Climate Change: snow business

By Richard North - December 3, 2023

I was hugely entertained by the social media pictures of snow-bound Munich and, in particular, the sight of the biz-jet tail-heavy with snow. The caption suggests that it was supposed to fly to Dubai to the CoP on global warming but there’s no evidence to support that claim. But I would love to think it was true.

The mishap pictured arose after nearly 18 inches of snow fell on the city, making it the heaviest snowfall in Munich since 1933, and the heaviest on record for a December. And despite Germany’s familiarity with winter snowfall, the depth of snow has temporarily overwhelmed the clearance teams and paralysed public transport.

As I sit here in West Yorkshire, I can see through the window and watch the snow falling, with the forecast warning of three hours or so of moderate snowfall. That’s on top of the light dusting we had three days ago, which is still on the ground as temperatures have remained below freezing even during the day.

We’re told that, to the northwest of us, in Cumbria, a major incident has been declared although there is nothing as dramatic as Munich, with a mere 4-6 inches of snow being reported. There is, though, a warning that temperatures may drop to as low as -12ºC.

Present conditions have been enough to bring traffic to a halt in some of the affected areas, even on the M6 motorway where jack-knifed lorries have blocked carriageways. Just to add to the drama, a belt of freezing fog is expected, making conditions even more treacherous.

As the snow spreads south, in what is described as a 250-mile snowfall, there have been falls of snow in the southeast, its earliest winter snowfall for 15 years. London Stanstead Airport has also been disrupted by the cold, with news of flight delays and cancellations.

It may even be cold enough in London to overcome the urban heat island effect and lead to a light dusting of snow on the city’s streets, although that is unlikely, given the current forecast. If the white stuff does fall, we’ll doubtless see a national emergency declared, as the Chelsea tractors bog down in the hands of their inexperienced drivers.

Scotland has already seen fairly heavy snowfalls, but it isn’t just parts of the UK which are getting hammered. Much of Europe is currently under a blanket of snow, with as much as 60 percent of the landmass affected, stretching from France, through to Germany and Poland where the snow has been particularly heavy, triggering power outages and public transport delays.

This makes for an interesting contrast with earlier in the year when, in January, under the heading “Climate”, the BBC was joyfully recording that temperatures had reached an all-time high in a number of nations across Europe.

National records had fallen in eight countries – Netherlands, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Latvia, Czech Republic, Poland, Denmark and Belarus – and regional records were broken in another three. Warsaw, Poland, saw 18.9ºC (66ºF) while Bilbao, Spain, reached 25.1ºC – more than 10ºC above average.

Although Switzerland wasn’t mentioned in the BBC piece, it made the news elsewhere, with a report that multiple skiing resorts had been closed due to the unseasonably warm weather and the lack of snow. The snow line had been hovering between 2,000-2,500 metres and in some of the lower resorts, this had wiped out snow cover entirely.

Winter sports, and especially alpine skiing, have long been targets for the climate change doomsayers and, as late as August this year, an article dripping with pessimism forecast that alpine snow could no longer be relied upon. Climate change had reduced snow cover to levels which were “unprecedented” in the past 600 years.

This season, however, has seen record snowfall, much earlier than usual, promising bumper season, after one of the “snowiest ever Novembers” was recorded in the Alps. Some of the high resorts are saying they already have enough snow to see them through the whole season.

Less welcome is the snow in Eastern Europe. Moscow has been snow-covered since late October but, more recently savage winter storms have been lashing parts of southern Russia, Crimea and Ukraine.

Heavy snow, affecting the Odesa, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv and Kiev regions in Ukraine have stretched power resources, and killed at least 10 people after storms dumped up to 10 inches of snow in some places. In the battle areas, the weather has had a significant effect, damping down the fighting.

Oddly enough, the cold is not just confined to these areas. Across the Atlantic, early season snows and high winds have affected parts of New York State, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Although severe conditions are not expected, late November and early December do not routinely see snowfalls.

In the Pacific, Hawaii – in the news earlier this year for the devastating wildfire on the island of Maui – has now received a heavy coating of the white stuff at higher altitudes, with up to six inches of snow being recorded in some areas. Elsewhere on the islands, there has been heavy rain, a welcome relief from the period of drought experienced earlier in the year.

Further east, China saw its first major blizzards in early November, blanketing swaths of the northeastern region, shutting schools and halting transportation.

At the time, the National Meteorological Centre was forecasting that the snowfall was likely to “breakthrough the historical records”, with heavy snowstorms expected to continue in parts of Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning provinces. Snow depth of up to 8 inches was recorded in some places.

Later in the month, Reuters reported unusually cold weather, with sub-freezing temperatures in some cities expected to plummet to levels seen more typically in January. Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang province, was bracing for temperatures as low as -25ºC and the weather was to remain below freezing into December.

Abnormally cold has also been experienced in Japan where the summer seems to have transitioned straight from summer to winter, missing out autumn.

Heavy snow was recorded in Mombetsu, Hokkaido, which saw 18 inches fall in a 24-hour period, followed by Yubari, also in Hokkaido, at 16 inches and the Sukayu area of the city of Aomori at 14 inches. Mombetsu’s snowfall was a record high for November.

All of this, of course – unless you are following the BBC or the Guardian – is just weather, although one recalls the propensity of the climate cultists to recruit any abnormally warm conditions to support their thesis of global warming.

Given that the CoP climate-fest is blasting out the claim that we have just seen the hottest year evvah, it is instructive to find that nature is not going out of its way to support the propaganda line.

Nevertheless, even if we are used to the idea that any unusual weather is caused by global warning – be it dry, wet, cold, hot, windy or calm, one cannot escape the observation that, in a lot of areas of the world at the moment, it is unusually cold with an exceptional amount of snow in some regions.

But this don’t mean nuffink. It really is just weather – until it isn’t.