Category: Weather

Jeebus

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Portland, Oregon hit 114°F (45.5°C) Today.

If the death toll in the Pacific Northwest from high temperatures over this weekend is not in the thousands, I would be very surprised.

Even for houses with air-conditioning, this is likely to be more heat than they could handle: 

Portland again reached a new record temperature late Sunday afternoon, hitting 112 degrees and breaking the previous records set earlier Sunday and Saturday, the National Weather Service announced on Twitter.

The high temperature for Portland International Airport reached 108 degrees Saturday, surpassing the city’s all-time record of 107, first set in 1965. By 2:20 p.m. Sunday afternoon, Portland had surpassed that record by three degrees. The record now stands at 112 as of 5 p.m. Sunday.

Portland normally has a handful of 90°F+ days a year.

In the 4 years that I lived in Portland, it never broke 100°F. (Update, Checked the record, I was wrong.  From August 1976 through August 1980, there were 10 100°F+ days)

Obviously, this is weather, and not climate, but it is clearly anthropogenic climate change driven weather.

118°F (48°C) Above the Arctic Circle

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It happened in Verkhojansk, Eastern Siberia today.

Anthropogenic climate change is a bitch:

Newly published satellite imagery shows the ground temperature in at least one location in Siberia topped 118 degrees Fahrenheit (48 degrees Celsius) going into the year’s longest day. It’s hot Siberia Earth summer, and it certainly won’t be the last.

………

The 118-degree-Fahrenheit temperature was measured on the ground in Verkhojansk, in Yakutia, Eastern Siberia, by the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel satellites. Other ground temperatures in the region included 109 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius) in Govorovo and 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celsius) in Saskylah, which had its highest temperatures since 1936. It’s important to note that the temperatures being discussed here are land surface temperatures, not air temperatures. The air temperature in Verkhojansk was 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius)—still anomalously hot, but not Arizona hot.

But the ground temperature being so warm is still very bad. Those temperatures beleaguer the permafrost—the frozen soil of yore, which holds in greenhouse gases and on which much of eastern Russia is built. As permafrost thaws, it sighs its methane back into the atmosphere, causing chasms in the Earth.

………

The same region also suffered through a heat wave that led to a very un-Siberian air temperature reading of 100 degrees Fahrenheit(38 degrees Celsius) exactly a year ago to the day from the new freak heat. It’s the hottest temperature ever recorded in the region. It was also in the 90s last month in western Siberia, reflecting that the sweltering new abnormal is affecting just about everywhere. And it’s not just the permafrost suffering; wildfires last year in Siberia pumped a record amount of carbon dioxideinto the atmosphere, ensuring more summers like this are to come.

Even if we do all the right things, this is going to end up very poorly in the near to medium term, and we are doing NONE of the right things, so we are looking at a truly apocalyptic scenario.

90°? We are F%$#ed!

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In the first half of 1969, I was living in Anchorage, Alaska.

On June 14, 1969, Anchorage hit was was then the highest temperature ever recorded up to that time, 85°F (29°C).

Note that Anchorage is 372 miles (599 km) south of the Arctic Circle.

Today, in it hit  86.5°F (30.3°C) in Nizhnyaya Pesha, just north of the Arctic Circle.

We are completely screwed:

It’s only May, but it feels like summer has arrived in my hometown of Baltimore. Since I woke up, I’ve been counting the hours until I can drink iced cocktails on my deck while wearing a sundress. Can you blame me? It’s 80 degrees Fahrenheit (26.7 degrees Celsius) out.

There’s another reason I really need a drink, though: That’s the same temperature it is in the Arctic today. Welcome to climate hell.

In fact, parts of the Arctic circle got even warmer than that on Wednesday. It was 86.5 degrees (30.3 degrees Celsius) in the Russian town of Nizhnyaya Pesha, and 91 degrees Fahrenheit (32.3 degrees Celsius) in the nearby town of Kolezma. The wildly high temperatures came as part of an ongoing heat wave in the region.

According to meteorologist Scott Duncan, these temperatures are between 37 and 43 degrees Fahrenheit (20 to 24 degrees Celsius) hotter than the region’s average temperature for this time of year. As Duncan said on Twitter, this Arctic heat is “truly exceptional for any time of the year but mind-boggling for May.” But though they’re bizarre, they’re also a sign of the broader changes happening in the Arctic, which is warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the globe.

I have a suggestion:  Let’s send all the anthropogenic climate change deniers to a penal colony in Nizhnyaya Pesha for the rest of their lives.

Can We Give Texas Back to Mexico?

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Wind turbines in, you guessed it, Antarctica

Snow and cold weather has hit Texas hard, and because of what can only be called high Texas idiocy, the power grid has collapsed.

So, the answer to the question, “Has privatization failed Texas utility customers?,” is F%$# yes.

In order to evade federal regulation the Texas electricity grid is largely separate from the rest of the country, and because it is Texas, suppliers of both natural gas, used to make electricity, and the electricity generators, make more profit from shutting down their plants to spike the prices.

This is what caused the California energy crisis in 2000 and 2001, deregulatory mania leading to market manipulation:

Privatizers use the one-size-fits-all economic theory of “retail choice-free market competition” to promote the deregulation of Texas electric utilities. Privatizers promise that lower electricity prices and higher system reliability will follow electric utility deregulation. Privatizers’ sloganeering convinces on-the-take politicians and the unsuspecting electorate to approve their lobbyist-written deregulation rules and laws.

Privatizers say the deregulation of Texas electric utilities is successful and other states should follow suit. This is misinformation. Relative electricity prices have increased dramatically, and dangerously lower electrical system reliability is the result of Texas electric utility deregulation in 2002.

But Texans, and Trotskyites, are never ones to let facts get in the way of their free market mousketeer theories, so Texas Governor Greg Abbot is claiming that the problem has come from renewables like wind and solar being disproportionately impacted by the weather.

It is a nice theory.  The problem is that it is complete bunk:

Frozen wind turbines in Texas caused some conservative state politicians to declare Tuesday that the state was relying too much on renewable energy. But in reality, the wind power was expected to make up only a fraction of what the state had planned for during the winter.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas projected that 80% of the grid’s winter capacity, or 67 gigawatts, could be generated by natural gas, coal and some nuclear power.

An official with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas said Tuesday afternoon that 16 gigawatts of renewable energy generation, mostly wind generation, were offline. Nearly double that, 30 gigawatts, had been lost from thermal sources, which includes gas, coal and nuclear energy.

By Wednesday, those numbers had changed as more operators struggled to operate in the cold: 45 gigawatts total were offline, with 28 gigawats from thermal sources and 18 gigawatts from renewable sources, ERCOT officials said.

“Texas is a gas state,” said Michael Webber, an energy resources professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

While Webber said all of Texas’ energy sources share blame for the power crisis, the natural gas industry is most notably producing significantly less power than normal.

“Gas is failing in the most spectacular fashion right now,” Webber said.

………

He went on to note the shutdown of a nuclear reactor in Bay City because of the cold and finally got to what energy experts say is the biggest culprit, writing, “Low Supply of Natural Gas: ERCOT planned on 67GW from natural gas/coal, but could only get 43GW of it online. We didn’t run out of natural gas, but we ran out of the ability to get natural gas. Pipelines in Texas don’t use cold insulation —so things were freezing.”

This was compounded by looting from the various energy suppliers. 

It actually pays for them to have a significant amount of their generation capacity go offline, as shown by this anecdote:

As a historic winter storm raged across Texas over the weekend, Akilah Scott-Amos received an alarming message from her power company: Please switch services because “prices are about to explode.”

The 43-year-old owner of an organic skincare and apothecary shop was initially confused by the message from Griddy, which sells wholesale power for a monthly membership, but she began to look for other providers.

Then she checked her bill.

“I paid $450 for one day. I was in shock,” Scott-Amos told The Daily Beast on Wednesday. “It made no sense because we have a gas heater, a gas fireplace, and we have been keeping the temperature around the house at 65 degrees. With that amount of money, and the labeled amount of usage Griddy said was used—we would have to be lighting up the whole neighborhood.”

The nightmare only got worse on Monday, when she realized her bill had increased by another $2,500. In comparison, Scott-Amos paid $33.93 last year for the entire month of February. 

The cost per kWh went from a bit more than 2¢ to more than $2.

………

But data from ERCOT suggests the price of getting the lights back on might be too steep for some Texans. As first reported by Reuters, the market prices on the power grid spiked more than 10,000 percent on Monday in the aftermath of the deep freeze. Prices skyrocketed to more than $9,000 per megawatt-hour—compared to the pre-storm prices of less than $50 per hour.

The amped-up wattage costs have affected Griddy customers in particular because of the company’s distinctive business model. In Texas’ hypercharged market for electricity, Griddy makes money by debiting its subscribers a flat $9.99 monthly fee—and then selling them raw power at its going wholesale value, effectively stripping out any insulation between consumers and the oscillations in supply and demand.

New business models and cute names translating into ripping off consumers, yeppers, there’s a deregulated market.

It’s just another excuse to pick your pocket.

It ain’t the weather, it’s the corruption.

Talk About Like a Lamb

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You know the old saying, “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.”
I’m getting lunch from the food truck, and the weather is magnificent.  (Ironically, I got the lamb.)
72 degrees without a cloud in the sky.

When juxtaposed with the brutal winter that we’ve had, it is a bit surreal.

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Bear Who Swims Seriously Considers Move to Norway*

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My brother, AKA the Bear Who Swims, is fond of winter.

In fact, my brother has frequently expressed a sense of loss at not experiencing Minneapolis weather now that he lives in Seattle.

Well, Bear Who Swims, have you considered Norway?

Residents of Norway view their long dark winters as something to celebrate. How it’s possible to be cheerful for the next four months.

As the days get darker and colder in much of the northern hemisphere, it’s easy to indulge in gloom. For the next few months, you’ll be shivering. You’ll be battling foul weather. Thanks to daylight saving time there will be no chance to see the sun after work.

The gloom leads to a common question: What can I do to cope with the dark and cold?

If you truly want to be happy during winter, though, this is the wrong approach to the season. Changing your mindset can do more than distracting yourself from the weather.

That’s the takeaway from research done by Kari Leibowitz, currently a PhD student at Stanford University, who spent August 2014 to June 2015 on a Fulbright scholarship in Tromsø in northern Norway. Tromsø is so far north that from late November to late January, the sun never climbs above the horizon. Leibowitz went to study the residents’ overall mental health, because rates of seasonal depression were lower than one might expect.

………

It turns out that in northern Norway, “people view winter as something to be enjoyed, not something to be endured,” says Leibowitz, and that makes all the difference.

………

And finally, people are enamored with the sheer beauty of the season. Leibowitz grew up near the Jersey shore, and “I just took it as a fact that everyone likes summer the best.” But deep in the winter in Norway, when the sun doesn’t rise above the horizon, multiple hours a day can still look like sunrise and sunset, and against the snow, “the colors are incredibly beautiful,” she says. “The light is very soft and indirect.”

I rather imagine that as he reads this, my brother is thinking wistfully of the thought of sub-zero evenings and the Northern Lights.

*Actually, to be fair, Stephen has never expressed an interest in moving to Norway, I just think that he might now.

You Have Got to Be F%$#Ing Kidding Me

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On a number of occasions over the past few weeks, the temperatures in Fairbanks Alaska has been higher than those of Phoenix Arizona:

Alaska, along with the rest of the Arctic, has been warming even faster than other regions of the world due to climate change. That was the findings of a report this spring from the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which found that the rate of warming will only continue to increase in the coming decades.

The signs of rapid warming in Alaska were everywhere this past winter. The Iditarod was moved north 300 miles to Fairbanks because Anchorage had record low snowfall. A ski resort outside of Juneau had to close because of low snowfall and warm temperatures that inhibited snow-making.

Now the 49th state experienced a heat wave at the end of May. Over Memorial Day weekend, while Texas was being inundated with floods, parts of Alaska were warmer than Arizona. On May 23 in Fairbanks, the temperature reached 86 degrees Fahrenheit, while Phoenix topped out at 83 for the day, reports Al Jazeera. Even the town of Bettles, which is north of Fairbanks and falls within the Arctic Circle, recorded a temperature of 82.

That same day, Eagle, Alaska hit 91 degrees Fahrenheit, marking the earliest 90-degree day in state history, according to NASA Earth Observatory. And it wasn’t just one unusually warm day. “Between May 16 and May 24, Eagle hit 27 degrees Celsius (80 degrees Fahrenheit) or higher daily—its second longest such streak on record for any time of the year,” says Al Jazeera.

I understand that weather is not the same as climate, but repeated instances of abnormally f%$#ed up weather are an indicator of climate issues.

And Republicans still deny climate change, because they don’t want to admit that Al Gore was right.

We are completely f%$#ed.

Snow Day Today

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This deserves to be on my moribund bad hair web page

So the kids did not go to school.

We cut a deal, they shoveled the walks, and I (insert ominous music) cleaned the cat boxes.

Natalie, as you can clearly see, had a very bad hair day, which she posted to her Facebook page.

BTW, the best comment to her post was:

OMG YOU LOOK LIKE YOU COULD WORK IN A 60’S DINER WEARING ROLLER SKATES

It’s nice to have a daughter who does not take herself too seriously. (she loved the comment)

It’s July 4th

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We just finished watching the Catonsville fireworks show, and before that, we did a cookout at Patapsco State Park.

The weather was glorious, clear and with a high in the 70s.

It actually got a bit nippy while we were watching the fireworks.

It’s the coolest Independence Day I can remember since moving to Maryland.

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We are Having a Spot of Weather

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Clip Image for Slide Show

Normally, I would not write about this, but a city block of street in Baltimore just slid into a rivine:

A nearly 120-year-old retaining wall that has troubled Charles Village residents for decades collapsed Wednesday amid a month’s worth of rain, dumping street lights, sidewalks and half a dozen cars onto the CSX rail tracks below.

 No injuries were reported. City officials evacuated 19 adjacent homes along East 26th Street and urged residents to avoid the area in case of lingering instability.

 The landslide halted CSX rail traffic through what is a main artery to the port of Baltimore. The track carries cargo containers handled by rail at the state’s Seagirt Marine Terminal, a substantial economic engine for the region.

I think that I also saw animals pairing up 2 by 2.