record December snow in Sierras

[agesilaus]

Broke the 1979 record by 35 inches, almost 120%z:

Record snowfall

If it keeps up it may be a late Tioga Pass opening

Edited January 3, 2022 by agesilaus

[Barbaraok]

As long as there isn't warming winds that all melt all of that before it compacts and freezes hard.  That's what gives slow release come spring that refill reservoirs without flooding out valleys.    Always something to wish for - early spring warm winds are the bane of everyone who lives in a narrow valley in either the Sierras or the Cascades.   

[Kirk W]

DFW saw multiple records regarding warmth for month of December, 

[Barbaraok]

Climate change is changing the weather EVERYWHERE.  

[JimK]

It is fashionable to blame climate change for every extreme in the weather.  I wonder if even the experts can guess as to the importance of the change versus the extremes that have always occurred.

Certainly there have been extremes for as long as I can remember and I am older than dirt.  I remember many decades ago when the West was experiencing a long wet spell.  It got so bad that the Great Salt Lake was eating roads and the railroad line and was threatening to flood inhabited areas.  In the 60s and 70s there were some really cold spells.  I remember climatologists talking about the possibility of at least a mini ice age.

It seems clear that some climate change is occurring and might be a major threat but that certainly does not explain major shifts in weather and short term shifts in climate that have always occurred.

[Kirk W]

22 minutes ago, JimK said:

It seems clear that some climate change is occurring and might be a major threat but that certainly does not explain major shifts in weather and short term shifts in climate that have always occurred.

As one who has lived long enough to have seen clear evidence of climate change, only those in complete denial can pretend it isn't happening. The only debate is what is causing it and what, if anything can or should be done about it. 

[RangeMaggotBob]

Our family had some property on the Walker River when the first El Nino hit back in the 90s. All the snow melted at one time and totally flooded everything in the vicinity of the eastern Sierras. Reno was just about under water. Hwy. 395 was closed through Walker Canyon for 2 years. Our beautiful piece of property was wiped out; the river is now a ditch that looks like the LA river. As soon as the flooding started, some guy hired a helicopter to video tape the whole thing. It's pretty awesome. The only thing is, it's on VHS. Definitely hope for no El Nino.

a 

[Vladimir]

Here is a great hobby for full-time RV'ers!!

Buy one of these, and start taking tree cores as you travel across the US.  

https://www.forestry-suppliers.com/product_pages/products.php?mi=13981&itemnum=63331&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI-se6r8uY9QIVhD2tBh1pgQBMEAAYASAAEgL_5_D_BwE

You can see the effects of climate change with your FIRST core.  Pretty quickly you should be able to build a climate history for various areas as you travel.

Doing a search on increment borers will get you video's on how to use them and take care of them and basic interpretation of tree rings.

A eight inch borer will allow you to core a 16 inch diameter tree.  Those will generally be under 150 years.   If you want to track climate change over a greater period of time.  Get a larger borer. 

The eight inch is easier to use and they store in a very small space.  You do want to pick "free-to-grow" NATURAL trees, (not irrigated) to build your climate history.

The University of Arizona has a climate history for much of the western US if you want to calibrate your cores.

https://repository.arizona.edu/handle/10150/311587

https://news.arizona.edu/story/widespread-droughts-affect-southern-california-water-sources-six-times-century

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/american-west-may-be-entering-megadrought-worse-any-historical-record-180974688/

Oh, climate change in the American west is dramatic....as this book documents the last 10,000 years primarily in California.

https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520286009/the-west-without-water

 

\

 

 

 

Edited January 4, 2022 by Vladimir

[hemsteadc]

6 hours ago, JimK said:

Certainly there have been extremes for as long as I can remember and I am older than dirt. 

The only extreme I concern myself with is the Co2 concentration which has not risen to levels this high, so fast, in several hundred thousand years.  Everything else trends toward guesswork and political noise.

Edited January 4, 2022 by hemsteadc

[sandsys]

7 hours ago, JimK said:

It seems clear that some climate change is occurring and might be a major threat but that certainly does not explain major shifts in weather and short term shifts in climate that have always occurred.

I believe in both. I remember an ice storm that hit central Illinois in the 1950s that kept us all housebound without electricity until it thawed. I also attended an elementary school that had new bricks on the top floor as a result of a hurricane. But nothing that held on as long as the current drought.

Linda

[Kirk W]

4 hours ago, Vladimir said:

Buy one of these, and start taking tree cores as you travel across the US.

If all or us, or even a large number of people took up that hobby, would it not begin to damage the tees that we easiest to get access to? How many cores can to take out of a tree before it is damaged?

[mptjelgin]

1 hour ago, Kirk W said:

If all or us, or even a large number of people took up that hobby, would it not begin to damage the tees that we easiest to get access to? How many cores can to take out of a tree before it is damaged?

Many (most) parks and public lands severely frown on folks going around coring trees for their own personal fun. We volunteered at Goose Island State Park three different times, and the park had to specifically forbid folks from trying to core the "Big Tree" to determine its age. 

[Vladimir]

55 minutes ago, mptjelgin said:

Many (most) parks and public lands severely frown on folks going around coring trees for their own personal fun. We volunteered at Goose Island State Park three different times, and the park had to specifically forbid folks from trying to core the "Big Tree" to determine its age. 

I have cored thousands of trees, particularly early in my career.  It is where my interest in climate change started.   The record is there, expressed in tree rings.

BUT, I don't recommend coring trees in National Parks or State Parks.  Those and historical trees should be left alone just for common sense.

We literally, have an "epidemic of trees" in this country.  It is the reason we have all those forest fires year after year. There are billions and billions of trees on public and private land that can safely be cored.  It doesn't hurt the tree.  

BUT, you also don't want hundreds of cores of one tree.  It is just common sense.  A trait that appears to be lacking lately in our society.

 

 

[bruce t]

Climate has changed for millions of years. The ability for us now to film it and measure it has changed. Sure it's changing. It always has and always will. Humans contribution is what the debate is all about. But don't let us rich folks dictate what poor countries can't have even though we have it. It never ceases to amaze me how rich folk preach to those who aspire to be just like them. How we have to change while China continues to give the rest of the world the middle finger. Rather than rant on social media go and protest outside the Chinese embassy. Change China and we will ALL benefit.

Keep it all in perspective.

 

 

[JimK]

23 hours ago, Kirk W said:

As one who has lived long enough to have seen clear evidence of climate change, only those in complete denial can pretend it isn't happening. The only debate is what is causing it and what, if anything can or should be done about it. 

Perhaps looking at the facts would help.  Take a look at the Min Max snowfall amounts for US cities.  You will quickly see that there has always been a lot of variability.  Every time there is an extreme event it is natural to look for an explanation such as climate change.  Certainly the popular press has latched onto this.  Again the facts show a lot of variability extending back in time since careful measurements were made.  Climatologists are struggling with the "attribution" issue.  It is beyond difficult to determine how much effect in the variability is potentially due to climate change and man's impact.

Again, look at the facts instead of parroting popular opinion.

U.S. Snowfall 1900-2019: A Decade-by-Decade Look | Weather Underground (wunderground.com)

[rickeieio]

21 hours ago, RangeMaggotBob said:

Our family had some property on the Walker River when the first El Nino hit back in the 90s.

Ahh, kids now days........  El Nino and La Nina have been occurring a bit longer than that, but you can't core the oceans to find direct evidence.

I'm a retired farmer.  I've paid attention to, and have been affected by, the weather more than some.  Climate change is a constant.  New records will come and go.  It's what nature does.  Big precipitation events and flooding are just part of the cycles.  The house I grew up in had over 1' of water on the second floor in 1937.  I have pictures of a boat docked on the porch roof.

[GlennWest]

I don't believe we are killing each other with burning fossil fuels. Climate change as stated has been around as long as records. As for my lifetime we have burned fossil fuels. This is all the record I can be sure of. I know air quality is bad in Houston due to the refineries. But those same refineries have made me lots of money. Has run this country also. Getting away from fossil fuels is a two edged sword for me. Not much need for welders without it. My next vehicle will be a hybrid though.   

Edited January 5, 2022 by GlennWest

[TXiceman]

58 minutes ago, GlennWest said:

I don't believe we are killing each other with burning fossil fuels. Climate change as stated has been around as long as records. As for my lifetime we have burned fossil fuels. This is all the record I can be sure of. I know air quality is bad in Houston due to the refineries. But those same refineries have made me lots of money. Has run this country also. Getting away from fossil fuels is a two edged sword for me. Not much need for welders without it. My next vehicle will be a hybrid though.   

Glenn, you can only bury your head in the sand for so long.  Yes, the Earth has undergone heating and cooling cycles for ages, and we do appear to be in a warming cycle.  Being an engineer and dealing with the energy industry for my career, I have seen many changes, and some are for the worse.  Man is definitely accelerating and contributing to this climate crisis which can be helped by man.  The nay-sayers will be the doom of mankind.

The use of fossil fuels does need to be cut back and replaced with renewable energy sources.  This is not something to be done overnight and some fossil fuel applications will be here for a long time to come.  For the nay-sayers, they will sit back and watch the planet be turned into a wasteland.  It won't happen during our lifetime, but future generations will have a mess to deal with.

Ken

[GlennWest]

My opinion is just that. Not my intention to ruffle feathers. But fact is, I would made a lot less money in my life if no refineries. Maintenance on them drove our wages up. I can't shoot the hand that feeds me. 

[Kirk W]

3 hours ago, JimK said:

Again, look at the facts instead of parroting popular opinion

I suggest that you need to do some of that, but you also need to look at all of them and not just selected sources. As I stated there is clear evidence that climate is changing. Nowhere did I state that it has never happened before.  But there are things which clearly have not happened before and first among those facts are the human population of the world and their consumption of natural resources. I make no argument as to what should or shouldn't be done, nor did I state any conclusions but surely you do realize those 2 things are true?

3 hours ago, rickeieio said:

I'm a retired farmer.  I've paid attention to, and have been affected by, the weather more than some.  I've paid attention to, and have been affected by, the weather more than some.  Climate change is a constant.  New records will come and go.  It's what nature does.

I didn't retire from the farm but did grow up on one and do have several friends and relatives who have retired from farming and a few who still farm, so I too watch the weather. Having grown up a farmer, I even observe farming in places I only visit because of my interest in all types of farming. There is no question that there are areas that we have been using to produce large amounts of food which are no longer viable due to water shortages. While it is quite possibly true that all of these things have happened before (I'm old but not old enough to have observed prehistoric conditions) it is also true that never before have these things happened with a world population of what it is today. Many, if not most of our environmental issues are mostly due to the tremendous increase in the human population. 

30 minutes ago, GlennWest said:

I can't shoot the hand that feeds me. 

That is the problem with pretty much any environmental action. So do we just continue to use up everything that makes us money, without any concern for the future that we are leaving for our children and grandchildren? There are no easy answers and this is made more complicated by the fact that we seem to have lost the ability to listen to anyone who thinks differently. I do not have the answers but I do try to listen to the best qualified sources, choosing them based on what knowledge I have. I don't know how real the problems for the future are, but I do know that we live in a generation that seems to demand more of everything with little regard for anyone else. I hope that our grandchildren don't find themselves in 50 or so years, looking back wondering why their parents and grandparents didn't seem to care if they would be able to survive with a lifestyle approaching ours.

Perhaps the best answer would be to curtail the medical science community and allow survival of the fittest to resolve the environmental issues? If world population returned to what it was a few hundred years ago, most environmental problems would recede or at least decline sharply. 

Edited January 5, 2022 by Kirk W
repair a typo

[RangeMaggotBob]

3 hours ago, rickeieio said:

Ahh, kids now days........  El Nino and La Nina have been occurring a bit longer than that, but you can't core the oceans to find direct evidence.

 Yeah, us kids don't know s#%t. Though I'm most likely older than you. Probably been around for thousands of years, so, but it wasn't identified or called "El Nino" til the 1990s, and the term "El Nina" came later.

 

[GlennWest]

A lot of the work at refineries are to lower emissions. Cutting out old valves to install new lower emission valves. Redesign systems for lower emissions. We have cleaned them up a lot. And I do believe the current population is the biggest problem. 

Edited January 5, 2022 by GlennWest

[Darryl&Rita]

16 minutes ago, RangeMaggotBob said:

the term "El Nina" came later.

La Nina. FTFY.

[RangeMaggotBob]

Thanks. Like your quote says ......

[hemsteadc]

Science doesn't care what you believe.