Extreme winter weather, such as subzero temperatures, wind chills and heavy snow, is impacting much of the U.S. this Christmas holiday weekend and is expected to heavily impact travel. Major parts of the U.S. electricity grid are very vulnerable, particularly as a result of Biden energy policy, steering investment away from coal, oil and natural gas.
Places across the northern Rockies, northern Plains and upper Midwest are experiencing temperature drops by tens of degrees in minutes. The extremely cold airmass is expected to hit at least 24 other states along the Gulf Coast and in the eastern U.S. The National Weather Service has a Detailed Warning HERE.
The potential for severe consequences as an outcome of this winter storm has the political minders of Joe Biden worried.
.
(Via NWS) – A major and anomalous storm system is forecast to produce a multitude of weather hazards through early this weekend, as heavy snowfall, strong winds, and dangerously cold temperatures span from the northern Great Basin through the Plains, Upper Midwest, Great Lakes, and the northern/central Appalachians.
At the forefront of the impressive weather pattern is a dangerous and record-breaking cold air mass in the wake of a strong arctic cold front diving southward across the southern Plains today and eastward into the Ohio/Tennessee Valleys by tonight.
Behind the front, temperatures across the central High Plains have already plummeted 50 degrees F in just a few hours, with widespread subzero readings extending throughout much of the central/northern Plains and northern Rockies/Great Basin.
These temperatures combined with sustained winds of 20 to 30 mph and higher wind gusts of up to 60 mph will continue to lead to wind chills as low as minus 40 degrees across a large swath of the Intermountain West and northern/central Plains, with more localized areas of minus 50 to minus 70 possible through the end of the week. (read more)
I am reminded of Fort Wainwright, Alaska, in January of 1989, when a cold airmass settled on the state for weeks. It was so cold (-50°, -70° or worse) that airplanes could not achieve lift. McGrath went from +29° to -42° during a work shift. During a single work shift everyone’s truck tires were flat and frozen. LOL… Crazy stuff.
Joe Biden – “I’m going to, shortly, be briefed by — by both FEMA and the National Weather Service, and we’re going to start that briefing.
And — but in the meantime, please take this storm extremely seriously. And I don’t know whether your bosses will let you, but if you all have travel plans, leave now. Not — not a joke. I’m tell- — sending my staff — my staff, if they have plans to leave on — tomorrow — late tonight or tomorrow, I’m telling them to leave now. They can talk to me on the phone. It’s not life and death. But it will be if they don’t — if they don’t get out, they may not get out.
So, any rate, thank you all for coming in, and I’m going to do the briefing now. Thank you.” (link)
The polar air will bring “extreme and prolonged freezing conditions for southern Mississippi and southeast Louisiana,” the National Weather Service (NWS) said in a special weather statement Sunday.
“We’re looking at much-below normal temperatures, potentially record-low temperatures leading up to the Christmas holiday,” said NWS meteorologist Zack Taylor. (link)
Not to worry folks. The climate crisis is well under control by our faithful government. They will undoubtedly control the climate the same way they have controlled the budget, war on poverty and immigration. It’s a sure bet.
“The potential for severe consequences as an outcome of this winter storm has the political minders of Joe Biden worried”
Yep – people will be reminded that it’s been a kinda, sorta, double-plus-ungood strategy to drive up petroleum prices and derivatives like home heating oil to 2x or 3x what they had been
They’ll also have smack-my-damn-head awakenings like
“Hey! … this doesn’t look like Global Warming!”
And many will be shivering if they’ve got electric heat, demonstrating the vulnerability of the electric “grids” that are to be furnishing power from solar panels and windmills that’ll be snow-covered and standing motionless with frozen bearings.
But “muh new green deal”, y’know
yeah, sad state of affairs, Sat0
As long as Pudding Brain gets his PM ice cream cone, the world is just fine.
Please, my wife scares me enough!
🤣🤣🤣
Joey wants as many citizens dead as possible so that he can replace them with foreign voters.
The trouble is, who is going to pay the taxes that support the illegal immigrants when we are all killed off?
“They” don’t give a damn, destruction is all “they” are interested in. That is what communists do, destroy things.
30 Trillion in debt – They just borrow money and give it to foreign countries! Like bowering money to pay your neighbors mortgage. STUPID!
The multi talented FJ Biden shows off his Weatherman skills. “Leave now, no joke”. I am so grateful that this great man is at the helm. No worries now folks. We good.
Like we wouldn’t know what to do without his advice. Many of us have been dealing with cold and snow for decades and this current storm is actually not bad compared to others we’ve been through.
That reminds me….short of lettuce and some dolt at the grocery store said it was “because of the hurricane.” 1. We don’t get lettuce from Florida and 2. We’ve always had hurricanes, and have NOT had produce shortages. Geesh!
Good story about cold weather in Alaska. I was living in Fairbanks when a Canadian C-130 landed short because it was so cold the altimiter was off and the ice fog so thick they were landing on instruments. They all made it but the plane was wrecked. I am in northern Wyoming now, it’s minus 25 tonight, but nothing like Fairbanks.
Got down to 30 below last night in NW Montana.
Power went out before 6 am and came back about 10:30 am.
Then it warmed up to 14 below.
God bless and keep safe the power line crews!
Stupid global warming!
That’s brutal! I hope you get a break soon!
Where’s all this Global Warming they’ve been promising? LIARS!
I was chatting with friends this afternoon about the book The Children’s Blizzard, David Laskin, published in 2004, which is a simple narrative of “how things went” in the disaster that developed January 12, 1888 , catching the children of Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Minnesota, “..the weather so mild (that day) that children walked to school without coats and gloves. But that afternoon………………….”
As I pulled my copy out to check the author’s name, I see the note I wrote in the front flap about my own memories in rural Montana….my note intended, I guess, for whatever family member eventually takes this book into their keeping. My note reads like this:
Blizzard conditions and temperatures such as those described here primarily–HURT. The impact of the frozen snow on the tender skin of face and neck is like being sandblasted at close range, and when you instinctively put an arm or hand up to protect the skin, and comfort, and protect… another area of skin is exposed. It’s a no-win situation unless you can get into shelter that is warm.
In the 50s we wore stacked layers in an attempt to improve protection but the jacket sleeves (2 or 3 layers also) were never predictably long enough to hold firmly to the varied lengths of gloves on the wrist. So sometimes a little rim of frozen snow and ice would build up around the wrist where the warmth from the skin caused slight melting, which then refroze.
The little crevices of woolen mittens would be filled with ice and snow so any effort to move scarves or hands around would mean clumsy, icy contact and the abrasive touch would add to the misery of the poor face.
It–all–just–flat–HURT. And that is all in the first five minutes of exposure.
If, like the families in this book, you can’t find shelter and relief then, in this condition and from this place, you begin to try to walk to safety. Somehow. In some direction. Long enough to save your own life.
The experience doesn’t vary just because because it occurred in one century or another. It’s devastating. It’s primal. And if you live, you never forget the way it felt.
It’s what I recall even from our final 18 years in Minnesota, between 1993 and 2011.
30 below zero hurts.
Blizzard conditions hurt.
(End of the note in my copy….) Now back to present day weather: people will die in the next few days in these conditions. I hope it ends up being very, very, VERY few. In the 1888 event, in less than 18 hours, “more than a hundred children …(died)… on the Dakota-Nebraska prairie”.
The best way to survive such conditions is simply not to get in the situation where your survival is at stake. Don’t be out there. Besides risking your own life, someone else will have to risk their life trying to get to you when they realize you haven’t arrived on time somewhere.
No Christmas dinner is worth it. No church service is worth it. No “last run to town for another gift” is worth it. Just don’t. Please. Your family does not deserve such a memory about Christmas 2022.
Sharon…I hope you don’t mind me posting this, but I’m so glad to find that AMAZON still carries copies of your book. I cherish my copy, and I highly recommend the book! For those of you who have been with the Treehouse since our earliest days, you’ll remember her weekly posts titled “Mailboxes and Old Barns”. They were wonderful recollections of a life growing up in rural East Montana.
Mailboxes along the roads and old barns set back in fields overgrown with weeds often served as landmarks that told us where we were and how far we had to go. Sometimes they signaled “home” and the end of the road. At other times, barely visible through swirling snow, they told us we had miles to go. When I started compiling these word pictures, I realized they were like those mailboxes and old barns-still identifying important places along the road, still signaling where I am and how far I have to go.
No problem, Puddy…..thank you for the kind reminder! As I understand the new processes, I think any books ordered are actually “printed when ordered”. Very strange, but apparently they have found a way to make such a process profitable.
I remember. 🙂
Today I decided to make a final run for Sams just as our day’s high started– a nice warm Negative 3 F.. I wanted to try one more time to see if I could find around a dozen decent looking small items to put in some of my close neighbor’s mailboxes.
Just as I was getting out of the car with hat, muffler, gloves 4 layers of top wear, and my mid-calf fur lined snow/ice boots here come the wind. You know that type of wind that shuts the door for you when you really don’t want it to. .Stayed put for about 5 minute & than said if not now when.
I can testified the wind does BITE–Only space uncovered was a small strip acrross my eybaalls so I could see. Did wonder if my eyeborw would freeze off LOL. It was the same back to the car, even though the wind changed directection so the car was a bit of a barrier.
At least it was worth it, and tomorrow I will go have some fun with what I found.
You have lucky neighbors! 😉
TY ad–Just me at Christmas…
Just what I do at Christmas….
God bless you!
Thanks, Sharon, for the first- account
I have only third-hand experience with that kind of winter, that being mutiple viewings of the movie ‘Fargo’
It has a couple scenes out on a desolate highway, surrounded by an endless white landscape of several feet of snow
There’s dry snow being swept across the black tarmac by raging winds, that’s when you can “feel” the cold and wind
first-HAND-account
When I first started as an engineer, my lead engineer, who grew up near Baggs, Wyoming would tell us of what he and his brothers had to do each morning before school. It was so cold that they had to hook up a team of horses to drag the pickup truck around until it started, then they’d hook the truck up to the tractor and drag it around until it started, then they would hook the tractor up to the dozer and drag it around until it started. Once it was started, they would hook up the trailer/sled and throw on several tons of hay to take out to the field to feed the cattle (they had a large ranch with hundreds of head of cattle). Then they would go back in, eat breakfast and go to school. Did that every day during the really cold weather.
now THAT’s a ‘Merican life
a particularly trying and industrious life
Ummm … did anybody else notice that the desk where President Imposter was sitting during that ABC News clip wasn’t “The Offal Office?” How many television studios does this man have?
That was the Oval Office.
Certainly unlike any other incarnation than I have ever seen.
that window looks like the same one that was in the fake studio
— one time they had pine trees just outside – forget if there was snow or not
— the other time it was container-ship crane gantries at Port of Long Beach
— right outside the same frikkin’ window!
You know I was going to say something but for once, I didn’t want to be petty.
Zelensky was at the White House, there are exterior photos documenting it (I posted one on the prior page). Biden was there too.
Any time he defaults to his “nope – not a joke – not joking” – it just reminds me that the inmates are now running the asylum. The psychopath inmates…..
Between eggs and heating bills, it sure will be a long bitter winter! FJB
Another episode of “Fear Factor” with tonight’s guest host: Effin Joe Biden!
Our regular host Dr. Tony Ouchie is out tonight
“What is up with the weather Joe?”
Hmmm, How is the Global Warming Syndicate explaining this cold weather phenomenon? In my lifetime so far, the latest episode of this occurred was the day my sister died. December 19, 1983. It was 70 degrees that day. And three days later it went to twenty below zero. By the time I returned back south, my water pipes froze in my apartment, and ice was pouring out of my neighbors second story bathroom.
I’ve always liked the movie “the Day After Tomorrow.” Not exactly Christmas material, but it is funny. Americans invading the Southern border to get away from the cold.. What a hoot.
Instead I”ll be watching “Its a Wonderful Life,” all versions of the” Christmas Carol” with Patrick Stewart and George C. Scott and burning lots of wood in the two wood burners.
Things here in PA may improve by Sunday.
Anyways, after a really funky week full of sadness, I remembered that my parent’s absolutely loved the Fiddler on the Roof. This song saved my spirit today. May it raise yours up too:
Sabbath Song:
A
And may your parent’s honored memories be likewise praised.
Yes, Retired Ig, this beautiful Shabbat Prayer certainly lifts ones spirit. Thank you for posting it was lovely.
My absolute favorite—nothing else like it — Christmas Carol is the one with Alistair Sims. Once you’ve seen his Scrooge, no one else will do. (Hope I’m spelling his last name right.) Seriously — catch it this year, and you’ll want to make it your every-year-classic.
Joe Bastardi has been forecasting this polar blast for over a month and I have been passing on that information on the Open Thread from the beginning when he forecasted it. The same thing happened a couple winters back when Texas got that super cold blast of Arctic air. Joe was forecasting at least three weeks before any of the weather models did.
Joe is an old school meteorologist using old school methods. So when you hear so called “experts” claiming that this is caused by “Climate change”, ask them why they did not forecast this particular event.
Another point. All of the weather models are ALWAYS wrong about what the actual low temperatures will be when storms like this bring dangerous cold to the deep south! They always forecast the temps to be warmer by a considerable margin than they actually turn out to be.
Great time to see if Texas actually took effective action to stabilize their grid since that last disaster.
Looking to the future. Based on analogs of past global weather patterns, there is a very good chance that we will see a reset for the same thing happening again in January. The month starting out mild then polar blasts hitting western Europe, Asia, and N. America again. Watch for it.
December 5th started what statistically is the coldest 90 day period in the Northern Hemisphere. Typically the coldest weather hits early in February. So we have a long way to go and there is every indication that this winter, which is the third La Nina winter in a row, is going to be considerably colder than the last several winters we have experienced in N. America and the NH in general.
The morons running Germany are already anticipating this, and are telling the citizens that if they have to ration or have blackouts it all the fault citizens for not rationing themselves.
this ‘global cooling’ is the direct result of bombing the russian nordstream gas lines, biden emptying the US strategic oil reserve, biden stopping fracking and drilling, europe shutting down industry and farming, and the ‘build back dumber’ global program. /s
Really? And here all along they have been telling us that the increase in that magic molecule of CO2 was to blame for all the climate disaster they predicted and predict (which never happen) and atmospheric CO2 has not declined but continues the same gradual increase.
Oh, and reason that the German government is blaming the citizens for what is likely to come, is because blaming it on the Russians did not play well.
It is a replay of what Hitler did. Saying that his failures were the fault of the German people because they were not worthy.
Are we sure they won’t find a way to blame MAGA?
Don’t ever forget this:
What percentage of the windmills and solar panels will provide power in this storm? 100%? 50%? Less?
Maybe I should charge up some batteries and pre-grill some chicken.
Global warming my ass……………………….
The chickens are coming home to roost:
UK OFGEM Authorize Brown Outs – Watts Up With That?
From that website: Won’t be long until the terms “brown out” and “black out” are considered racist.
Bomb cyclone hits… literally 60 seconds for the temperature drop… TWENTY foot waves simultaneously on Lake Superior, Michigan, Erie AND Ontario… flooding up and down East Coast?
I wonder if electric cars cause this great global freezing?
I live in Ocean Shores, WA, a small beach town on the Pacific Coast, a little ways up from Oregon. We rarely get freezing weather as bad as it was last night. It was 25 degrees and also blowing with sustained winds up to 35 MPH. I woke up this morning at 4AM because I was cold. The power had gone out during the night and it was 47 degrees inside my house. So much for global warming.
This reminds of a little known fact about WA State. 11,000 years ago, my home in Washington State, was under 10,000 feet of solid ice. It took thousands of years, but it all melted without any human interference.
I love Ocean Shores! Many great memories there. Stay safe friend))
Is there actually anyone that believes the climate can be regulated like a thermostat?
To regulate climate you must be able to regulate weather because climate is merely the long term aggregate of weather. So many of these modern “climate scientists”, which can’t get anything right in the projections, are saying that we can control the weather.
They are no different from the old scamsters that showed up during droughts claiming they could make it rain if the locals would just pay them to do so. And those that believe in what the scamsters say are just as ignorant and naive as the citizens back then that were willing to pay.
Born and raised in Fairbanks, Alaska, I remember that time frame well. The hubby worked at Fort Wainwright as I did for a time 🙂
Here’s a main driver of this frigid air plunging into the US as far as Texas and Louisana
This is the upper-level jet stream, showing a ‘trough’ centered on the midwest, and a steeply plunging arm on the west coast, with high-velocity upper-level wind driving frigid polar air down into the states
It’s from a Navy climate model, I think the colors correspond to wind speed (isotachs) and there are wind barbs showing direction and faint contour lines for 200 hPa (hectopascal) pressure heights
But it’s mostly the rough geometry that tells the tale
Jet streams are upper-atmosphere air currents about 6 to 9 miles up
If they’re a simple “band” around the earth, they’re a nice conveyor for air travel – going east they’ll be a tail wind of about 250 knots … going west they’ll be a headwind
But sometimes – particularly in winter – they get contorted, with “troughs” and “ridges”
Troughs make a ‘U’ pointing at the equator; ridges make a hump
Upper-level troughs are usually underlain by lower-atmosphere “lows” (low-pressure systems)
It’s the lows that make rainy or snowy weather – the storms
So when one of these upper-level troughs form, they anchor the lower-level weather and drag it across the continent west to east as the upper-level current shifts and migrates east
And the whole setup tends to draw arctic air to the south, into the mid continent
Kinda sorta – I’m not a meterologist, just a surfer who know a little about the weather
Some background
https://scijinks.gov/jet-stream/
temperature forecast from Daily Mail UK
At my place in central Indiana this blast has been a bust as far as snow fall. the NWS and models were projecting 6-10 inches. So far we haven’t gotten 3 inches. I am thankful that that power has kept on despite the winds and ice.
The “Polar Vortex”, as they call it now, is an area of low pressure that results in the flow of a jet streams around the Arctic and Antarctic. That Jet Stream gets disrupted by high pressure which blocks the normal flow and pushes the “polar vortex” out of its normal laminar flow pattern. Joe makes his forecasts in part based on the patterns of high pressure cells and particularly at the 500 mb level over the Arctic circle. For example, here is what that pattern looked like on Dec. 21st.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fj4bFIjWYAIIVIV?format=png&name=medium
There are also the various short term oscillations. Such as the EPO (Eastern Pacific Oscillation). All four of the short term oscillations are in negative territory. And on top of those four the Madden-Jullian Oscillation which has moved into a cold phase.
The climate scamsters claim that CO2 is causing the flow of the “Polar Vortex” and other jet streams to be disrupted more often. If you google “Jet Stream disruption” the top link will be titled “Green House Gases”.
This is total BS. Though there is still plenty of argument about what causes the formation and movement of the high pressure cells that disrupt the flow, there is not a bit of real observational evidence that CO2 or any other gas causes a disruption of the flow of Jet Streams. Believe it or not there is a strong correlation between spikes in solar activity and the formation of blocking high pressure over the Arctic.
thx, rah, appreciate the explanation and sources
Here’s your figure, should show, I edited the link
Forgot to mention that it’s the high-pressure systems that bring the cold air. High pressure systems “blow down”, bringing frigid air aloft down to the ground surface. In low pressure systems, air rises and moisture condenses into water vapor and then rain. So Lows bring the rain – the storm – and the following High brings the frigid temps. Viewed from the side, a preceding low is followed by the high with descending cold are being pushed down to the surface. It spreads out and “noses under” the warmer air of the low it’s following. This also causes air to rise, again condensing into rain. That’s called a cold front, a rain band with high winds and cold, dry air to follow (the high).
descending cold AIR being pushed down
rah – do you have a favorite online source that discusses current state of the various oscillations you mentioned? and their combined significance?
I’m aware of each but can’t think of a single site I could visit to make the concise summary you did. I could visit pages specific to each one, but not all – and I couldn’t draw a summary interpretation of what the net result would be
thx
In this case my information came from Joe Bastardi who is showing GFS version. But here is the NOAA page with four of the short term oscillations.
CPC – Teleconnections: Arctic Oscillation (noaa.gov)
BTW, notice the term “teleconnections” That is the term you might like to use when looking for information on any of the short term oscillations.
thanks much, rah
appreciate your help
and here is the umbrella teleconnections pages that lists 4 indices
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/teleconnections.shtml
and one page above that, even more of an overview
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/MJO/climwx.shtml
“So cold that airplanes could not achieve lift…” Planes routinely fly at altitudes where temperatures are -70. ‘Lift” is enhanced by colder temperatures. Getting their engines started or inability to deal with wing icing prior to takeoff may be the problem, but not “achieving lift” because of temperature.
LOL! Colder air is denser air. Take off rolls are longer on hotter days or at higher altitudes due to the air being less dense.
It held steady at -11 overnight here in my part of Nebraska (near Omaha), not as cold as yesterday morning’s -18, but it is much more windy, so God knows what the wind chill is. Probably will get a bit colder now, as it’s 7:38 and getting light out. I have a fire in the fireplace and a space heater, as the furnace has issues.
Stupid people let stupid things happen, sometimes they even vote for their own demise.
Pretty bad when you can’t trust the potus about even the weather!
Well, I’m sure the puppet’s handlers are hoping that a lot of the opposition voters will lose power and die. The majority of Democrat voters only exist during Election Season and then vanish into the ether until the next election, so they never die.
This guy is a frickin piece of toast! Hey…maybe the power will go out in DC and never come back on!
Dear Santa,
Please give every single U.S. politician in Washington a nice sleigh ride to the North Pole and don’t
ever bring them back.
Thanks in advance,
An American
PS. And please don’t leave Zelenskyy behind.
minus 17 here as I write. If you need to teach people to take care of themselves when they step outside in a freeze, you are talking to idiots. Now, we actually Name these “bomb cyclones”, when in all my years out here in the Flyover, it has been called Winter.
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Joe Bastardi
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Bomb cyclones this week atmospheric rivers into the West Coast next week. Meteo misinformation media Goes wild with things that have always been there and we’ve always seen if you have a lick of objectivity about you. Fat chance with the hype machine on climate change today
Global Warming is a Big Shiite Sandwich and we all have to take a bite….
Global Warming….Not a joke….
Global warming
Storm warning advisory by a known liar. That how people die. No trust in Biden!
Bizarre to hear the senile old dolt telling us to take the weather seriously. Gee, what did we do before we had the gov telling us to be careful in freezing weather? Guess we all got along somehow.