Why Less Snow Can Lead to More Accidents
A story at The Weather Channel caught my eye, seeming to confirm something I’ve noticed over the years, tracking Minnesota winters. Big storms are well-advertised. Motorists are generally prepared and tend to slow down.
It’s the small storms, under an inch, especially at cold temperatures (under 15F) that trigger a disproportionate number of spin-outs and accidents. A lousy inch of snow? People often drive faster than conditions warrant, until the first fender-benders, or worse.
From 2004 to 2013, nearly a quarter of all traffic crashes in the U.S. were caused by weather, according to 10-year averages released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
No big, travel-complicating storms are brewing into next week. Daytime highs hold in the 30s this weekend, with more 30s and 40s late next week for Thanksgiving and “Black Friday” fun at the local mall.
A brewing La Nina could/should mean a colder winter, but NOAA’s CFSv2 model now predicts a milder than average December.
The distant future is unknowable, but it will include bad weather – of that I’m fairly certain.
Nothing Arctic – Yet. Temperatures cool off a few degrees todayy and Thursday before another blip into the 40s Friday; another fleeting warm(er) front by Monday of next week before the next inevitable cool front. Plan on upper 30s to near 40F on Thanksgiving Day. ECMWF numbers for the Twin Cities: WeatherBell.
December Preview. Confidence levels are low, but NOAA’s longer-range climate model (CFSv2) shows a warm bias for much of the USA next month, especially Upper Midwest into New England. I wouldn’t bet the farm on this forecast, but it’s interesting to ponder. A warmer trend in spite of La Nina?
La Nina is Officially Here, and Favors a Cold Winter for Northern USA. Capital Weather Gang reports: “…La Niña is not the only control on winter weather, however. In the eastern United States, the character of the winter is often defined by whether and how frequently areas of strong high pressure develop near Greenland, sometimes referred to as blocking patterns, which force cold air in Canada to spill southward. These patterns usually can’t be predicted more than one to two weeks ahead of time. The Weather Service says there is a 65 to 75 percent chance La Niña will persist through the winter, and probably through at least April. Should La Niña last into the spring, it could portend more violent thunderstorms across the nation. La Niña conditions tend to trigger ingredients in the atmosphere that lead “to an increase in tornado and hail reports,” wrote researchers Michael K. Tippett and Chiara Lepore for Climate.gov last spring...”
Map credit: “Temperature difference from normal over the tropical Pacific Ocean. Blue areas indicate cooler than normal, signaling La Niña.” (Climate.gov)
Is Light Snow More Dangerous for Drivers Than Major Snowstorms? An article at The Weather Channel caught my eye: “…There seems to be a critical time of accumulations first occurring on untreated roads with some drivers not yet realizing the roads have become slick, maintaining their near-normal speeds until a slideoff or wreck occurs,” said weather.com senior meteorologist Jonathan Erdman. From 2004 to 2013, nearly a quarter of all traffic crashes in the U.S. were caused by weather, according to 10-year averages released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Of those, 17 percent occurred during snow or sleet, 13 percent on icy pavement and 14 percent on snowy or slushy pavement. Walker Ashley, associate professor of meteorology at Northern Illinois University, contends that “minor” winter events are more deadly (on Midwestern roads, at least) than notable winter storms due to heavier traffic on roads and possibly more dangerous road and visibility conditions than perceived by drivers...”
Lessons from Hurricane Harvey: Houston’s Struggle is America’s Tale. Check out the New York Times article.
Rolling Back the Clean Power Plan is a Losing Proposition for America. WRI, World Resources Institute, has the article: “… It is undeniably true that coal employment has fallen considerably in recent decades, and that the communities left behind deserve our attention and need economic development. However, solving these challenges requires a real, honest discourse grounded in facts. That discourse must begin with the acknowledgment that the main drivers of change in the coal industry have been increased productivity and low natural gas prices. Consider that even with recent production declines, the nation produces nearly 50 percent more coal than we did in 1940, but employs one-eighth the number of miners. The underlying shift to less labor-intensive methods of mining coal means that the industry will never see employment levels comparable to where they were decades ago…”
Will Electric Vehicles Replace Gas-Powered Ones? Here’s an excerpt of an interview with one of 3 experts at The Wall Street Journal: “…By 2030, 95% of U.S. automobile miles traveled will be in on-demand, autonomous electric-vehicle fleets, in a new business model called transport as a service. This disruption isn’t going to be one where individuals simply trade in their gasoline or diesel vehicles for electric vehicles. Both gasoline/diesel vehicles and the individual ownership of automobiles will be disrupted. By 2030, 60% of light-duty vehicles are expected to be owned by fleets that provide transport-as-a-service—think electric, autonomous versions of Uber, Lyft or Didi—and only 40% to be individually owned. However, since fleet vehicles will drive 100,000 miles a year apiece, they will contribute 95% of the total miles driven in the U.S., while individuals will only contribute 5% of the miles. Also, the total number of vehicles in the U.S. will shrink by 80%, because individuals will stop buying cars for themselves and opt for these services instead…”
Photo credit: “Tesla’s Model S electric car, shown in production in Fremont, Calif., was Motor Trend’s Car of the Year in 2013.” Photo: Jeff Chiu/Associated Press
Fossil Fuel Emissions Hit Record High After Unexpected Growth: Global Carbon Budget 2017. The Conversation has the story: “Global greenhouse emissions from fossil fuels and industry are on track to grow by 2% in 2017, reaching a new record high of 37 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, according to the 2017 Global Carbon Budget, released today. The rise follows a remarkable three-year period during which global CO₂ emissions barely grew, despite strong global economic growth. But this year’s figures suggest that the keenly anticipated global peak in emissions – after which greenhouse emissions would ultimately begin to decline – has yet to arrive…”
Don’t Slow Clean Energy Job Growth in the Heartland. An Op-Ed at The Des Moines Register had a few interesting nuggets: “…Wind energy is now the cheapest source of energy in many states, making it the common-sense choice when new electricity is needed. This is obviously great news for ratepayers and cleaner air, but it’s also vital to the economic well-being of my neighbors in rural America. In my company, we proudly employ rural Americans with wind occupations — technicians, engineers and executives, among many other jobs, in communities across the nation where wind is a real economic force. In fact, wind turbine technicians are the fastest growing jobs in the U.S. There are nearly 1,500 Americans employed by the wind industry in South Dakota, more than the oil industry. Wind employment in neighboring states is also growing: 1,740 in North Dakota, 3,859 in Iowa, almost 2,000 in Minnesota, and 1,981 in Kansas…”
File photo: Yale Environment 360.
Lyme Disease Is Slowly Spreading Across the U.S. East Coast. Minnesota and Wisconsin are also seeing an uptick in ticks, according to Gizmodo: “Lyme disease is the most common vectorborne disease in the United States, but it’s also mostly confined to a small swath of the country running down the eastern seaboard to the Mid Atlantic and along the Great Lakes. But while it was once thought that Lyme disease rarely occurred outside of the Northeast, a new report from the Centers for Disease Control confirms that Lyme is slowly expanding its geographic footprint. In 11 states that neighbor the 14 states where Lyme disease occurs frequently, the report found a significant increase in the number of confirmed Lyme cases…”
Map credit: “Average annual Lyme cases from 2008-2015, by county. Each dot represents one confirmed case.” Image: CDC.
Exit Interview: Scott Kelley, an Astronaut Who Spent a Year In Space. No, being in space for a year isn’t for everyone, as a story at Atlas Obscura explains: “Being an astronaut is not all zero-gravity gymnastics and big blue marble flyovers. There’s also all the time spent repairing the urine collector and hunting for lost screws. Scott Kelly’s delightful new memoir, Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery, chronicles the mundane, frustrating, and surprisingly funny reality of life on the International Space Station (ISS). Endurance recounts his year up there—including the Sisyphean struggles to fix the urine collector—his unlikely career as an astronaut, and his partnership with identical twin brother and fellow astronaut Mark Kelly. Kelly retired as an astronaut in 2016, shortly after the end of his year-long mission, but NASA continues to monitor his health. They’re examining specifically how his year in space affected Scott compared to his ground-bound twin, Mark…”
Photo credit: “Astronaut Scott Kelly inside the Cupola, a special module in the International Space Station that provides a 360-degree view of Earth.” NASA/ Public Domain
How Nazi Art Wound Up on an Army Base in Virginia. Washingtontonian has the fascinating tale: “…This particular bust came into Uncle Sam’s possession seven decades ago. At the end of World War II, Allied soldiers seized it from the Eagle’s Nest, the Führer’s Austrian mountaintop redoubt. It was more than a simple piece of war booty. Seventy-two years after V-E Day, the Army still owns the statue as well as hundreds of other pieces of German propaganda and wartime art—all of which reside on post at Fort Belvoir. The collection includes four watercolor paintings by Hitler himself. They’re under lock and key in a flat file inside a vault. It’s not easy to get to the Army’s Nazi-art stash. My visit took months to arrange. The Center of Military History, which oversees the Army’s art collection, does little to publicize the Nazi pieces in its possession. They’ve been loaned out only twice in the last decade…Given concerns about the resurgence of far-right groups in America, the military has some reason to keep these relics of the Third Reich hidden...”
Image credit: “Hitler liked this piece so much that he bought it himself. It now resides just off Route 1 in Woodbridge.”
Minnesota North Shore Hopes Dark Sky Will Spark Tourism. KSTP.com reports: “Visit Cook County in Grand Marais has created an ad campaign to see the stars. The area is one of the darkest places east of the Mississippi River. The tourism bureau has created a map of the best locations around the county to star-gaze. Visit Cook County in Grand Marais has created an ad campaign to see the stars. The area is one of the darkest places east of the Mississippi River. The tourism bureau has created a map of the best locations around the county to star gaze…”
Image credit: Dark Site Finder.
Useless Trivia: Yes, You Can Cook Your Turkey in Your Dishwasher. You might make a mess in the process, but it is possible, according to this source.
44 F. high temperature yesterday in the Twin Cities.
42 F. average high on November 14.
50 F. high on November 14, 2016.
November 15, 1976: So far this year there were over three thousand forest fires in Minnesota.
TODAY: Mostly cloudy, chilly breeze. Winds: NW 10-15. High: 38
WEDNESDAY NIGHT: Clearing skies. Low: 26
THURSDAY: Sunny start, then increasing clouds. Winds: SE 8-13. High: near 40
FRIDAY: Pretty gray, few showers and sprinkles around. Winds: S 8-13. Wake-up: 35. High: 49
SATURDAY: Mix of clouds and sun, cool breeze. Winds: NW 10-15. Wake-up: 30. High: 36
SUNDAY: Chilly start. Partly sunny, feels like November. Winds: SW 5-10. Wake-up: 20. High: 37
MONDAY: Sunny peeks, milder breeze. Wake-up: 30. Winds: SW 8-13. High: near 50
TUESDAY: Blue sky, cooling off again. Winds: N 8-13. Wake-up: 32. High: 39
Climate Stories…
How a North Carolina Meteorologist Abandoned His Climate Change Skepticism. Greg Fishel is a friend (since my high school days). He’s a smart guy and a gifted meteorologist; here is his story at Columbia Journalism Review: “…But this search sparked a flurry of other questions. Why was the country so polarized on issues of science, and why did it appear that religion was at war with science? I argued vehemently that we discuss politics and religion within our documentary. I’ll never forget the look on our producer’s face when I first made the pitch. But we did it. Out of that research and filming, one primary culprit for this polarization emerged: unconditional loyalty to one’s tribe, a quality that is remarkably common. We believe what the people we align ourselves with believe, and rather than look for common ground with those who fall outside of that tribe, we seek the disparities…”
Climate Change Bringing “Biblical” Rains to Texas: From Climate Nexus Hot News: “The chances of a Hurricane Harvey-scale hurricane in Texas have increased sixfold since 1980, and climate change will make massive storms in the area much more likely by the end of the century, according to new research. A study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences from MIT’s Kerry Emmanuel finds that warming upped the odds of an over-20 inch rainfall from a once-in-100-years event in Texas between 1980 and 2000 to a once-in-16-years event in 2017. Emmanuel’s study projects the chances of this type of extreme rainfall in Texas to rise to once every 5.5 years by the end of the century. “There are folks down in Texas who are having to rebuild infrastructure, and I think they need to have some idea of what kind of event they’re building for,” Emmanuel told the Washington Post.” (Washington Post $, AP, Bloomberg, LA Times $, The Atlantic, Ars Technica)
File photo: AP.
How Climate Change Fueled Hurricane Harvey. A story at WIRED.com caught my eye: “…Hurricane Harvey has already dumped 9 trillion gallons of water on Texas and may leave even more before it backs up to the Gulf of Mexico. Starting as a category 4 hurricane as it made landfall on Friday night, Harvey, which has since been downgraded to a tropical storm, is breaking weather records every hour—and is leaving some scientists scratching their heads as to why it stalled over south Texas instead of cruising northward to Oklahoma and then to the Midwest as storms of this nature typically do. Is climate change to blame for its atypical path of destruction? Well, a bit, according to climate researchers. Climate change didn’t spawn Harvey, or any other hurricane, though it has made them more dangerous...”
More Than 15,000 Scientists Issue a “Warning to Humanity”. Big Think has the details: “More than 15,000 scientists from 184 countries have issued a warning: Mankind must take immediate action to reverse the effects of climate change, deforestation and species extinction before it’s too late. The warning, issued by the Alliance of World Scientists and published in the journal Bioscience, comes on the 25th anniversary of a similar warning from the Union of Concerned Scientists that was titled “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity”. The new letter, however, has 10 times as many scientists endorsing it. “On the 25th anniversary of their call, we look back at their warning and evaluate the human response by exploring available time-series data,” the paper reads. “Especially troubling is the current trajectory of potentially catastrophic climate change due to rising GHGs from burning fossil fuels (Hansen et al. 2013), deforestation (Keenan et al. 2015), and agricultural production—particularly from farming ruminants for meat consumption (Ripple et al. 2014)…”
Image credit: NASA.
Can Carbon Dioxide Removal Save the World? A story at The New Yorker caught my eye: “…Carbon-dioxide removal is, potentially, a trillion-dollar enterprise because it offers a way not just to slow the rise in CO2 but to reverse it. The process is sometimes referred to as “negative emissions”: instead of adding carbon to the air, it subtracts it. Carbon-removal plants could be built anywhere, or everywhere. Construct enough of them and, in theory at least, CO2 emissions could continue unabated and still we could avert calamity. Depending on how you look at things, the technology represents either the ultimate insurance policy or the ultimate moral hazard.Carbon Engineering is one of a half-dozen companies vying to prove that carbon removal is feasible...”
Image credit above: “Carbon-dioxide removal could be a trillion-dollar enterprise, because it not only slows the rise in CO2 but reverses it.” Photo-illustration by Thomas Albdorf for The New Yorker.
We’re Not Even Close to Being Prepared For The Rising Waters. Bill McKibbon has a book review for The Washington Post: “…These effects were somewhat harder to calculate than other impacts of climate change. In particular, scientists were slow to understand how aggressively the poles would melt, and hence the main international assessments, until recently, forecast relatively modest rises in sea level: three feet, perhaps, by century’s end. That’s enough to cause major problems, but perhaps not insuperable ones — richer cities could probably build seawalls and other barriers to keep themselves above the surface. Yet new assessments of the disintegration of glaciers, and more data from deep in the Earth’s past, have convinced many scientists that we could be looking at double or triple that rate of sea level rise in the course of the century. Which may take what would have been a major problem and turn it into a largely insoluble new reality…”
Photo credit: “The shoreline in Miami, a low-lying city threatened by rising sea levels.” (Joseph Michael Lopez/For The Washington Post)
Climate and National Security With Maj. General Rick Devereaux. Here is an excerpt of an interview at Citizens Climate Lobby: “…Devereaux offered four caveats to be aware of when talking about climate and national security. He said:
- “Our military is not interested in entering the debate on human-caused climate change.” Instead of a debate, they’re more focused on preparedness and resilience.
- “Our military is not interested in taking the lead in solving the problem of global climate change.” They may be taking steps that are “green,” but their mission isn’t to fix climate change.
- “Be careful about overstating the relationship between climate change and national security,” Devereaux advised. “I talk about the linkage, but don’t overstate it.”
- Finally, he said, “It’s always good to use expert opinions from national security experts, rather than environmentalists.” He cautioned that there will be skeptics on both sides of the debate, but referencing material from the original source is a good way to start...”
Pope Denounces “Shortsighted” Human Activity for Warming. Here’s a clip from The Washington Post: “Pope Francis on Saturday blasted “shortsighted human activity” for global warming and rising sea levels and urged leaders at climate talks in Germany to take a global outlook as they negotiate ways to curb heat-trapping emissions. Francis met with a delegation of Pacific leaders and told them he shares their concerns about rising sea levels and increasingly intense weather systems that are threatening their small islands. He decried in particular the state of oceans, where overfishing and pollution by plastics and micro-plastics are killing fish stocks and sea life that are critical to Pacific island livelihoods. While several causes are to blame, “sadly, many of them are due to shortsighted human activity connected with certain ways of exploiting natural and human resources, the impact of which ultimately reaches the ocean bed itself,” the pope warned…”
Photo credit: ”
The Tipping Point of Climate Change. Arkansas Online has the Op-Ed: “…A tipping point, in the context of climate change, is a point of no return when our climate system will be changed irreversibly. It is like the game children play with a seesaw: putting a heavy child on one end and seeing how many of his friends can get on the other end before their collective weight tips his end up. The professor said that he thought the earth had passed the tipping point. The other panelists agreed. A stunned silence fell over the large conference hall. It was obvious that the audience didn’t expect to hear that answer. And it’s not surprising that the audience reacted in that manner. The possibility that the earth was undergoing climate change first came to public attention in the late 1970s and early 1980s...”
