Typical of the green movement and the administration - they gravitate to the convenient extremes that can be expected almost every year somewhere.
This year the snow and cold in the east and central is reaching top ten or even worst ever levels. To do a press conference in one of these regions might lead to snow balls and laughter. So they head to eco friendly California. See how the Sierra snowpack is almost as bad as 1976/77 and 1923/24. But that means it happened before (when the Pacific was in the cold PDO La Nina modes) and in the past said to be multi year.
In 2010/11, very heavy mountains snows brought nearly record snowmelt and skiing that continued into the summer. In 2010/11 near record snowpack filled up reservoirs but the state and federal government did not take advantage of the water to use when the inevitable dry year followed. But the blame gets shifted to carbon dioxide not incompetent bureaucrats. With a push from environmentalists, a judge years ago shut off most of the water for farmers to “save” the Delta smelt, a non-native sardine that took over the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta after somebody dropped some bait fish. AS SEPP reports, California has an under-appreciated engineering marvel in its complex system of capturing storm and spring runoff to prevent flooding and storing the water for irrigation and drinking water in the more arid regions of the state. The system was designed to withstand multi-year droughts of about 5 years. It worked well. Water from wet years was used for dry years.
Unfortunately, Green politicians and environmental organizations could not keep their hands off a system that works well. They have caused much of the water needed for dry years to be diverted into the San Francisco Bay and the ocean, apparently to protect fish such as the delta smelt. Now, California is suffering from two years of drought. Orchards have dried up, and unemployment in many of the agricultural regions, such as the San Joaquin Valley, is very high. Green politicians and environmental groups are witnessing the destructive consequences of their actions. Of course, they are blaming climate change - though more severe droughts have occurred in the past.
The Republican-controlled House recently voted to address the drought by rolling back environmental protections so farmers would have water diverted to their crops instead. The democrats plan instead to provide financial aid - you can’t irrigate crops with dollar bills.
That is by the way, I gave the same advice about stepped irrigation planning to southern Brazilian farmers in 2010 where the cold PDO and more frequent La Ninas in the cold PDO mean more frequent droughts. The intervening El Ninos bring heavy rains that should be stored and used to irrigate crops in the drier prime areas. Drought is aggravated by low solar and we are entering a multidecadal period where that is likely.
Further east Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia and Chicago are setting snow records.
But the climate models are failing miserably.
The winter has been much colder than NCDC has shown with raw data.
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See the long term December/ January trend - you can see the 60 year cycle. This winter is cold but the NCDC numbers are smaller than the raw observation based data used by the models.
The trend is down the last 20 years for the CONUS. THIS IS DECEMBER/JANUARY TREND data downloaded from NOAA NCDC.
Every one of the 9 climate regions in the US are cooling for 20 years.
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Link to all the regions here.