Extensive Snow and Ice: North, and South

Snow cover for the current Northern Hemisphere winter is 2% above normal, and the highest for the past 5 years.

With a major snowstorm in China and snow covering much of Asia and parts of the middle east and a decent snowpack in North America (recently NASA reported 60% of the lower 48 states and all of Canada was snowcovered), our Northern Hemispheric snowcover is now 2% above normal and the highest level in at least 5 years. A rather amazing 25% of the northern Hemispheric is snow and ice covered....December sea ice extent in the Southern Hemisphere was a remarkable 15% above normal and the highest of the entire record as was the case in the late winter (it is now mid-summer and the sea ice is diminishing but is still well above normal).____IceCap

Also linked by Tom NelsonPredictions for further snow this winter:

A briefly bitter cold start to January gave way to a record second week warm spell. Frigid air returned in week 3 concentrated in the central states. It has moderated this weekend in the central and will by early week with some rains in the east but another shot of cold will be felt this week mainly across the north....We are entering a phase of the MJO that favors a series of storms for the west and central states that will bring very heavy snows to many areas there (focused mainly on the Midwest in areas like Des Moines, IA, Chicago IL and Madison, WI).

You will see stories in the news about these snow events through the next few weeks. These storms will ride up through the northeast but those storm track usually mean rain for the east with the exception maybe in some events for the higher elevations up north and west (northern New York and northern Vermont). With time (in a few weeks) the storm track will shift east and assuming there are bullets left in storm gun, the east would get its shot at more snows, in time for ski areas to recover for the important President’s Day week.-----IceCap

Of course, this is only weather. Weather does not become climate until a trend persists for 25 years or more. Weather is driven by the sun, and ocean oscillations. The solar cycles and the cycles of ocean oscillations combine to create longer term climate.

For over a decade, opportunists in politics, the media, certain industries--even in science--have been trying to frame every short term weather event in terms of "catastrophic anthropogenic global warming" (CAGW). A lot of weather events that did not fit the orthodox dogma were either ignored or minimised. But it is now time for everyone to start the clock ticking on the GCM projections of Hansen etc.

Unfalsifiable theories are not science. Up to this point, all we have from Gore, Hansen, etc. is unfalsifiable assertions. Given the public respect and adoration these men have been given (thanks to an uncritical and largely ignorant-of-science media), they should show the courage to lay out a timetable of climate phenomena that would falsify their CAGW theories.