.” The former, Sunshine Village, is known for attracting snowboarders from around the world due to the plentiful volumes of natural snow that the area receives which typically builds from early-November to late-May.
Does this early snow mean a cold and snowy winter is on the cards?
The Farmer’s Almanac seems to think so, with its calls of well-below average temperatures and significant snowfalls:
The Almanac predicts a story for south of the border, too, for the United States:
For more:
Low Sunspot Count
Over the weekend, an M1-class solar flare near the Sun’s eastern limb hurled a coronal mass ejection (CME) toward Mars.
NASA modeling suggests the Red Planet will be hit on Friday, September 1:
The impact could spark ultraviolet auroras and erode a small amount of the Martian atmosphere, writes Dr Tony Phillips of spaceweather.com.
Looking elsewhere over the Earth-facing solar disk, other than sunspot AR3415, which posses a ‘beta-delta’ magnetic field that harbors energy for additional M-class solar flares, there really isn’t much to speak of.
Solar Cycle 25 has, at times, impressed when compared to its predecessor, the historically weak SC24. But for an approaching solar maximum, which most solar physicists have determined will arrive early, in 2024, this isn’t exactly ‘all cylinders firing’:
Solar Cycle 26 is where I’ve long contended the ‘chill of solar minimum’ will begin. An uneventful fizzling out of SC25 will only add support to this.
Today’s other article:
It’s not just summer snow. It is summer snow at the very peak of SC25. Alarming! Freeze altitude spears to be dropping.
I just an interested reader…and have been for 12-13 years, but these cold anomalies such as the past year’s increased snowfalls, record Anarctic and other cold events, the meridional jet stream and the activity with the solar/terrestrial magnetic fields happening at the peak of a solar cycle seem quite significant.
(would be nice to be able to correct typos)
No one is sure if we’re at the peak of SC25. Some have only speculated that it has come early.
A really cold winter would be pretty awesome. What percent of the Farmer’s Almanac forecasts come true?
Conveniently you forget to mention that this New Zealand ‘snow system’ is brought about by an atmospheric river i.e., a result of warmer oceans. Snow levels were in excess of 1600m above sea level – extremely high for NZ which more typically sees snow levels around 400m this time of year.
The 11-year cycle has zero effect on climate. Sorry. The only real effect is when the sun goes quiet for good, such as in the Dalton and Maunder minima. The upcoming Eddy Minimum will definitely have a strong effect on climate, namely via volcanism and the negative feedback from increased cloud albedo due to rapidly warming oceans.
Increasing cloud cover warming oceans is a contradiction. Try again 🙂
How? It’s common knowledge by now that warmer oceans increase moisture content and therefore cloud cover. That, coupled with the cosmic ray influx we’re about to receive, will lead to extraordinary cloud albedo.
Son our ‘summer’ here in KY has been very cool, wet and not like our normal of DRY and 90°F +!
AND our whole YEAR is below average for Temps and OVER for Precipitation…since July 29 to today we have had OVER 6.5 INCHES of rain and this is our DRY time in KY!
We are at +- 45 inches so far and still have 4 Months to go!!!
I am beginning to wonder the same as Adaminaby Angler. At a cursory review of max temp, min temp and global solar exposure on an annual basis I cannot see any recent 11 year trend for Bundaberg Australia.
In fact the global solar exposure & annual mean max temp have both been progressively falling for 3 years since their peaks in the year of least sunspots 2019-2020. Maybe la nina effects?
We have had rooftop solar hotwater since about 2011 – its always has been a dud every winter and only comes good (ie solar heating only, needing no electric boost) about mid August every year. But there are major climate changes eg several years of drought and no wet season or there used to be wild wet and stormy Septembers but not anymore. I expect both these things will swing by again. I do not know where these observations fit with a solar cycle if at all.
We certainly have an 11 year cycle demonstrated in the USA.
Jan 2010 Florida freezes so cold it kills One Million fish in the Everglades.
11 years later, Feb 2021 Texas gets so cold 702 Texans freeze to death in their beds since Texas houses were not built to stay warm in extended below zero F temps.
Both these events were tied to periods of zero sunspots of 30+ days occurring in the year before the events. Jan 2010 had two of them, 2021 had three of them.
I know as I used that to predict the 2021 winter of unimaginable cold on 20 Sept 2020 as posted in http://www.beforeitsnews.com under the title of “Unimaginable Cold Coming This Winter”.
Next Major Freeze: 2032
Dallas