South Africa Endures Record-Breaking Polar Blast; September Snow Clips Colorado Peaks; Las Leñas, Argentina Receives 3.3 Feet In 24hrs; Cool Month For New Caledonia; + Surprise CME
South Africa Enduring Record-Breaking Polar Blast
“Snow, snow and more snow in large parts of South Africa!”, reads a recent The South African headline.
“Snow doesn’t fall every day and South Africans are certainly feeling the cold as temperatures continue to plunge across the country,” reads the article’s opening lines.
The South African Weather Service (SAWS) has issued snowfall warnings across many regions, namely for dangerous road conditions. Snow has been reported in the Northern Cape, Western Cape, Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal mountain ranges.
Sutherland is one Northern Cape locale dealing with ‘heavy, low-level snow’, so reports snowreport.co.za.
While in the Western Cape, low-lying areas such as Swellendam, Greyont, Barrydale, George, and Matroosberg Reserve are also copping anomalous spring conditions.
The SA government has advised Mzansi to “be more cautious” in these unusually treacherous conditions.
“It will be an icy cold morning as the front is moving in,” so said VoxWeather’s Annette Botha.
The cold is forecast to extend throughout the week, according to SAWS meteorologist Ishmael Moyo — a second cold front is expected to crash into the south of the country, one that could see thermometers drop to -5C (23F).
September Snow Clips Colorado Peaks
Following a September cold wave that swept through the state, a string of Colorado peaks–mostly above 10,000ft–have picked up their first measurable snow of the season.
Pikes Peak opened the week with measurable, early-September snow — unusually high accumulations for the time of year, in fact, which saw workers forced into a little early-season shoveling.
Trail Ridge road, located farther north, also copped a dusting of ice and snow.
While roads at Rainbow Curve and Milner Pass had to be temporarily closed due to inclement conditions.
Las Leñas, Argentina Receives 3.3 Feet In 24hrs
In just 24 hours, at least 1 meter (3.3 feet) of snow has pounded the Argentinian resort of Las Leñas.
I say ‘at least’ because the exact totals from the monstrous 24-hour storm cycle have yet to be confirmed because it’s been too treacherous–the snow has been too deep–for staff to step outside and measure it.
What is known, however–as reported by snowbrains.com–is that the avalanche danger in Las Leñas is “extreme, with the probability of a slide considered to be certain”. For safety, a number of Las Leñas’ slopes were closed Monday and Tuesday.
The plan moving forward is for ski patrol crews to mitigate the avalanche risk as the snow stabilizes.
This impressive dumping comes barely two weeks after Las Leñas was hit by a “mega storm” which delivered 12 feet of snow in 4 days to the mountain’s mid station. “This will certainly a storm to remember,” stated Snow Brains at the time.
Cool Month For New Caledonia
August 2023 in New Caledonia finished with an average temperature of 19.6C (67.3F), which is a substantial 0.9C below the multidecadal norm.
August continued the South Pacific island chain’s cool 2023 which, thus far, has delivered record low temperatures in July and a string of colder-than-average months, including an anomalous March of –0.3C.
Surprise CME
An unexpected coronal mass ejection (CME) walloped Earth’s magnetic field on Sept 12 (12:37 UT), sparking a G2-class geomagnetic storm:
Bright auroras danced around the Arctic Circle.
Skies over Iceland–for example–were illuminated by dramatics swirls of red and green.
“It was a wonderful night with more Northern Lights than I expected,” said photographer Jónína Óskarsdóttir, who needed only a 5-second exposure to fill her camera’s frame with uninterrupted color:
As the night progressed, and as the storm was subsiding, Dan Bush in Albany, Missouri, captured the faint red afterglow.
“The display was brief, but detectable by my camera,” said Bush.
“Our latitude here is +40.2N.”
But where did the CME come from?
Dr Tony Phillips of spaceweather.com postulates that it likely originated one of the many CMEs to lescape the sun on Sept 8:
Activity on the Sun has stepped up in recent days. The solar disk is currently sending so many CMEs flying in so many directions that it can be hard for analysts to disentangle the overlapping storm clouds.
It is probable, contends Dr Phillips, that in the chaotic activity of Sept 8, an Earth-directed CME was missed.
AWESOME Cap!!!
Dallas
https://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/cold-front-sweeps-across-sa-bringing-snow-and-chilly-temperatures/
– direct from the article: “While it might seem unusual to experience such cold weather during spring, SAWS forecaster Wayne Venter assured the public that cold fronts like this are typical for this time of the year.
“This is typical for this time of the year to still receive cold fronts moving into the central interior of South Africa. At the moment, we do have quite a strong cold front, and we have a strong high-pressure system behind that cold front, pushing cold air across South Africa. This is still normal for this time of the year; we still expect some frontal activity during the spring season.”
Why do you continually try to spin normal cold weather into “””RECORD-BREAKING COLD””” ?? Even a child could easily fact-check your nonsense headlines, it’s not even funny.
Oh, and one more thing. The South American snow is due to extremely heavy moisture hitting the Andes, on account of the unprecedented ocean heat (we all know that warmer oceans hold more moisture). The Andes are fortunately high enough to receive all of this moisture as snow rather than rain – had this same setup occurred in the Australian Alps for instance, it would’ve been a total washout.
“Record cold” was a term used by The South African, and many other SA publications.
Why do you continually attempt to downplay any cold, what is your agenda?
Also, by your ‘Andes boiling oceans snow’ logic, how do you explain NH winter snow extent increasing? https://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_seasonal.php?ui_set=nhland&ui_season=1
Your linked article doesn’t state what the records actually are, nor the forecast temps. How could you possibly declare record cold when you don’t even know what the forecast temps are? And I don’t ‘downplay’ the cold – it’s just that there is none at this stage. For instance, I fully admit that November 2022 was unusually cold in AUS, because we had the records to prove it – I personally observed the greatest summer snow extent since 1964 in the AUS Alps. That was genuinely cold. Although November 1992 was slightly colder in averages (linked with Pinatubo eruption), November 2022 was more wintry and reached lower temperatures with snow to lower levels (snow to 800m on two separate occasions that month).
But what on Earth is there to prove with these South African temperatures? Where are the records? What are the forecast temps? Snow by itself doesn’t mean anything, especially when discussing ultra high altitude environments.
I have no agenda, but I DO have a preference for colder winters and a hope deep down that it WILL get colder like you people promise, and that snow in lowland AUS will once again be a normality. And so I find it very disheartening when the claimed ‘record cold’ turns out to be an exaggeration or totally fabricated. I am not interested in politics in the least bit – a weather enthusiast through and through.
You contended that the latest snowstorm to hit the Andes was caused by “unprecedented ocean heat”.
Are warming oceans also responsible for the increase in Northern Hemisphere winter snow extent since 1967 (chart linked previously)?
Since the NH Snow Extent chart does not specify altitude, I can only conclude that mountain ranges are also being counted in this measurement. Mountains in the NH are very high, and any moisture will fall as snow no matter how warm the airmass due to sheer altitude. We know for a fact it’s getting wetter (and snowier at higher altitudes), as that is what occurs in a warming world; increased evaporation leads to excess cloud cover and moisture, which in turn is a negative feedback for temps. So don’t get me wrong – I think the whole ‘runaway warming’ hypothesis is total BS as it doesn’t consider negative feedback of increased evaporation and cloud production. I personally cannot wait until this feedback properly kicks in and AMOC shuts down. But as it stands, we are still in the ‘pre-feedback’ stage of extreme warmth.
Whoops my bad, I read the NH snow chart on the side of your blog and saw ‘excluding mountains’. So NH snow is not due to warming oceans. I’ve noticed that in America for instance, winters have hardly changed since the early 20th century and winter cold records are still being set – I wish that was the case in AUS :^ (
The art of listening is asking questions.
You claim not to have an agenda, but if that’s true why do you keep trying to claim global warming is a major problem?
Clearly the MSM does have an agenda and attaches words such as unprecedented, historic, record breaking to every warm spell, flood etc. and claims they’re evidence that we’re in the midst of a climate crisis. This has even happen with the tragic flooding in the Libyan city of Derna. Given the scale of the tragedy, maybe 10,000 deaths, this has received very little coverage in the media. The cause was 2 poorly maintained dams failing, that may well of been built on the cheap and in the wrong place to meet the aspirations of a mad dictator, Gadaffi. The constant use of human misery by the MSM to promote a political agenda based on junk science is sick beyond words and any reasonable person should condemn it is the strongest possible terms.
It’s a major problem for me because I hate mild winters and boring, stable weather. I want the fun, exciting, cold and stormy weather that we used to get.
The Sun has warmed up the Oceans but NOAA has forecast that the Grand Solar Minimum that the Sun is in will start biting in 2025 with NOAA forecasting that the Sunspot Number will start dropping and keep dropping until it reaches zero and it will stay at zero until at least 2040 when their forecast ends. Lower Sunspot Numbers are associated with fewer hot regions and less solar output so the Earth will be experiencing colder weather. The last Grand Solar Minimum in the 1600’s caused the agricultural output to drop substantially resulting in mass famine.
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/predicted-sunspot-number-and-radio-flux
The Oceans have a huge lag time.
I ran an article about the deep Pacific getting colder they thought was caused the Maunder Minimum.
The AGW fanatics like to do an old trick I have seen used by government for years, rule out one thing at a time in isolation to everything else. It does not work that way.
There is so much involved, the volcanoes are up, oceans acting up, solar cycles down, atmosphere contracts when sun is down, apparently their is a focus on methane now too, they do not know why its racing up faster than ever but it is not us.
I had predicted an early solar maximum after previously realizing I had made a mistake in the ‘patterns’. Did that early in 2022 and now everyone seems to be talking about this.
If this turns out to be the case and it very much looks like it is, the AGW fanatics are literally out of time already.
They have until the end of the year for it to pick up to stand any chance of the focus not shifting to the effects of another low cycle and NOAA’s prediction on no solar maximum for cycle 26.
I’m not sure if anyone has come close to working out the time lag due to ocean heat. There’s been one or two scientific papers claiming it could by 100-150 years based on a comparison of past solar activity and global temperature anomalies. I would class them as interesting but far from convincing. For example global cooling from roughly 1950-1975 could be due to the Dalton or Centennial solar minimums. Alternatively it could be due to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation being in it’s negative phase. I’m not sure what is measured in order to determine the value of the PDO, but it could be the difference in temperatures or temperature anomalies between the East and West Pacific. This could mean the overall temperature of the pacific doesn’t change much, if at all, but regional changes could affect large scale weather patterns. Since clouds reflect incoming solar radiation and the tropics receive more radiation than temperate regions a change in average cloud amounts in the 2 regions will cause warming or cooling depending on which area sees an increase in cloud cover.
So it is supposed to snow more?
Odd as on Twitter I have been asking for years for proof this was predicted and as yet nothing has been produced.
Now you are switching to oceans when we have had a three year La Nina, I predicted and your side was blaming for the record colds, you can’t, it does not work that way.
Currently your side are now, or WAS, arguing that it was going to be mild winters because of El Nino and I asked what they thought all this now warm moist air will do when it hits the lengthening winters. Crickets.
Also ‘ocean heat’ has nothing to do with the Sun, currently, or CO2.
I hate to break it to you but oceans are not flat, neither is the Earth and works in three dimensions. It’s called ‘circulation’ for a reason.
Feynman said that when your prediction is wrong, your hypothesis is wrong and there have been oh so many failed predictions.
“Feynman said that when your prediction is wrong, your hypothesis is wrong and there have been oh so many failed predictions.”
Yet the AGW fanatics move onward undeterred, simply ignoring or “explaining away” the failed predictions and publishing brand new ones.
Constantly moving the goalposts, as it were, while finding the same villains (industry, farms, autos, cows) to blame for a non-existent crisis.
Did you copy this from Tony Heller the Graph Manipulator Guy?
;^ D
Watch the video below to see how the likes of Tony Heller & co. use denialist manipulation tactics to trick his viewers into believing that graphs were “manipulated by BoM/NOAA” etc, when in fact that hebrew liar Heller can’t even READ graphs in the first place!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWKQSawxJDs
I challenge Heller the Liar to respond to the above video. I would love to see him try dig his way out of that one! He’s a lying rat like the rest of his kind.
It didn’t take you long to resort to ad hominen attacks when you can’t explain the evidence or it contradicts your beliefs. I’ve yet to try and have an online discussion with a climate alarmist who doesn’t do this sooner or later, or replies to lengthy comments full of supporting evidence with simplistic comments such as “absolute drivel” or “this is a pack of lies”. It beyond pathetic, but totally predictable and perhaps understandable as these people either choose to ignore evidence or fail to understand what it means.
If graphs of global temperature produced in 1980 show rapid cooling from roughly 1950-1975 and graphs produced in the last 10-20 years show little or no cooling then the data has been manipulated, since no new data from 1950-1975 has become available. If you can explain why this manipulation was scientifically justified please do so.
You have a strange infatuation with Tony Hellier, your everyday whipping post.
If you’d watched the video, Dr Keith Strong already explained that. The trend is the same – the scale, range, end dates and especially baseline of the graphs are all different. Heller takes advantage of that to claim that NASA etc. ‘cooked the books’ when actually it was nothing more than a difference in end dates (Heller’s older graphs stop in 2000 or so BEFORE the main warming) and the scale (ranges from -0.6 to +0.6 would produce a different curve than say -1.0 to +2.0 and these are actual examples used from Heller’s graphs). Then there’s the baselines: 1951-1980 and 1961-1990, are substantially colder than the modern 1991-2020 baseline; so of course if you plot the trend on a 1991-2020 baseline, it will “cool the past” so to speak as the past was compared to a much earlier baseline in those old NCAR graphs.
Adaminaby Angler
It is a pity that you’ve spent so much effort posting this nasty post above. I am a fellow Aussie, and have observed in my 87 years of living around the wold that the type of post you uttered is typically from second rate types.
An example is this nonsensical utterance of yours: ” (we all know that warmer oceans hold more moisture).”
Then you also would have noticed the rapidly warming winters in Australia over the last 87 years, and the disappearance of low-level snows. And the decline of ‘westerly blow’ weather that used to be very common at this time of year.
Of course Angler,
In my short life span now approaching my 137th birthday,
I did absolutely notice the rapid warming on the last 83 years in Western Australia.
Thank God for the Coral Calcium!!! It certainly aids the longevity
of a person.
And many more!!!
Gina!!! Your friend!!!
Sea temp West of Las Lenas is 56F, about average. PM2.5 from volcanos still heavy SH stacked up SW Coast of SA westerly flow hitting the wall of the Andes. 61 volcanos erupting on the report nine days ago.
https://www.windy.com/-Sea-temperature-sst?sst,-42.618,-73.916,4,m:cGJad70
https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/cb/ssta/ssta.daily.current.png
https://www.youtube.com/@DailyEventsWorldwide/videos