AGW -- Snow Day

So we had a really cold October, then a rather above average November, and this morning winter came in with a vengeance. Since it hasn't been much below freezing of late, I assumed when they said it was going to snow during the night that very little of it would stick. But when the alarm went off at 5:45, and Dorothy looked out the window, we turned on the TV to see that the schools had already been canceled.

I took the van to work today--I'm glad I did since the main South Belt highway I take into work was snow covered and very slippery. It's not often I spend much time at 30 mph on that road--most days I never touch that speed since it's slower than I'm moving when I take the ramps on and off. When I backed out of the driveway, despite knowing every school was closed, it was still a shock to see that my driveway had four or five inches on it. Grand Rapids will be under a winter storm warning until 4 p.m. or so, which means the drive home won't be a picnic either.

There is a really good chance today that Houston will have it's earliest touch of snow ever. Last year they had snow in December also, and tied their record early date. If they get snow today they will exceed that record by 6 days. It was the snowstorm in Colorado that postponed a baseball playoff game the made one of the Climategate fudgers say this in an e-mail to his fellow fudger:

Kevin Trenberth wrote: Hi all. Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low. This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on Saturday and then played last night in below freezing weather).

Oh, and if you missed it, this is the e-mail where he also said: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't."

Well, duh, Trenberth, of course you can't. You're using statistical models. The actual travesty is that he and others of his ilk spoke with such certainty in the first place. You can manufacture all the make-believe you want, but in the end reality is what is.

Real.

UPDATE: It's a new record! http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl//6750042.html