Late season midwest snows ease drought in US crop belt

3/22/13, "Weekend snow expected to ease drought in U.S. crop belt," Reuters

"Moisture welcomed by drought-stressed crop belt * Cold snap not expected to harm U.S. wheat crop * Weather to slow early corn seedings."

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3/21/13, "Bloom off of global warming on first day of (brrrr) spring," Detroit News, Henry Payne

"“First day of spring?” said a WWJ-Detroit Radio forecaster Wednesday morning in frigid, below-normal, 21-degree, Midwest temperatures with little relief in sight. “Feels more like the first day of January.”

What a difference a year makes.

Last March, the media welcomed spring in a panic over global warming, as local and national media sensationalized unseasonably warm temperatures. “”Meteorologists and other weather commentators have frequently commented they’ve never seen anything like this, exhausting superlatives,” hyperventilated Washington Post meteorologist Jason Samenow, citing the usual Horsemen of the Apocalypse, NASA’s James Hansen and activist Bill McKibben. “The background increases in greenhouse gases – at levels unprecedented in at least 800,000 years – are stacking the deck for more extreme heat events such as this and we have observed increases in average and extremely high temperatures.”

That was soooo 12 months ago. As usual, the global warming crowd was confusing weather and climate (not to mention hysteria and science). The science tells us the globe hasn’t warmed in 14 years, even as the planet trends warmer out of the Little Ice Age of the mid-19th century.

Weather makes for great anecdotal scare stories with which to push more regulation. Not surprisingly, the media hysteria was non-existent this week as Samenow & Co. went back to reading temperature forecasts. “And the chilly air is here to stay for a while,” deadpanned Samenow. New England welcomed spring with a foot of snow. No screaming headlines. No predictions of disaster. Nothing to see here, just move along. 
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That’s not to say that the green crowd isn’t still beating the drums for a carbon tax (never mind the pain of declining American incomes). The New York Times’ Tom Friedman continues to flog his favorite weather event – Superstorm Sandy – as evidence the climate is in chaos. But a simple check of scientific history finds plenty of Sandy-like behemoths over the centuries: 1667, 1693, 1788, 1821, 1893, 1938, 1944, 1954, 1960, and so on (the 1938 “Long Island Express” hit NYC as a Category 3 hurricane, churned up 18-foot storm surges, and killed 60 New Yorkers).
So happy spring, everyone. Enjoy the blessed silence of the green lobby."

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Those selling storm Sandy as proof of CO2 terror ignore Manhattan history:

2/9/13, "Revisiting Superstorm Sandy Part 1: Spinning Climate, Weather for Political Points," Paul Driessen, Heartland.org

"Manhattan was pounded in 1667 and by the Great Storm of 1693. More behemoths followed in 1788, 1821, 1893, 1938, 1944, 1954, 1960, 1985 and 1992. Other “confluences of severe weather events” brought killer storms like the four-day Great Blizzard of 1888, which convinced New York City to build its subway. The 1893 storm all but eradicated Hog Island, and the 1938 “Long Island Express” hit LI as a category 3 hurricane, brought 18-foot storm surges and wind gusts up to 180 mph, and killed 60 New Yorkers.

Such winds today would rip windows from skyscrapers, launching a deadly blizzard of flying glass, masonry, chairs, desks and other debris, say experts. In fact, a blizzard of glass and debris struck Manhattan in 1912, when a sudden storm delivered an entire afternoon of 60 mph winds and five minutes of 96-110 mph fury! If such winds are accompanied by an event like Sandy, anyone seeking safety underground would drown as subway tunnels flood due to combined storm and tidal surges 20 to 30 feet above normal, the city’s 1995 hurricane transportation study warned.

Even Canada’s east coast has frequently been battered by hurricanes and other major storms. A 1775 hurricane killed 4,000 people in Newfoundland; an 1873 monster left 600 dead in Nova Scotia; others pummeled Canada’s Maritime Provinces in 1866, 1886, 1893, 1939, 1959, 1963 and 2003."...

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Intense hurricanes have struck New Jersey since prehistoric times:

7/2001, "Sedimentary evidence of intense hurricane strikes from New Jersey," Geology, Vol. 29, Issue 7, p. 615

	Donnelly, Jeffrey P.; Roll, Stuart; Wengren, Micah; Butler, Jessica; Lederer, Richard; Webb, Thompson, III,

"Nine Vibracores from the backbarrier marsh at Whale Beach, New Jersey, reveal three large-scale overwash deposits associated with historic and prehistoric storms. The uppermost and smallest overwash fan was deposited in the Ash Wednesday northeaster of March 5 8, 1962. A second more substantial overwash fan between 100 and 35 cm depth dates to the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. This fan was most likely deposited during the 1821 hurricane, the only intense hurricane to make landfall in New Jersey in the past 350 yr. A third, larger overwash fan between 200 and 300 cm depth was deposited between A.D. 1278 and 1438 and is likely the result of a prehistoric intense hurricane strike. The combination of historical and stratigraphic evidence indicates that two intense hurricanes (winds >50 m s^-1) have likely made landfall on the southern New Jersey coast in the past 700 yr, resulting in an annual landfall probability of 0.3%."






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