Hmm, Global Warming anyone?

[MKSheppard]

http://www.sunspot.net/news/weather/bal ... Dheadlines

By Johnathon E. Briggs and Scott Calvert
Sun Staff
Originally published February 17, 2003, 9:12 PM EST

The state’s worst winter storm in 81 years left Marylanders with sore
backs and aching muscles Monday as they began the arduous task of digging out from beneath mounds of snow that collapsed rooftops, snarled roads, stranded hundreds of travelers and was blamed for at least three storm-related deaths.

Across the region, awnings and barns buckled under the crushing weight of the snow, causing injuries to people and livestock. Even the 119- year-old roundhouse at the B&O Railroad Museum complex was not immune: The historic shrine to American railroading lost half its roof to a mass of snow.

“This is going to go down as a pretty memorable storm,” said Andy Woodcock, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sterling, Va.

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. said Monday that he plans to ask President Bush to declare Maryland a federal disaster area to help the state recoup the costs of cleaning up the storm, second only to the “Knickerbocker Storm” of January 1922 that dumped 26.5 inches in Baltimore.

The state will spend at least $30 million by the time road-clearing crews are done scraping the last inch of snow from state highways, Ehrlich said.

If the state is eligible, the federal government could reimburse state and local governments for up to 75 percent of what it cost to combat the weekend storm that dumped 24.4 inches at Baltimore-Washington International Airport.

The governor lifted his executive order Monday that banned driving Sunday night, but he continued to make televised pleas for motorists to stay off the roads.

State troopers, patrolling in four-wheel drive vehicles and more than 50 National Guard Humvees, had responded to 1,330 calls for service by Monday morning, including 173 accidents and 764 motorists with disabled vehicles, said Maj. Greg Shipley, Maryland state police spokesman.

But by and large, officials said, motorists were heeding the governor’s advice, which enabled road crews to make considerable progress as the state of emergency remained in effect for a second day.

Movement was slow across the region as Marylanders struggled to a navigate a snow-covered landscape that resembled a beautifully eerie Arctic wasteland.

Planes at BWI Airport were grounded for much of the day.

The Maryland Transit Administration kept buses and trains off the roads and rails. Schools and city county government offices in the Baltimore region -- closed anyway for Presidents Day Monday -- will also be closed Tuesday.

Curbside trash and bulk items will not be picked up in Baltimore, Annapolis or Anne Arundel County Tuesday. Baltimore officials said service would be delayed “until further notice.”

Many on foot

In the storm’s aftermath, walking and shoveling have become the exercises of necessity.

With sidewalks buried beneath heaps of white, powdery snow, pedestrians took the place of cars on streets in downtown Baltimore, walking in the well-worn tire tracks of SUVs. On Monument Street, walkers with arms and thumbs outstretched begged for rides. Along Interstate 95 in Cecil County, a long line of cars snaked behind a wedge of snow plows.

The storm turned Main Street in Ellicott City into a ghost town of closed shops. For much of Monday morning, the only audible sounds were the scraping of snow shovels on sidewalks and the occasional passing of a snowplow, pickup truck or SUV.

Yardstick measurements showed snow levels that ranged from 16 to 31 inches along Main Street. So much snow fell that it brought down a tent over a restaurant patio and the metal awning over the sidewalk in front of a hardware store. It also created drifts so high that they engulfed cars parked along a nearby residential community.

“Some of these cars look like igloos, they’re so covered,” said

John Aundertmark, who was digging out his Ford along Frederick Road.

In the Landings neighborhood of Annapolis, Carolyn Smith looked spent after two hours of shoveling knee-deep snow from around her Toyota Camry and her front steps. Her exercise routine typically consists of walks through the Library of Congress, where she is a researcher.

“I may discover aches and pains I never knew about before,” she said Monday. “I keep thinking, ‘Where are all those enterprising neighborhood kids who want to make a little money?’”

The cleanup

In Little Italy, a sense of civic unity was on display outside St. Leo the Great Church, where 12-year-old Rico Feracci was busy shoveling the snow off the steps of the church where he serves as an altar boy.

Rico said he had shoveled the walk outside his house and his grandmother’s house before landing his first paying job -- $10 shoveling for a neighbor on Exeter Street. He was shoveling the snow at the church, he said, for free.

“Even if Father Mike offers me money I ain’t going to take it,” said Rico, who then quickly, and excitedly, realized that his Pepsi can had frozen to the concrete.

“Look at that.”

“I’m hoping to make $50 by the end of the day,” Rico said.

“But,” he added, examining the dozens of other people shoveling snow along the street, “there’s a lot of competition.”

Shoveling proved deadly for some. Authorities said a 42-year Frederick County man and two Anne Arundel County men died of heart attacks Monday while shoveling snow. The latter were identified only as a 60- year-old from Severn and a 64-year-old from Odenton.

Two other county residents, a 40-year-old Ferndale man and a Crownsville woman, were hospitalized after having weather-related heart attacks, said county spokesman Matt Diehl.

Barbara Marie Johnson, 65, was taken to the hospital Monday after the aluminum awning

in the rear of her North Baltimore home collapsed from snow.

Her husband, Herman O. Johnson, said the 10-by-20 foot awning covering their back yard in the 4500 block of Marble Hall Road fell on his wife at noon.

“There was a knot on the side of her head, and she didn’t know what was going on,” he said.

Barbara Marie Johnson, a retired hospital employee, was taken by ambulance to Good Samaritan Hospital.

In Carroll County, a wooden building collapsed under theweight of snow on the roof at Tomorrow’s Promise Farm on Baust Church Road in New Windsor, injuring roughly 50 head of cattle.

Extended stays

By midday, a few folks at the Inner Harbor were walking down the middle of Pratt Street, searching for something to do.

Those stranded guests who ventured out of the Renaissance Hotel were greeted by the strains of the Brandenburg Concertos, beckoning shoppers to the Presidents Day sales at the

Harborplace Gallery that never happened. There was the occasional swhussh of a snowplow.

Amid the frozen downtown landscape, the Harbor Court Fitness Center was an oasis of bare flesh and warmth.

Stranded hotel guests splashed in the steaming hot tub and some booked $75 an hour massages and $120 sessions of “hot stone therapy.”

Jayme Laurash , a father of three from Cranbury, N. J. sat in the 104- degree hot tub with his 2-year-old daughter Madelyn, while his other daughters, Emma 7, and Brynn, 5, frolicked nearby .

Laurash said when he and his wife, Jennifer, heard reports of blowing snow on the New Jersey highways, they extended their weekend visit to Baltimore.

“We had plans to visit the National Aquarium,” Laurash said.

“One day, we got as far as the Hyatt, then hurried back to the pool and hot tub.”

Meanwhile, Dorothy Voelker, 89, wondered at the hubbub the Snowstorm of 2003 caused.

She was an 8-year-old girl during the 1922 blizzard and vividly recalls getting stuck in a snowdrift on 22nd Street. “It was bad then, but we just took it in stride,” she said by phone from the Oak Crest Village retirement community on Walther Avenue. “Now they make such a to- do of it. Then, people just walked for miles to get where they were going.”

When she got stuck, Voelker was trying to walk from her Kennedy Avenue home to Durkin’s store to buy milk for her mother.

Luckily for her, a group of men saw her sink into a snowbank.

“I couldn’t get up. I kept trying to push,” she said. “They had to come out and rescue me.”

All in the almanac

The storm came as no surprise to customers of Alfred

Gladden’s barbershop at Old Town Mall in Baltimore. As early as Thursday afternoon, with two TV sets tuned to the local weather forecasts, all bets at

the shop were on the Old Farmers’ Almanac, which had predicted a major storm from February 16 to 19.

“You know what,” said JuneDavis, as Gladden edged an

electric razor around his ears, “everything that’s happening here, it’s in the Almanac.”

The farmers’ almanac forecast for the Northeast States, which includes the area from

Maine through Virginia says: “Major storm adversely affects New England, south to the Delmarva Peninsula. Heavy rains and snows, accompanied by gale-force winds along coast, very low temperatures.”

Woodcock of the National Weather Service said that warmer temperatures are in store for the week.

“We want a gradual melt,” he said. “We have to be careful what we wish for. As much as people don’t like this much snow, I guarantee you ... people like a good flood even less.”

[Captain tycho]

Hard to believe those old guys died from heart attacks just shoveling snow.

[Sea Skimmer]

No no no you don't understand. You see, global warming, which is caused by human produced amounts of Co2 insignificant when compared to volcanic output, will make the earth warmer. Only that will then make it colder, which will however then spread topical diseases normally found in warm climates. Then the polar ice caps will totally melt despite the increase in cold because it's actually warmer as well.

Then all the evil humans die but the good grass eati9ng green humans can live in the trees above the flood waters.

[Lord Sander]

No no no you don't understand. You see, global warming, which is caused by human produced amounts of Co2 insignificant when compared to volcanic output, will make the earth warmer. Only that will then make it colder, which will however then spread topical diseases normally found in warm climates. Then the polar ice caps will totally melt despite the increase in cold because it's actually warmer as well.

Then all the evil humans die but the good grass eati9ng green humans can live in the trees above the flood waters.

Well, the sea level IS rising at a frightening pace, and none are as accutely aware of this as we are, since most our country has always been below sea level.

[Sea Skimmer]

No no no you don't understand. You see, global warming, which is caused by human produced amounts of Co2 insignificant when compared to volcanic output, will make the earth warmer. Only that will then make it colder, which will however then spread topical diseases normally found in warm climates. Then the polar ice caps will totally melt despite the increase in cold because it's actually warmer as well.

Then all the evil humans die but the good grass eati9ng green humans can live in the trees above the flood waters.

Well, the sea level IS rising at a frightening pace, and none are as accutely aware of this as we are, since most our country has always been below sea level.

Your country is also sinking, that just sucks for you. Sea levels might be rising, but theres nothing humans can do about it, except build bigger walls.

[Alyeska]

As I've explained before, intial global warming can cause global cooling and massive snow storms.

[Mr Bean]

Or the fact we are heading into another Mini-Ice age might be the cause...

[Alyeska]

Or the fact we are heading into another Mini-Ice age might be the cause...

Witht he previous increase of global temperatures, thats bloody unlikely. Ice ages, even mini ones have an affect on the entire northern region of the world (and southern most). Right now you have abnormally hot temperatures in Canada and Alaska in many places. If the trend of warming coninutes we will eventually move into a cold phase no the northern/southern regions while the tropical regions heat up because their temperatures aren't being disapated world wide.

There is a reason why the Ice Ages never moved into the tropics. It was way to freaking hot and the ice was lucky to make it to the continental US. While its cold in the arctic/antarctic, its hotter then normal in the tropics. The reason for this is the underwater converyour belt system is turned off. Instead of the water temperatures being regulated world wide, the tropics heat up while the arctic/antarctic cool down and there is no way to disapate the heat. The thing is it requires a rise in global temperature to start what eventually creates an ice age.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Or the fact we are heading into another Mini-Ice age might be the cause...

On the contrary, I think we're just pulling out of one.

[LadyTevar]

http://www.sunspot.net/news/weather/bal ... Dheadlines

By Johnathon E. Briggs and Scott Calvert
Sun Staff
Originally published February 17, 2003, 9:12 PM EST

The state’s worst winter storm in 81 years left Marylanders with sore
backs and aching muscles Monday as they began the arduous task of digging out from beneath mounds of snow that collapsed rooftops, snarled roads, stranded hundreds of travelers and was blamed for at least three storm-related deaths.

So how much snow did Maryland get after it went thru WVa? Some of our counties had 2-4 feet. The State Capital had only 8 inches, enough for me to stay home because I didn't want to slip/slide all over the road.

[jegs2]

No no no you don't understand. You see, global warming, which is caused by human produced amounts of Co2 insignificant when compared to volcanic output, will make the earth warmer. Only that will then make it colder, which will however then spread topical diseases normally found in warm climates. Then the polar ice caps will totally melt despite the increase in cold because it's actually warmer as well.

Then all the evil humans die but the good grass eati9ng green humans can live in the trees above the flood waters.

Well, the sea level IS rising at a frightening pace, and none are as accutely aware of this as we are, since most our country has always been below sea level.

Hey, I've seen Water World, so I know what's coming -- Hollywood will educate us before we kill each other off!!!

[Jetfire]

Hard to believe those old guys died from heart attacks just shoveling snow.

Snow is not light.

As a recent health blurb has been saying, 40 cm's of snow on an average size driveway weighs around 12 tonnes.

In any case, shovelling snow is not light work, like taking the garbage to the curb or anything like that; it is a major workout even though few people treat it as such.

[Morat]

What does the article have to do with global warming?

[Darth Yoshi]

Shep's citing it as evidence against global warming, I think.

[Darth Wong]

Need I point out the logical fallacy inherent in taking a complex global ecosystem and evaluating its entire aggregate heating/cooling trends based on recent local weather during part of the year in the Northeastern United States?

[Darth Wong]

PS. In the Canadian North, the permafrost is melting. Houses are literally sinking into the ground. The Arctic ecosystem is in chaos. This is a much larger region of environmental change than Maryland.

[Enlightenment]

Here again we see a perfect example of a rightwingnut in action. Bereft of any real intellectual ability or supporting facts, the wingnut must resort to strawmen, arguments from ignorance, blatant lies, and flames to justify the protection of its masters' economic interests.

[Admiral Valdemar]

It must be said that the winters in my area are a lot warmer and shorter now, for most of the past month or two I didn't need a jacket when the sun was out, a few years back in the same weather condition I'd be freezing my arse off.

Some places get warmer, others colder, the ecosystem is a VERY complex model.

[MKSheppard]

Here again we see a perfect example of a rightwingnut in action. Bereft of any real intellectual ability or supporting facts, the wingnut must resort to strawmen, arguments from ignorance, blatant lies, and flames to justify the protection of its masters' economic interests.

Hey asshole, I've read magazines from the 1970s, and they all talk
about Global COOLING

Sheesh people, get your boogeymen RIGHT. Don't flip them around
every 15-20 years.

[The Yosemite Bear]

I keep hearing people talk about the Axial "Wobble" and how north is supposed to become south all of a sudden?

Oh well move on Homosapians, make way for the Cockroaches (They'll survice anything I tell you.)

[Darth Wong]

Hey asshole, I've read magazines from the 1970s, and they all talk about Global COOLING

And what long-term cooling trends did they use as evidence? It would have been quite a trick since there were none.

Sheesh people, get your boogeymen RIGHT. Don't flip them around
every 15-20 years.

Hmmm, you attack one theory with observational support because 15-20 years ago, there was a different theory without observational support. (sigh) More Shep logic ...

[David]

Here again we see a perfect example of a rightwingnut in action. Bereft of any real intellectual ability or supporting facts, the wingnut must resort to strawmen, arguments from ignorance, blatant lies, and flames to justify the protection of its masters' economic interests.

Hey asshole, I've read magazines from the 1970s, and they all talk
about Global COOLING

Sheesh people, get your boogeymen RIGHT. Don't flip them around
every 15-20 years.

One of the reasons people dislike you so much is because you can't disagree without insulting people.

[beyond hope]

Aside from the "new Ice Age" there was also "the Population Bomb," claims that by 1980 we'd all need gas masks to breathe and water would be completely undrinkable due to pollutants, and the doomsday predictions about how quickly we were supposed to burn the last of our oil (from certain predictions I can recall, we're not supposed to have any left by now.) With that kind of track record, can you really blame people who are skeptical when we hear yet another tale of calamity and woe that can only be solved with massive infusions of grant money?

[Admiral Valdemar]

I'm trying to make a habit of not saying anything about the ecosphere since it will no doubt do the opposite soon after.

[Darth Wong]

Global warming is not one of these ridiculous doomsday stories; it is a simple observation that the average global temperature has risen.

It is up to each person to decide whether this warrants a response, and if so, what kind of response. However, it is not disputable that the warming has occurred.