UK’s Year Without A Spring; “Pneumonia Front” To Sweep Midwest; Due To Record Snow, Yosemite Park Roads Closed Until At least July; + Solar Filaments

UK’s Year Without A Spring

2023 has been cold and wet in the UK, with spring still refusing to sprung midway through May.

Even mainstream meteorologists are struggling to explain why winter’s gloomy conditions are still dragging on, themselves shocked by the “all the sharp frosts we’ve had this spring.”

BBC meteorologist, Tomasz Schafernaker said people are stopping him in the street, “asking when spring will finally arrive. And what have we done to deserve such cold, gloomy weather dragging on so long?”

According to Schafernaker, the answer lies in the history books, specifically the weather of the 1970s and 1980s.

“Every so often we will get a reversion to past weather habits, and that’s what we’re experiencing this year … However, thanks largely to climate change, temperatures have been creeping up — snow has become less frequent and spring has occasionally brought very warm weather, too. And we have grown used to it.”

First off, snow hasn’t become less frequent — the data show that clear as a bell:

Secondly, global temperature trends can change, Mother Nature graciously permit this — global warming is not a fixed scenario. To that point, and contrary to establishment proclamations, Earth has actually cooled since 2016 — both the satellite and land-based data reveal this.

“Last December saw below average temperatures of 1.3C for the UK as a whole,” writes Schafernaker. “It plunged as low as -17C (1.4F) in parts of Scotland.”

The cold continued through January, with Jan 23–for example–delivering Heathrow Airport its lowest temperature since 1987 (solar minimum of cycle 21). Schafernaker missed much of January’s freeze, opting for 3-weeks in Bali instead (no comment), but on his return to London later in the month, Schafernaker writes of his amazement at finding “everything frozen solid.”

February extended the anomalous chill, and March only added insult to injury: “Not only did we have a lot of snow –the Peak District was cut off– but the rain was relentless. We longed for April to turn the tide, but it was actually very mundane,” with the month overall, as with the four preceding it, finishing below the multidecadal average.

“This May has barely scraped 20C (68F),” continues Schafernaker, “meaning we’ve endured nearly half a year without any sustained period of warmth” — a reality the AGW Party doesn’t have an answer to.

Two-day summer heatwaves are easily explained, of course: “global warming is making mid to high 30s (C) and low rainfall commonplace” — a boilerplate answer every double-thinking mooncalf seems to be content with; however, periods of record-breaking cold, on the other hand, are proving a major headache for the establishment–not least because they’re increasing.

Schafernaker calls the situation “complicated” — and effectively leaves it there…

“Pneumonia Front” To Sweep Midwest

A stark drop in temperature is forecast Tuesday across the likes of Chicago and Milwaukee as a “pneumonia front” careens down Lake Michigan, driving that water-chilled air into swathes of eastern Illinois and Wisonsin.

According toNWS meteorologists are expecting gusty NE winds to compound the already crashing temperatures:

A second, larger mass of frigid air is due to engulf much of the Eastern U.S. later in the week.

Temperature anomalies will be in the range of 4-12C below seasonal norms.

Astonishingly, a little Mid-May snow could also be in the offing, though only for the far northeast.

Due To Record Snow, Yosemite Park Roads Closed Until At least July

Snow continues to fall across the West’s higher elevations, following what was an all-time record-breaking season.

Tioga Road and Glacier Point Road in Yosemite National Park will remain closed for the foreseeable due to the snow.

Each spring, crews work to clear 45.5 miles of road between Crane Flat and Tioga Pass. As of a weekend update (May 13), plows have cleared just 11 miles so far and are barely approaching White Wolf, where the rooftops are only just starting to reemerge:

Despite plowing seven days a week, the road crew is making slow progress.

Roads remain buried under at least ten feet of snow, much of it heavily compacted, and crews will have to carefully navigate several hazardous avalanche zones.

There is not yet an estimated opening date for Tioga Road.

While authorities are hopeful Glacier Point Road will reopen sometime in July.

Delayed mountain openings is a story playing out across California this year:

Because the snow over Sonora Pass is so deep, @Caltrans9 maintenance crews are using a snow cat to push the snow from above to the road below where the snow blowers can clear it from the highway. This method reduces the snow depth, allowing the snow blowers to push through. pic.twitter.com/wfVNR65TLx

— Caltrans District 9 (@Caltrans9) May 11, 2023

And across Utah, too.

Here, snow crews have already exceeded the state’s $24 million snow removal budget by some 70%, according to Utah Department of Transportation spokesperson John Gleason.

Gleason said crews conducted snow removal services along 6+ million miles of state highways during the past season. This isn’t much of a surprise given the 900+ inches of record-smashing snow that settled on Alta between Oct 1, 2022, to May 1, 2023.

Utah lawmakers are now planning to increase the state’s snow removal budget by $20 million.

–Nothing says “catastrophic global warming” like a near-doubling of a state’s snow clearing budget.

Solar Filaments

Where flaring is concerned, unstable magnetic filaments pose a greater threat than sunspots, and they currently outnumber sunspot regions by roughly 3-1.

The below photo, taken May 15, shows at least 20 dark filaments scattered about the solar disk.

This means there are about three times more filaments than sunspot groups, with half-a-dozen directly facing Earth.

As explained by Dr Tony Philips of spaceweather.com, “solar filaments are twisted tubes of magnetism filled with dense plasma.”

These areas are famously unstable, continues Dr Philips, and “their eruptions can hurl massive CMEs into space. Sometimes the debris falls back to the surface of the sun, triggering a Hyder Flare — two explosions for the price of one.”

The severe geomagnetic storm of April 23-24 was caused by a filament eruption, not a sunspot — shown below:

Stay tuned for updates…