ARCTIC SEA ICE –Slack Tide–

I prefer to contemplate arctic sea-ice in July. It is my summertime escape from inland heat and humidity, because I can’t escape to the shore,  as I could as a spoiled child with a father rich enough to afford a seaside summer-house. But in dark December, when the arctic is lurking outside my front door, (and sometimes even inside my drafty old house), rather than contemplating sea-ice I prefer to contemplate being young and spoiled, and wearing nothing but a bathing suit for days on end,  brown as a nut because sixty years ago mothers didn’t fret about skin cancer.

What does this have to do with sea-ice? Well, as a boy I was so glad to escape the snobby suburbs I wanted nothing to do with snobs at the sea-side, and therefore had an aversion to having anything to do with sailboats. Sailboats seemed the territory of snobs. Instead my joy was rowing about in a tiny dingy, and this made me aware of the currents caused by the tides, which could make my rowing easy or difficult, depending on whether they were with me or against me. Because I was aware of whether tides were ebbing or flooding, I also became aware of a brief poise between the two states, called “slack tide”.

In the simplistic thoughts of a boy it seemed “slack tide” should be easy to calculate, because it would be the moment the tide stopped rising and started to fall. I soon realized “slack tide” wasn’t as simple as it seemed.

For example, when I desired to dip-net for blue-claw-crabs in a tidal marsh I’d row my little boat down a cove’s shore to a delta of sand, seashells and gravel, where the tidal stream was exiting the marsh through a gully that penetrated a sandbar. I’d have to hop out and drag my dingy up the braided stream to where the braids came together in a single channel under a little foot bridge. Looking back to the cove, I could see the tide was starting to rise and cover the very bottom of the delta, but looking into the marsh, I could see the water was still flowing out, and would continue to flow out for more than an hour before the tide rose to the footbridge, and “slack tide” would occur at the bridge as the water stopped flowing out and started flowing in.

I’d dip for crabs in the deeper places where the stream scoured against the outer banks of curves in the meandering channel, trying to keep in mind the tide was changing. Being a boy, such memos often were misplaced in the jumble I called thought, and as I paddled I’d suddenly notice the current becoming slack. This meant I’d have to paddle against the current on my way out, and also that, when I had to hop out and pull my boat by its painter over shoals, or through narrows where the current was strong, the water wouldn’t be sun-warmed and pleasant, but uncomfortably cold.

Interesting things happened when that slack water moved upstream. For example, if you you stood on that little footbridge after dark and shone a flashlight down, you might see a large striped bass, forty or even fifty pounds, venturing inland with the current. Out over the marsh you could hear a odd, popping sound which I was never sure whether was the striped bass, or the eels they hunted.

I was becoming a decent naturalist, for age eleven, but just then my parents decided they didn’t like having a summer house and would rather give their money to lawyers, so they got a divorce. (Not that I have anything against divorce between consenting adults, but by law the boy should get to keep the summer house.)

But now let me return from warmth, and summer, and the halcyon days of a long lost youth, to the bitter business of winter and arctic sea-ice. A sort of slack tide is seemingly occurring at the Pole.

The “tides” affecting the Pole are numerous, due to the many variables involved in the chaos called “weather”.  The most obvious is the biannual shift from 24-hour sunshine to 24-hour darkness.  After a slack-tide period in the summer, when temperatures flat-line for roughly two months near or just above freezing, with little variation, they abruptly plunge nearly thirty degrees (Celsius) between September 10 and November 10. Then, during the winter, they flat-line again, albeit only in the averages. In reality there are dramatic shifts in temperature during the winter, as arctic air surges south as “arctic outbreaks,” and is replaced by maritime air flowing north from the Atlantic or Pacific.

Both the Atlantic and Pacific are effected by different “tides” that last roughly sixty years, called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). In their”cold” phases both cycles cool the waters in their northern reaches, causing sea-ice to expand south, which tends to cool maritime air coming north, which in turn tends to allow the sea-ice at the Pole to grow thicker. The differences  between the “tides” can be seen by comparing the polar temperature graphs of 1963 (left) with 2016 (right).

Roughly the change amounts to between a fifteen and twenty degree difference (Celsius) in winter temperatures at the Pole, which would obviously influence the amount of sea-ice that formed. However such polar temperatures should not be given the same “weight” as temperatures at the tropics, when calculating an “average” for the planet. Why not? Because winter air at the Pole is bone dry, whereas tropical air is downright juicy.

Humidity needs to be included, in any honest calculation of how much energy (and therefore “warming”) a unit of air holds. Unfortunately Alarmists calculate our planet’s temperature giving arctic air the same weight as tropical air, and much of the “Global Warming” we have witnessed since 1963 has been caused by bone dry air getting moister at the Pole during the depth of winter. This creates a false narrative, for the addition of the slightest amount of moisture to such bone dry air causes temperatures to rocket upwards the fifteen to twenty degrees which is so significant to Alarmist calculations. The same amount of moisture would make almost no difference to temperatures at the equator.

That being said, 2016 seems to represent a sort of “high tide” in the oscillation of such temperatures, and we may now be in a sort of “slack tide”, but just starting to edge downwards. (2016 left; 2019 right)

A third “tide” affecting sea-ice is the Sunspot Cycle.

We are currently at a sort of “low tide” between solar cycles 24 and 25, involving a cycle of roughly 11 years. We also may well be at a different “low tide” involving a period of roughly 200 years, with the last “low tide” being The Dalton Minimum, 200 years ago.

There is currently a lot of discussion about what the effect of low sunspot numbers actually means, and my conclusion is that the jury is still out. Alarmists like to state that the effect of the sun is minimal, for the radiance of the sun apparently only varies a tenth of a percent. However this variation is far larger than the variation of CO2 in the atmosphere, which is not one or two parts per thousand but one or two parts per million. I tend to feel that, in their eagerness to blame CO2, Alarmist ignore the changes in TSI (Total Solar Irradiance) in the same manner they ignore the huge difference in moisture in the air between the tropics and the arctic, and how that affects temperature.

While Alarmists agree a small thing can have a huge effect when talking about CO2, they dislike thinking a small change in the intensity of sunlight can have equally huge or perhaps greater consequences. This is especially true concerning situations that apparently are balanced on a hair, such as the alterations between El Nino conditions and La Nina conditions in the equatorial Pacific. A shift between an El Nino and a La Nina can have worldwide repercussions, yet are caused by changes so subtle they are very difficult to predict. Just as a small pebble may cause a huge avalanche, a slight change in the intensity of Trade Winds could shift an El Nino to a La Nada, or vice-versa. I often wonder if the slight decrease in energy reaching the earth when the TSI is at “low tide” could slightly decrease the Trade Winds, which could precipitate an El Nino, or prevent the development of a La Nina.

This would create a counter-intuitive result, namely that slightly less energy reaching the earth would not create slightly less heat, but rather would create warming, because El Ninos are associated with warming.

This solar-caused warming could in turn explain the failure of the PDO to turn to its “cold” phase in the expected manner, five years ago. The “rising tide” of the PDO is being masked by the “sinking tide” of the sunspot cycle. However the sunspot cycle is bottoming out, and soon it too will be rising. Perhaps the mask will soon be taken off.

This makes me a little nervous, for in certain situations a “slack tide” is anything but slack. For example, sometimes a rising tide at the mouth of a river is “masked” by a sandbar or jetty or jutting reef of rock, and water is kept back from entering the river except through a narrow channel. Then, as the tide keeps rising, the water starts to pour over the obstruction, and abruptly much more water enters the river and pushes upstream. If this surge is funneled by narrowing banks it can become a “tidal bore”, which is anything but boring. It can be a wall of water six feet high, and nothing you want to face in a small dingy. Yet all a tidal bore actually amounts to is a changing of the tide, and a very quick and condensed version of “slack water”.

I sometimes wonder if certain dramatic shifts in temperature seen in climatic history could involve similar dynamics. Various proxies derived from cores taken in icecaps and sea-bottoms indicate fairly stable temperatures which abruptly show a large rise or fall, without any visible rhyme or reason to explain the drama of the shift. Perhaps, just as a tidal bore resembles a tsunami yet requires no earthquake, sudden shifts in temperature require no earth-shaking event, but rather the slow rising of a “tide” to overcome whatever was resisting and “masking” it.

The expansion and decrease of sea-ice involves multiple variables. I’ve clumsily described  the seasons, the AMO and PDO, and sunspot cycles, but likely there are many more. There are multiple “tides”, sometimes working in conjunction and sometimes opposing each other. It seems to me the most dramatic changes would involve “tides” that were formerly opposed starting to work in conjunction. In such a situation opposition might create a calm, but it might be the calm before a storm.

This in turn can make a calm that might seem boring become very exciting. It might seem a bit cynical to distrust peace and quiet, like the sentries at night in a movie, who stand in the dark with the background music intensely suspenseful and ominous. The first sentry states, “It’s quiet…too quiet”. The second sentry states, “I agree. Trouble’s a-brewing, when they play this music.” (However rather than cynical and pessimistic, I prefer to see myself as possessing a certain enthusiastic zest for life).

The old-timers used to speak of a yearly “equatorial storm” which tended to occur around the fall and spring equinox. On these dates the Poles are shifting back and forth between six months of complete sunlight to six months of complete darkness, and it makes a sort of sense that the greatest flood and ebb tides should be occurring around these dates, creating the greatest contrasts between tropical and polar air, gross imbalances which must be balanced, creating hurricanes, typhoons, and monster North-Atlantic and North-Pacific gales. Once this imbalance is corrected things can quiet down into a sort of “slack tide”.

In my admittedly simplistic way of viewing things, a sign of imbalance is a loopy or “meridional” jet stream, which transports arctic air far south and tropical air far north. A sign that things are temporarily in balance is a “zonal” jet stream, which circles the planet in a flat manner, as cold air seemingly has no need to head south, nor does warm air need to head north.

Besides the jet stream being knocked out of balance by the fickle seasonality of the sun, other events can knock things out of kilter. For example, huge volcano eruptions apparently vomit so much ash into the atmosphere that the jet stream can become very loopy, attempting to balance things out. After two enormous eruptions between 1810 and 1815 (seen as ash in ice-cores in both Greenland and Antarctica) the jet stream became so wildly erratic that it apparently surged right across the Pole, from the Pacific into the Atlantic, in the process shoving an unprecedented amount of arctic sea-ice down into the North Atlantic. This caused the whalers up by Svalbard and northern Greenland to speak of Global Warming, as they saw no sea-ice to their north, while the people of Ireland shivered and spoke of Global Cooling, as icebergs grounded on their coasts, an event old-timers stated had never been seen before (nor since).

In terms of increasing the levels of sea-ice, a zonal flow that keeps the cold air up at the Pole is preferable. This not only allows the sea-ice to thicken, but also tends to flush less sea-ice south into the Atlantic. Unfortunately for those who hope to silence yakking, “sea-ice-Death-Spiral” Alarmists (by having a great growth of sea-ice manifest), the current quasi-zonal flow may mean we are now seeing the “calm before the storm”.

If you enjoy worry, most worrisome is the fact we are roughly fifteen years into a “Quiet Sun” period, and it was roughly fifteen years into the last Quiet Sun, (the Dalton Minimum), that volcanoes began popping off; (not merely the two super-volcanoes I mentioned, but many smaller ones as well.)  While I myself cannot claim to comprehend how something as gentle as a sunbeam can erupt volcanoes, scientists I respect suggest there is some correlation we don’t yet understand. Therefore, worry if you will.

Another worry you may enjoy is the fact the “rising tide” of the “cold” PDO has been opposed by the “falling tide” of a sunspot-cycle, creating a precarious sort of balance. Now, even though the next sunspot-cycle may be weak, the sunspot-tide will start rising, and it will start working in conjunction with the PDO. Meanwhile, across the arctic, the AMO is expected to be a tide that will stop falling and start rising, as a “warm” phase gives way to a “cold” one.  Having these three variables all shift and begin working in conjunction may be factors in some longer-term balancing act, but in the short term I suspect they will knock things very much out-of-balance, and cause some atmospheric reaction I certainly don’t dare forecast, but very much hope I live to see.

This is very dramatic talk, considering the current situation is rather dull. To be frank, the Pole is more zonal than I recall ever seeing during winter, in recent years. It’s Dullsville, Baby, Dullsville…….unless you are like me and suspect it is sort of calm before a storm.

What maps show is that high pressure basically parked at the Pole, and though it has wobbled about a bit it has refused to be knocked off the top of the planet by some rude “Ralph” (area of anomalous low pressure) attempting to be king-of-the-mountain. It has been a traditional “Polar Cell” and has behaved in a traditional manner, with lows about its edges.

I lost some maps due to a vile virus invading my computer, but here are the Danish Meteorology Institute  maps of the recent past. When I last posted on December 10 this was the situation:

At that point things were still fairly mobile, and the high pressure north of Canada represented a blob of cross-polar Siberian cold I expected would move south into North America. Some of it did, but not as a mighty high, but more as sneaky cold, bleeding south through Eastern Canada even as Pacific air fought its way into Western Canada. Over North America occurred a sort of state of confusion, with neither the warm Pacific Chinooks nor the Arctic Outbreaks winning, but both sides fighting to various standstills, and making life very hard but interesting for full-time weathermen. No so-called “pattern” would establish itself. Then my computer crashed, which explains six days of missing maps. When I staggered back to functioning on December 16 the maps show you didn’t miss much.

The low pressure north of Finland had moved to the Laptev Sea, as the gale by Iceland had weakened greatly and existed over  the Kara Sea. Most interesting was the high pressure over the Pole.  Some of it moved south into Canada, but the body stayed behind and, if anything can be called a “pattern”, it was the stubbornness of this high, so let’s call it “Stub.”

Stub stays stubborn, with lows wavering indecisively around it.

More of the same. “Feeder bands” from Pacific and Atlantic failing to fuel any sort of “Ralph”.

More of the same.

More of the same, but the first hints of “CC”,  a low developing over the Canadian Archipelago.

Stub over Pole. CC very disconcerting, as it is a cold-core low with no obvious feeder-bands.

High pressure over Hudson Bay perhaps feeding CC, but, if so, feeder-bands are not very obvious in isotherm map. Stub remains stubborn.

Same.

Three days later, and Stub is getting nudged off the Pole. What I find hard to explain is how CC can have colder air than Stub. (Because highs are suppose to be cold air sinking and pressing down, and lows are suppose to be warm air lifting up.) Elsewhere, note Atlantic feeder-band artificially spikes Pole’s temperature even as surrounding areas are very cold.

Note: Feeder-band are chilling and failing to form a “Ralph.”

Feeder-band perhaps growing low pressure northeast of Svalbard, pushing Stub towards East Siberia,  as CC is the coldest-cored arctic low I can remember seeing.

Feeder-band chilling swiftly, but has created a pathetic “Ralph” briefly at Pole, as  Stub cycles towards East Siberia. CC is very cold, but at least has the decency to develop a hint of a feeder-band.

36 hours later: Current Map; Stub seems to be exiting into East Siberia, and perhaps the slack-tide period is ending. CC is still whirling north of the Canadian Archipelago, perhaps venting arctic air down into Canada, and also into Bering Strait, which has swiftly iced-over. The feeder-bands have faded, showing how such air loses heat in the dead of winter. Perhaps the small low in Fram Strait will come north and be a “Ralph”, but for the time being the Pole has remained quiet, and has generated cold.

This quasi-zonal pattern has allowed sea-ice to grow without undue interruptions, especially in Bering Strait and Hudson Bay. (Thanks to Ron Clutz for animation).

This growth of sea-ice has allowed the “extent” graph to show levels zoom up from “the lowest in recent years” to “the highest in recent years”.

But that ice isn’t coming south. What should concern us people-just-south-of-tundra is the cold air freezing that ice, kept north by the “slack tide” of a Quasi-zonal pattern. If things go a certain way, that building cold could rush south as a sort of “tidal bore”, and then it can be colder in southern locales than it is at the Pole, right into February.

If “historic” arctic outbreaks occur, you can expect to hear an uniquely backwards (but clever) argument from Alarmists. Rather than stating a zonal pattern creates more ice at the Pole, they will state more ice at the Pole creates a zonal pattern. (Never mind that we have just seen the opposite occur.) They state this because it allows them to state that, when a zonal pattern gives way to a meridional pattern, and cold air charges south, that the arctic outbreak is caused by less ice at the Pole. This allows them to say Global Warming makes us colder, even though only a decade ago they were saying our children would not know what snow looked like.

In actual fact we could be on the verge of dramatic cooling.

For example, suppose the Quiet Sun did slow the Trade Winds at the Equator, and suppress the up-welling of cold water, but then, as the Quiet Sun became more “noisy”, that suppression became less. And also suppose that the former suppression was opposing the PDO and keeping it from flipping to its “cold” phase.

Furthermore, suppose that the oppression of the PDO was not stopping its development, but rather was masking it on a superficial level. Even though the way we measure the PDO, with sea-surface-temperatures, showed the shift to from cold to warm wasn’t happening, suppose it was happening on levels we don’t measure, perhaps down in the deeps of the sea. If this was the case, then, when the Quiet Sun stopped opposing the PDO, the PDO would not need to start from scratch. Rather it would explode to its fullest magnitude, like a tidal bore charging a six foot wall of water up a river, even though no tide ever actually rises six feet all at once.

Stay tuned.

 

 

 

 

 

 

LOCAL VIEW –Singing In The Pain–

One neat thing about the internet is the ability I gain to hear what people in other places are grousing about. For example, some are complaining their winter hasn’t had snowstorms and there will not be a White Christmas in their locale. This strikes me as ludicrous, for two reasons. First, winter will not even start for another two days. Second, here we are reeling from winter’s blows and many around here are already fed up with winter, before it has officially started.

The cold air masses that plunge down from Canada apparently “lift out” and are pulled back north before affecting many to our south, but we seem to always get clipped. Where to our south they get all rain we get some snow mixed in.

One storm I posted about two weeks ago gave us three feet of snow, though areas not far to our north and south got less than six inches. If it wasn’t trouble enough dealing with such depths of white, the following two storms passed to our west and gave us flooding rains, made all the worse by the fact culverts were clogged with snowbanks. A wash-out littered the end of my driveway with cobbles the size of my fist.

After dealing with deep drifts I had to make sure roofs didn’t collapse under sodden snow, and dealt with a flooded cellar. Then it seemed that the departing rain-storms always pulled down just enough cold air to create just enough backlash snow to force me to deal with clearing it; (at times three inches can be as annoying as three feet).

At the risk of sounding like Rodney Dangerfield, I was starting to feel I’d never get a break. Forget about finding time for Christmas shopping. I was finding it hard to find time to even keep the home-fires burning, or to start the campfires out in the pasture at our Childcare that makes sledding in the cold far more enjoyable for the children. It is hard to even start a fire when the firewood is under three feet of snow. Then children don’t want to sled when it is pouring rain. Then the arctic blasts that followed the rain turned the slopes into sheer ice, and supersonic sledding is downright dangerous when it involves three-year-old and four-year-old kids. (Not that the kids aren’t willing.)

To be honest, I’m getting a bit old to be involving myself in such nonsense. I should be staying home and complaining about the aches and pains brought on by low barometric pressure, not be out in the storms making aspirin salesmen happy by attempting to shovel and split wood like a young man, and to go sledding down bumpy slopes like a child. When the kids demand an igloo I moan. Then, when the igloo is half-built, and the rain ruins it, I start sounding like Rodney Dangerfield.

Despite all the pain, I can find myself singing. I can’t claim credit for lifting spirits, for I do some things by rote, in a purely mechanical fashion, about as cheerful as a robot. I depend on children aged three and four to display the spiritual wherewithal. They are the ones who muster the cheer. They never fail me.

For example, when we ran out of campfire wood I lugged my chainsaw out to the pasture. I know most childcare-professionals turn green at the very idea of small children being within a mile of a chainsaw, but I happen to know, from experience, that children delight in being invited along to the felling of a dead cherry tree or pine.

I take all sorts of precautions, keeping children out of harm’s way even should the tree falls the exact opposite direction I aim it to fall, and the children seem to comprehend the gravity of the situation. I don’t even need to gently rebuke the especially young and naive, because a five-year-old does it for me, like a small sergeant.

A hush descends when I shut off the saw and state the tree is about to fall. Then, when I lean against the trunk, and with a rending crack the tree starts to topple, and I shout, “Timber!”, the children jump up and down more than they do for fireworks, and when the trunk thuds to earth you’d think I’d just invented sliced bread. I keep my eyes on them as much as the log as I cut up the trunk, for they tend to edge closer, eager to load the logs on sleds. Then I likely violate child-labor-laws as badly as Tom Sawyer did when getting his Aunt Polly’s fence whitewashed, for children seem to fail to recognize moving hundreds of pounds of wood to a campfire on sleds is work. For them it seems a romp. But I do nothing to make the work be fun. The children do that work as well.

Another thing I do by rote is to show children what the Christmas carol that begins, “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire” is talking about. Some modern children have no idea what a chestnut, (or even an open fire) is. So I telephone grocery stores until I locate chestnuts, go get several pounds, build a fire and breed a bed of coals, and finally roast some chestnuts. Originally I used a flat rock or bricks, but we’ve gravitated to using the end of a broken shovel.

I never have to lift a finger to make the kids be interested. If anything I use reverse psychology, saying things like “This is grown-up food and you probably won’t like it” and “Chestnuts are too hot for little kids to peel the shells off of”. Even the most doubtful and suspicious will be busily shelling hot nuts, crouching like a squirrel (sans the tail) within an hour. The children supply the eagerness and excitement, as I plod about doing it all by rote.

However even the most idyllic setting can be wrecked by bad weather. Yesterday evening I had a splendid fire going out in the pasture, but noted that the sunset, usually ten minutes after four this far north, abruptly darkened. The wind swirled, and sparks flew from the fire, and then we were hit by an arctic snow squall. Such squalls immediately plaster small faces with wet flakes, and in a gusty wind even the warmest snowsuit can’t counter a freezing face.

I didn’t even wait for the wailing to begin. We immediately abandoned the fire and headed through the swirling, heavy snow for the “warming room” back at the stables, which was a bit like herding cats. The wailing was in full chorus by the time we arrived. Temperatures were crashing as yet again we got “clipped” by the coldest air so far this season, and again temperatures dove towards zero ( -17 Celsius.) By the stable’s infrared lamps the wailing soon ceased.

This morning’s bright sunshine did little to warm things, as the north wind roared in the pines.

Today I thought I might get my Christmas shopping started, but a member of my staff suffered a misfortune and I had to cover for them. Rather than being spiritual and feeling pity for them, I was Rodney Dangerfield and felt sorry for myself. (It is hard dealing with a bunch of small children bouncing off the walls when you can’t do the logical thing, which is to throw them outside.) (I’d rather “delegate”, and watch my staff deal with such chaos.)

Actually, children want to go out despite the cold, especially when the low, December sun is white in a vivid blue sky, and looks inviting through a window. Rather than quarreling I tend to dress them up in their snow suits and allow them out to learn for themselves that their fingers and toes are swiftly bitten by an invisible creature. I keep an eye on their cheeks, watching for the healthy pinkness to tinge to purple, which is a sign the white patches of frostbite may soon follow. I also teach lessons that northern people should know, such as staying out of the wind, or staying close to the sunny side of a barn, which happens to be right by the warming room at the stables. I want to be by that room for I know that, despite all the clamoring to go outside, and all the work of putting on snowsuits and boots and hats and mittens, in as few as five minutes the exact same children will be clamoring to go back in. I prefer that they go into a room where I don’t have to take their snowsuits off. Some settle in the warming room and play with toys or color with cold crayons, but other go in and out, in and out, all morning long. By lunch I’m exhausted, and glad to hand the children off to an arriving member of the staff who will usher them indoors to lunch and settle them for “quiet time”.

But what about poor old Rodney Dangerfield? What about me? Who will usher me or settle me? No one, because I’m a grown man. I’m macho. But machismo didn’t make me all that happy today. I felt the pain but didn’t feel like singing.

It was too late for shopping, (as I also had an afternoon shift), but I had other tasks to catch up on. The woodpile on the porch was getting low, and I needed to cut some short logs from the long lengths of wood up on the back hill behind the house. It shouldn’t be so hard, now that recent rains had reduced the three feet of snow to six inches. I hoisted my chainsaw and headed off stoutly in that direction, and heard the pines roar, and then was hit by a blast of wind that made me wince and cringe away. Instantaneously I decided the saw was too dull. Rather than cut wood I should sharpen the saw. When I touched the blade the fabric of my gloves froze to the steel. I decided I should do the sharpening inside by the hot wood stove.

I think it was at this point my mood changed. Perhaps I don’t always need three-year-olds and four-year-olds to supply the spiritual wherewithal. Perhaps I can rouse something called “a sense of humor”, and muster enough poetry for a sonnet about sharpening a saw.

I know my wife don’t like machines within
Her tidy, warm house, but Wife wasn’t home.
The cold would freeze chainsaw’s steel to skin
And so I brought the chainsaw in, but own
Brains bright enough not to place Saw on polish
Of Wife’s Table. Instead I bent Old Back
And creaked down to the floor, a smallish
Rat-tailed-file in hand, and by Stove began Attack
On Dullness, tooth by tooth. Hearing grinding
My old dog came over to see what bone
I gnawed, down on her level. Then, finding
None, she licked my face. So, now I own
That simplicity’s not all that boring,
Stuck inside with arctic winds roaring.

THREE DARK DECEMBER SONNETS

Before celebrating the return of Light and the Candle in a cavern, December holds days when light is least, like starlight glinting in new moon’s midnight icicles.

Don’t ask the Almighty, “Why shouldn’t I?”
He’ll reply, “Do you really want to know?”
If you then nod, you may plunge from the sky
Like bright Lucifer. Then pain helps you grow.

“Why avoid bad girls when they’re so much fun?”
“Do you want to know?” “I want it madly!”
Then fun fades and faith cracks; sad morning sun
Shows fun isn’t fun when the bad treat you badly.

All such suffering is avoided by they
Who heed the advice spoken from on high.
But I could see no good, and wouldn’t obey,
And sought the answer to that hard word, “why”.

Now I ask “what” with a sad sort of grin
For I missed seeing “what” might-have-been.

*******

Humbled by time, and facing a cruel world
That has never cared a hoot for the Truth,
I face the Truth. I lift the gauntlet hurled
Down by liars and ask them, “What’s the use
Of fighting your own wavering shadow?
It only fights for as long as you do.”
They do not understand, for they cannot know
The Truth they deny. Beauty that is True
Stands waiting with asking, appealing eyes
But they still scorn it, as they’ve always done.
What is ever-fresh and young they disguise
In decrepitude, crucifying the One
Who heals, and so I lift my wondering eyes
To where the heavens are blue and clear
And ask, “Where on earth do we go from here?”

*******

Why does God create only to then burn?
Why grow vines only to prune and then throw
Into the fire? Men are fools, and fools learn
Through blunders. What can I possibly grow
When my entire life is but a rough draft
Doomed to be crumpled and thrown into the trash?

God knows the answer. The Creator’s craft
Weaves vast vaults of starry skies as a mere sash
For Atlas-shoulders. Creation’s ending
Is beyond creation, for Love needs Love.
Space and time are curved, with all things bending
Back to the beginning. (I’m speaking of
What can’t be spoken.) Though I’m a rough draft
I think I will love the result of God’s craft.

LOCAL VIEW –Pyro-chickens–

I am an idealist and have fairly high standards, but life has had a way of humbling me. Often I fail to live up to my own standards. For example, I feel I should drive a fancy sports car, but in fact drive an old clunker. I feel I should be rich and famous, but in fact am poor and unknown. Not that I am less optimistic. I keep right on plugging ahead, rolling with the punches, and refusing to allow a few piffling set-backs to get me down.

In some senses I suppose this makes me a hypocrite, for I state standards should be high while looking a bit low. Also I seem to have a disconnect from reality, only managing to accomplish 5% of what high standards require, which seems a sure recipe for failure. However I sail through debacles and fiascos I seemingly shouldn’t survive, and through the grace of God emerge unscathed, at times reminding myself of Mr. Magoo.

One characteristic of Mr. Magoo is that he is so near-sighted that he is constantly misinterpreting what he is seeing, and driving the wrong way down one-way roads in any number of ways, but he also possesses blind luck, and miraculously never is killed in headlong collisions, and in fact is often blissfully unaware of the dangers he’s just escaped by the skin of his teeth, (though he is able to take offense at what his poor eyesight sees as a rude gesture from an onlooker, when it is actually an inanimate coat-rack.)

To misinterpret what you are seeing is like a baseball player expecting a fastball when a curve is coming, or a banker expecting a boom just before a bust, or a weatherman predicting sunshine just before an storm. We all experience such failures, and recovering from them is part of life. However I have noticed some fascinating things happen during that period of recovery, which causes me to think the grace of God is involved.

One thing we seldom see coming is particularly bad weather. This makes mincemeat of our high standards, for a thing like three feet of snow makes things we don’t schedule or even think about, such as walking from the front door to our car, suddenly an unexpected task, a thing we didn’t include in Plan A or Plan B, and because we had no contingency plan in effect we are an hour behind, just shoveling our way to our car.

Another thing we seldom see coming is the absence of a crucial employee we count upon. Because we must fill-in, there is other work undone, and we soon are another hour behind.

These hours add up, until one must give up on high standards, because certain deeds cannot be completed, and are either postponed or cancelled outright. Standards start slipping. For example, after a big storm one thing I notice at the local market is that most women are having bad-hair-days.

As soon as standards slip, danger increases. One wants to cover every contingency, but simply lacks the stamina. And it is at this point people start to pray, (albeit under their breath, if they are Atheists). Also at this point many who think they have faith because they attend church regularly discover their faith is weak, and mutter doubts such as, “If God existed he wouldn’t allow it to snow three feet.” In conclusion, three feet of snow tests the faith of Atheists in their Atheism, and Believers in their Belief, for there is nothing like the whiff of danger to peel away the thin skin of our intellectualizing, and expose our hearts.

On a farm, the increasing danger caused by slipping standards is painfully obvious. Crops can wither or rot or be smothered by weeds or consumed by vermin, and animals can be injured or die. Because farmers are not perfect, they are subject to punishment and guilt for every imperfection. They feel waves of anger and pangs of grief over the death of a chicken, (even without the help of animal-rights-activists, who seem primarily concerned about guilt).

My chickens, on the other hand, care little about me. They just want food. They rush me even when I’m on time, and if I’m late their onrush makes it difficult to walk. In fact, rushing me is such a habit that, even if I have just fed and watered them, they rush me on general principles, when I drop by to try to make their coop warmer. Not a single chicken makes my work easier by handing me a hammer, and in fact they tend to make work more difficult by pooping on the hammer’s handle.

The winter-quarters I have built them utterly fails to meet my high standards. I had a Mercedes planned but have flung together a Model-T. I could give a long list of excuses, but in essence I failed to plan for December to pounce upon us early, in late October. Hit by arctic blasts, huddled in their summer quarters, the chickens formed a ball of feathers at night that looked like a single extra-large chicken, made of eight. Therefore I built and moved them to their winter quarters in a frantic rush, planning to make improvements when I had “extra time”, which, due to things like three feet of snow, I never had.

I built them nesting boxes, but the ungrateful birds refused to use them. I could tell by the size of their combs they ought to be starting to lay, but the only egg I saw was a lone one, on the floor in front of the boxes. ( I had no “extra time” to conduct an Easter-egg-hunt.) I lengthened their time of daylight with conventional lighting, and warmed the nesting area by slapping up a heat-lamp, but they seemed completely unwilling to thank me by paying rent with a few eggs.

Instead the ungrateful chickens seemed to feel the heat-lamp wasn’t enough. They needed a bigger fire. One flew up and attempted to sit on the heat lamp (which I confess wasn’t fixed in place according to fire-department codes), and knocked the lamp to the floor. For some reason the bulb didn’t break, and instead shone onto the pine-shavings, making them hotter, and hotter, until they began to smolder. Rather than bursting into flame they formed an expanding area of red coals that ate away at the floor boards and floor joists. Rather than the smoke rising it weirdly was sucked down into the crawl-space and exited to the rear of the stables where no one could see it. Rather than flying out through the goat stalls the culprit chickens remained, perhaps planning to rise from ashes under the delusion they were phoenixes. The expanding pool of red hot coals expanded under the wall of the coop into the straw bedding of the goats, which was powder dry.

And what was I doing? Doing even as the coals expanded outwards, on the verge of bursting into flames and likely consuming the stables in a flash, and probably the adjacent barn as well (because our local fire-department is cruelly called “The Cellar-hole Savers”)?

What was I doing? I was settling down to take what I felt was a well-deserved siesta, patting a swollen paunch loaded with a big bowl of chili with beans.

I hate to admit it, but I was feeling smug. Not that I wasn’t giving glory to God, but one cannot help but feel a bit smug after Mr. Mcgooing through a situation, only doing around 5% of what should be done to uphold high standards, yet coming through it alive. After all, at age 66 I shovel and snow-blow snow in a manner which, compared to how I worked at age 30, is definitely sub-standard. Yet I’d dealt with three feet of snow, and also the fact the snow-blower broke at the height of the storm. I also dug up and split firewood to keep the home-fires burning. And, when the storm was followed by a thaw and deluge, I dealt with a flooding cellar and malfunctioning sump-pump. To top it off, I substituted for missing staff at our Childcare, and hoisted and coddled and romped-with three-year-olds despite the fact my aching body protested. Not that I did 5% as well as the missing staff might have done, and not that a better man would have done a better job of maintaining his snow-blower and sump-pump, but, through the grace of God, I’d made it through the snow and flood. I deserved a brief nap, but just then my cellphone rang.

I learned a storm door was refusing to latch at the Childcare, and was bothering napping children, by slamming in the wind. My immediate response was not texted back. It was, “What about napping old men? Should they be bothered, too?”

Glancing out the window I could see the wind was swiftly dying down. I concluded the problem could wait. I can gain astonishing refreshment from a fifteen-minute “dip”. But some odd intuition hit me. I had a “feeling” I would “dip” better if I dealt with the door first. So, stretching and yawning, I lazily drove over to the Childcare, inspected the latch of the swinging door, jury-rigged some wires to halt the swinging until I found time to fix the latch, and slouched back to my car to head home for my “dip”. But just then another odd intuition hit me, and I wondered if my chickens had laid any eggs.

Just to make such an odd impulse look slightly sane, I should mention I’ve had egg-eater chickens in the past. It had occurred to me one reason I’d found only one egg might be because I had another egg-eater on my hands. One way to become aware of an egg-eater is to check nests more regularly, before egg-eaters have had a chance to eat. So I lazily wandered over to the coop.

The moment I opened the door of the coop my consciousness was hit by a series of jarrings which, because my belly was full of chili and beans and I was feeling soporific and yawning, I cruised through without fully waking up. It took about thirty seconds, but will take far longer to tell.

The first ten seconds involved me hearing the clonk of goat hoofs at the top of the partition that separates the chickens from the goats, and being faced by Lydia, my alpha-female goat, giving me a most-definite “look,”

Now I will have to explain what a “look” is. It is how the alpha-female silently communicates to the alpha-male that he may think he is boss, but her opinions matter. You often see it while herding goats because goats are not “grazers” like cows and sheep that are happy eating grass all day long, but “browzers” like deer that require variety. Often the alpha-male might be perfectly happy munching acorns under oaks, but the alpha-female has decided it is time to move on to munching goldenrod. Rather than just heading to the goldenrod, she starts to give the alpha-male a “look”. She stares at him intently, without wavering, until he notices. He practically jumps when he sees the “look”. Almost immediately, pretending to be casual and that it was his own idea, he leads the flock away from the acorns.

We have not had a male goat around since we gave up on our dairy, (my wife doesn’t like their powerful musk), and therefore Lydia has seemingly decided I am some sort of surrogate alpha-male. I am forever getting the “look” from her. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times I inform her I am not a goat and will not be moved, I keep getting the “look”. And, to be honest, it is a bit uncanny how much can be communicated by eyes, without words. Where I have to use a whole slew of words to describe a mere ten seconds, a goat can communicate volumes with a single glance.

The glance I got from Lydia was unlike any I ever saw before. The closest I’ve ever seen was a look my mother gave a brother when he brought home a girl she didn’t approve of: A distillation of worry. If goats had foreheads, Lydia’s would have creased with concern. My soporific consciousness could only manage a nonintellectual, “What the…”

The next ten seconds involved stepping forward, and noticing the red glow of a heat-lamp was not up where it should be, but down low behind the door of the chicken coop. Two more steps and I opened the door, and witnessed what the above picture shows, but with a lot more red and orange. The above picture is a reenactment produced after the fire was out. At the moment I was not thinking of taking pictures. What appears to be a dark hole in the above reenactment was a circle of red coals crossed by a red line which were coals that had once been the floor joist.

Due to the bizarre drafts, the coals reminded me a smoker’s pipe. (Not that I have seen a man smoking tobacco in a pipe in thirty years.) The coals blazed red, and then as the draft slackened smoke would puff up, and then the coals would blaze again as the draft resumed.

I have not heated with wood for decades without developing the ability to discern when a smoldering fire is about to burst into flame. This fire was right at that point, and the closest faucet was over at the Childcare. However my laziness saved me. Because I don’t like going all the way to the Childcare to get water for the chickens, I’d stuck a bucket under the eves to catch rainwater during the deluge.

The third ten seconds involved me leaping to that bucket, bringing it to the fire, and cupping my hands and throwing a couple of handfuls on the coals.

I have not heated with wood for decades without knowing it makes a world of difference to a smoldering fire if you lower your lips to pucker and blow on it, nursing it to life, or throw a single handful of water on it. Talk about a so-called “tipping point”! Five minutes later and the coop and stables might have been blazing to a degree where the entire bucketful of water would have been a laughable attempt to put the fire out, but because I was in time I deeply discouraged the fire with the first flung handful.

I made sure the last coal was out, spending a long time sprinkling handfuls of water and then feeling with my fingers to locate heat I could not see. (Long ago I heard a tale of a man who awoke at night with his house on fire, fought the fire until he thought it was out, and then went back to bed unaware an ember still glowed. The next time he awoke he was in the next world.) It was interesting how the coals ate like worms down tunnels through the old wood and tinder-dry bedding, especially under the partition and into the bedding on the goat’s side. But at long last, after many handfuls, I could find no warmth and see neither steam nor smoke.

But during the process of poking about I did discover more than I ever expected:

At this point my sense of absurdity kicked in. I was feeling a bit ashamed over my stupidity, kicking myself for putting a heat-lamp where a pyro-chicken could knock it to the floor, and figured I deserved to have my stables and barn burned down. Instead I was rewarded with a dozen farm-fresh eggs. Oh Magoo! You’ve done it again!

However, beyond the irrefutable proof of my own absurdity, I felt I had glimpsed God’s grace. After all, it is quite unlike me to postpone a nap, especially when I have worked hard for an old geezer, and think I deserve a nap. What in the world got into me? Why on earth did I listen to some voice in my own head, and delay my nap to go attend to a door slamming in the wind? And what was that voice?

If you use a search engine such as DuckDuckGo and type in “still, small voice”, you may find yourself back in the Old Testament, when Elijah was disagreeing with Jezebel, and found himself in deep do-doo. When hopelessly outnumbered in a debate with her rump-swabs, he infuriated Jezebel by basically trouncing her rump-swabs with Truth, and consequently had to run for his life because Jezebel wanted him dead. Elijah himself wanted to die, but on his own terms and not on Jezebel’s terms, and, while Elijah was deep in this suicidal despondence, exiled in the wilderness, apparently Truth had a talk with him. What is interesting to me is that Truth did not speak in a deep, booming baritone. Instead the encounter is described as follows:

” A great and mighty wind was tearing at the mountains and was shattering cliffs before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire there was a voice, a soft whisper.”

This makes me wonder about the “soft whisper” that strangely motivated me to act so out of character, and, rather than procrastinating with a nap, made me procrastinate the nap itself.

You cannot deny, as I describe things, that the whisper made a huge difference. Yet it has no obvious substance. It is about as intellectual as the glance I get from a goat.

Why should God concern himself with big things
When the small pebbles that cause avalanches
Will do? Big Icarus sought big wings
And big lights and got clipped, like the branches
In vineyards thrown into the fire. The snips
Of God’s shears are heard in quiet places:
On shaded side streets; humble homes; small ships
Netting small fish. And the bright faces
Touched by His light are turned away from fame,
Which is His shadow. What changes our lives
Is often silent. Those who seek acclaim
Seek to be stunted. The vineyard that thrives
Hears the quiet tread and sees quiet deeds
Of One who knows best what the tavern most needs.

ARCTIC SEA ICE –See Prior Update–

Things have been “interesting” around here. Three feet of snow and temperatures below zero (-17 Celsius) were followed by temperatures above fifty (+10 Celsius) and heavy rain, followed by a flash freeze and three inches of snow, resulting in a car crash, floods in the cellar and a fire in the stables. Handling such interesting stuff leaves little time for posts on sea-ice, but I have managed to update the prior post up to December 10. It can be found here:

https://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2019/12/07/arctic-sea-ice-cross-polar-switcheroo/

LOCAL VIEW –Mining Wood–

In case you young folk want to know where firewood comes from, it comes from “wood mines”.

My rat-hunting dog begs to differ. She claims they are called “woof mines”.

The deep snows make everyday deeds, like getting an armload of wood, difficult. The deep snow-cover also seems to confuse the computer-model used to figure out our forecasts.  Temperatures are significantly lower than forecast. The low last night was forecast to be 10F (-12 Celsius) but instead it is getting down towards zero in the dark before dawn. But check out the forecast. Nearly fifty degrees warmer and raining by tomorrow!?

What a mess it could be! Everything will turn to slush and then freeze solid. Great start to winter. But if the snowbanks by the roads freeze solid it will be more difficult to skid off the roads. They become like bobsled runs.

 

ARCTIC SEA-ICE –Cross-polar Switcheroo–UPDATED

In 5 1/2 days the flow of air up at the Pole went from Canada-to-Siberia (November 28, lower left) to Siberia-to-Canada (December 4, lower right.)

 

Personally I prefer Canada to export its cold air to Siberia, for that means there is less left over to freeze my socks off where I live,  south of the Canadian border in the state of New Hampshire. It seems to me that the last thing Canada needs during winter is the import of Siberian air.

I may be a bit prone to ranting about the subject of cold weather at the moment, as we have been at the center of a so-called “lollypop” on snowfall maps, and are dealing with 36 inches. (91 cm). It’s unfair, because the politicians in the capitals of Concord, New Hampshire 35 miles to our northeast, and Boston, Massachusetts 49 miles to our southeast, experienced less than six inches. If there was any justice they’d be the ones digging down three feet to get a stick of firewood, or even to get their mail. 

But maybe its for the best. If they had to deal with three feet of snow they’d likely invent some new tax or fee to deal with it, and never shovel a flake themselves.

I amuse myself by imagining what politicians would come up with. Perhaps they’d concoct a fee to supply every mailman with a snow-shovel to dig down to mailboxes with, but only a nickle of every dollar would reach the mailman, as 95 cents went to “administration”, which would of course involve the politician’s  Aunt Agnes and Cousin Waldo, plus anyone else who contributed to his reelection.  This alone explains why governments are so inefficient when they attempt to do what ordinary people do. When I shovel out my mailbox 100% of my energy goes into the job, but when politicians try to do the same job 95% goes to nepotism and cronyism, and the remaining 5% causes the Postal Workers to go on strike, for currently they refuse to deliver me my mail if my mailbox is under snow,  (even though I pay them to deliver it with my taxes),  and if you supply them with a shovel and tell them to deliver the damn mail even if it involves digging,  you will not only see no digging, but you will see no mail delivered.  In essence the entire tax-dollar is wasted.

In like manner, it seems my imagination is wasted, when I spend time on the antics of politicians. It seems far better to spend my imagination on the antics of clouds. Not only has the government not yet found a way to tax us for looking at clouds, (though they have invented a “view tax” to add onto the property taxes of houses on hills), but also clouds are 100% efficient, whether it is the cloud’s job to free the sunshine, or to dump three feet of snow on my mailbox.

One reason I look to the North Pole is because it gives me a heads-up to what my future may hold. It was good news that the cross-polar-flow went from Canada to Siberia, for it promised a break in the arctic outbreaks that afflicted us. But it is bad news that the cross-polar-flow has undergone the switcheroo. Mark my words, after a mild spell to start next week, the (bleep) is going to hit the fan around here, and I may manage very few posts about sea-ice, until spring.

One interesting thing about watching cross-polar-flow is that it doesn’t matter which way the air goes, it warms crossing the Arctic Sea. People tend to see the North Pole as the source of cold, but in actual fact the source is Tundra, and to a lesser extent Taiga.  Over Siberia temperatures can drop to -90 F, which gives us pretty pictures like this:

However as that air is sucked towards Canada via cross-polar-flow one notes it swiftly warms, right at the surface, and the Central Arctic Basin seldom sees temperatures below -30ºF, very rarely sees temperatures below -40ºF, and never (that I have seen) reaches temperatures below -50ºF.

Meanwhile Alaska and northern Canada, though not as expansive as Siberia, can see temperatures below  -70ºF. When the cross-polar-flow  moves from Canada to Siberia, one again sees the surface temperatures rise.

What does this suggest? First, it suggests that the true sources of arctic cold are Northern Eurasia and Northern North America, and the Arctic Sea is actually a “heat-island” between two very cold places. Second, because the Arctic Sea is a “heat island” and because warm air rises, it must constantly be sucking air north to replace the air that rises.

If the air sucked north is from the Atlantic or Pacific, it is “maritime” air and slows the growth of sea-ice as it is relatively mild (though usually below freezing). But if the air sucked north is from Siberia or Canada it is “continental” and enhances the growth of sea-ice because it is very cold.  In simplistic terms all Alarmists should root for maritime air being sucked north while all Skeptics root for continental air being sucked north.

In actual fact the opposite may  be true. If you study the temperatures of air-masses,  it becomes obvious nothing squanders the planet’s heat as swiftly as a mild air-mass moving to the sunless Pole. In like manner, nothing preserves the planet’s heat as much as it’s coldest air never freezing lower latitudes, and instead being warmed over the Arctic Sea.

Some eloquent arguments  may then arise between those over-focused on sea-ice and those over-focused on air temperatures. Both are “wrong”,  for the situation is complex and involves multiple variables. One reason climate models fail is because they miss certain variables, or fail to give certain “weight” to certain variables, or even to vary the “weight” of variables (which creates varying variables). It is so complex it tends to give me a headache, so what I prefer to do is to make an overly simplistic forecast and then enjoy my failure. Fortunately no one is depending on my forecasts, for it frees me from blame and guilt, and, like a child at play, I think train wrecks are cool.

 

One train wreck in my forecasting has been due to attempting to see a pattern, when the pattern is a switcheroo pattern, which in essence is a lack of a pattern. If you try to base things on a Canada-to-Siberia flow then you get messed up when the pattern goes through a switcheroo and is the exact opposite 5 1/2 days later.

Another train wreck occurred because a pattern did persist even as things all around it were going through a switcheroo. What happened was that an upper air trough in eastern North America combined with a ridge to the west and brought a flow of arctic air persistently south, the first half of November.  Then this flow was interrupted by the Aleutian Low penetrating the ridge in the west, which allowed Pacific air to flood inland in Canada. What this usually means is that our north winds become noticeably milder, because it involves air from a different “source”.  That change was the “switcheroo”, but the arctic air wasn’t entirely banished from the north winds. Way over towards Greenland a thin ribbon of arctic air bled south, sneaking over the east side of Hudson Bay into Quebec. That was the “pattern that persisted”. Perhaps the arctic wasn’t breaking records and sending impressive blobs of high pressure south, (causing Texan ranchers to laconically drawl, “Nothin’ between here and the North Pole but a few strands of barbed wire an’ some cold cows.”) But the arctic flow persisted in the very east of Canada. That resulted in a personal train-wreck forecast, for that cold air was the reason that rather than rain we got three feet of snow.

If one is in the mood to be gloomy, that persistent drain of cold in the east of Canada, even when the west is flooded with Pacific air, does not bode well for the Great Plains and East of the USA. If it effects us even when the cross-polar-flow is Canada-to-Siberia, it will be far worse when the flow is Siberia-to-Canada. Our worst winters see the arctic sweep south down the east side of the Rockies, brew trouble by mixing with tropical air in the Gulf of Mexico, and send snowstorms up the east coast.  This early in the winter the Atlantic retains summer warmth, so the storms often contain rain or are all rain, but as the winter proceeds the big cities of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and even Washington D.C. get clouted, (and politicians get busy dealing with the climate by raising taxes).

Around here the last thing we want right now is rain. When you have three feet of snow on your roof the snow acts like a sponge in the rain, and the weight of all the wet snow can cause buildings to collapse. In fact I’m going to shovel the roof of my goat’s stable over the weekend. (When younger I made some extra money during bleak winters risking my neck in that manner, but now I just do it for survival, which I also call “fun”.)

There seems to be a lag of up to a week between events in Northern Canada and repercussions reaching us down here. A switcheroo up there leads to erratic weather down here. It’s still too early to be certain what the winter pattern will be. One looks for things to “settle down”, but one also is not entirely sure the switcheroo-pattern might not be THE pattern, and chaos will continue non-stop. Stay tuned.

(I’ll ad some graphs and the individual DMI polar isobar and isotherm maps later, when I find time. But now I have to go shovel a roof.)

*******

OK. Heavy rain is now reducing any snow that hasn’t been shoveled from local roofs, allowing me to scrutinize maps.

When I last posted a Aleutian Gale had been deflected north up the Siberian side of Bering Strait, (becoming “Hula Ralph #2”). The southerly gales up through Bering Strait actually pushed the expanding sea-ice backwards, increasing the open water (and warmer surface temperatures) north of Bering Strait. (Nov. 24 to left; Nov, 27 to right).

Sometimes these retreats of sea-ice can cause a dip in the extent graph, but in this example the decrease in the Chukchi Sea was more than matched by increases in the Kara and Greenland Seas and Hudson and Baffin Bay.

By November 29 Hula-Ralph #2 was rapidly weakening north of Alaska, and I was watching the next Aleutian Low to see if would follow the same path. Despite the vast impulse of Pacific air coming north through Bering Strait and across the entirety of Alaska, the Pole itself was still cooling, which was not what I expected. I expected the Pacific “feeder-band” to fuel more of a “Ralph” low north of the New Siberian Islands, but instead an Atlantic low strengthened at the top of Norway.

Over the next two days the Pacific influence continued to dwindle, to my surprise. The influx of pacific air cooled, precipitating very little snow, and the next Aleutian Low faded without coming north, though it did swing a secondary into Alaska. The Canada-to-Siberia cross-polar-flow was falling apart, but I still expected the Atlantic low to fade and high pressure to reassert itself on the Atlantic side, as all the Pacific air would allow low pressure to reassert on the Pacific side, resurrecting the Canada-to-Siberia flow.

The map of December 2 made a train-wreck of my expectations.

First, polar temperatures hit their lowest levels of the year, despite the huge invasion of Pacific air through Bering Strait. To be honest, the invasion seemed a spectacular flop. All the invasion seemed to accomplish was to lose an incalculable amount of heat to the arctic night.

Second, I failed to foresee the expansion of high pressure from Siberia, even as I failed to forecast the low pressure expanding north through Baffin Bay. A month ago a similar low moved right up to the Pole, but I had low confidence the current low could do the same, with the Siberian high advancing from the other side of the Pole. It seemed to me an irresistible force was meeting an immovable object, and I tend to avoid forecasting the outcomes of such affairs. 

The next day saw the two powers both stronger, and still at a stand-off, but the isobars between the two suggested the cross-polar-flow was completely reversed to Siberia-to-Canada.

The next day showed the Siberian high pressure won. Just as the Aleutian Low failed to penetrate north the prior week, and instead was deflected east, now the Baffin Bay low was deflected east into the Atlantic. The cross polar-flow was starting to suck in some milder Atlantic air through Fram Strait, creating a feeder-band north of Greenland.

One day later saw the high weaker, and a massive Atlantic storm strengthening. This storm had sub-950 mb and the power of a super-typhoon, but such beasts get little press, as there are not even shipping lanes that far north. But what does get press is temperatures at the North Pole, and this Icelandic Gale pumped the feeder-band north of Greenland fatter, and warmed the Pole. I found it odd that a feeder-band existed without a “Ralph”, and I was paying undue attention to the very weak low pressure north of the Canadian Archipelago. I dubbed that low “Wimpy-Ralph.”

Maps a half-day later day demonstrated what a wimp that Ralph was. Rather than being fed by the feeder band he was weaker, and pushed east.

A half-day later Wimpy-Ralph had made a train-wreck of my theory feeder-bands feed Ralphs, for he was weaker and getting pushed southwest. However Wimpy-Ralph was, besides crimping my egotism, crimping the cross-polar-flow. It no longer came straight across from Siberia, but now described a backwards “S”, first swinging towards Svalbard to scoop up some Atlantic air, before curving towards Alaska, and only then swinging down to Canada. (At this point it is interesting to think of the cross-polar-flow as a high-pressure-hose laying on a pavement. When it swings over in one direction, what do you expect will follow?)

Only a day later the cross-polar-flow is aiming down the east coast of Greenland, rather than curving around towards Alaska. How could such a dramatic shift occur?

First, the Siberian high pressure, though weakening towards Siberia, expanded greatly towards Canada, pushing Wimpy-Ralph down towards Hudson’s Bay.  In fact while the official center of the high pressure is still over the New Siberian Islands, the body of high pressure is generally moving across the Pole.

Second, if high pressure is moving away, low pressure tends to replace it, especially if other factors support growth, and in the Kara Sea we see growing low pressure from a “kicker” storm ahead of the weakening Icelandic gale now hitting the northwest coast of Norway.

The next day’s map shows the Siberian High and Kara Low performing a sort of Polar Waltz, something remotely like the Fujiwara Effect between adjacent Typhoons.  Let it suffice to say (because I can’t claim to understand it) that the body of the high pressure is dislodged from the coast of Siberia and is moving towards North America.

The following two days show stuff occurring on the Pacific side, associated with the Aleutian Low, and the Atlantic side, associated with the Icelandic Low, which may well be the subject of my next post. However, for this post, simply notice how the dislodged high pressure moves across to Canada.

I may well be laying the tracks for my next train wreck, but to me it seems the cross-polar-passage of an entire high pressure system is more significant than cross-polar-isobars which are here today and gone tomorrow.

For one thing, cross-polar-isobars only suggest winds “can” transport air from Siberia to Canada. The actual transport takes time. How long? You’d have to send up a balloon, and see how long it took to float from Siberia to Canada.

You can be certain the balloon wouldn’t follow the straight path suggested by one map, when following maps first curve the path towards Alaska and then down the east coast of Greenland.

However, when an entire high-pressure crosses the Pole, in some ways it is a big balloon, in and of itself. (And I know, I know, some don’t like to call a high-pressure a “thing”, and to say it is but a reflection out outside imbalances, but for the sake of argument allow me to state it has a reality and is an entity.) This balloon is not a hot- air balloon, rising, but is a cold-air balloon, pressing down and making barometers read “high pressure”. (In such a case a high-pressure represents a big blob of cold air, and therefore is a “thing”.)

The power of such Siberian cold can be hidden, for its lowest levels are warmed by the passage over the thin ice of the Arctic Sea. However the surface maps mute the true intensity of the cold. If we could only afford towers, or perhaps drones, to measure temperatures only a hundred feet above the sea-ice, we might see that the warming of Siberian cold passing over the Arctic Sea is superficial. It seems to me that I have seen constant examples of times such air, the moment it moves from the Arctic Sea into Canada, reveals its true nature. It was not truly made into a maritime air-mass by passing over the Arctic Sea, but rather was a Siberian air-mass with its very bottom, as little as six feet thick, turned into a maritime air-mass. How can I claim such a thing? It is because air “above-normal” over the Arctic Sea can become “below-normal” within a half hour of moving inland and over Canadian Tundra. This would be difficult to do, because Tundra’s “normal” is so much colder than the “normal” over sea-ice, but becomes possible when the layer of “warm” air is so very thin it is easy to mix out of existence.

In any case, it will be interesting to watch the high-pressure that has crossed the Pole, and to see if it is a “thing” that causes North America grief.

To conclude this update, I should revert to the subject of sea-ice, and state that neither the invasion of Pacific air through Bering Strait, nor the feeder-band that invaded north of Greenland and fed Wimpy-Ralph, slowed the yearly growth of sea-ice. In fact the growth has been so rapid we are no longer counted among the lowest years.

If you are into headlines, you need to change the September headline “Lowest Extent In Five Years” to “Highest Extent In Five Years.” (No bother, because you’re only changing one word.)

Hudson Bay is in the process of swiftly freezing over. (November 30 to left; December 11 to right.)

We are ahead of the same date in 2016 (left) but behind 2017 (right)

As soon as the Bay skims over the cold is able to build much more swiftly to my north, and north winds become crueler here.

The only thing Alarmists have to crow about is sea-ice “volume”, which is notoriously hard to determine, but is currently quite low:

I think the low volume is largely due to the open water north of Bering Strait, but that area is rapidly shrinking and Bering Strait is now bridged by sea-ice.

Also of interest has been the slow growth of a sort of mountain range of thicker sea-ice all the way from Svalbard to Wrangle Island. This range of ice has largely been created by the transport of ice from the marginal seas along the Eurasian coast. The Laptev Sea is always a great creator and exporter of sea-ice, as cold winds blow north from Siberia, shifting sea-ice away from shore and creating polynyas of open water which swiftly refreeze in the frigid winds. But this year it seems the Kara, East Siberian and even Chukchi Seas are also getting into the act.

Stay tuned.

 

 

 

RUFFLED CHICKEN SONNET

My chickens don’t like deep snow. Their feathers
Are ruffled. They need to be smooth as nudists
And able to stay calm in all weathers.
They need to say “Aum” like good Buddhists
But won’t listen to me. Chickens won’t parrot.
I lecture, “say ‘Aum'”, but they just cluck.
At least parrots can copy. Neither carrot
Nor stick works on chickens. They stay stuck
Just like the World stays stuck. Peace is a jewel
But the World prefers feathers be ruffled.
It can’t stop. Warfare is habitual
And peace is a voice that gets muffled
By deep snow. Then Silence speaks out what I mean:
“Stop this ruffling of feathers, and preen.”

LOCAL VIEW –We are # 1!–

The final New Ipswich storm total was 36 inches. Picture of my cozy home:

We actually were struck by two storms. The first was a surge of mild air ahead of both the upper air trough and the surface low, that I would call “a warm front”, but I understand is now called “warm air advection”. The upper air jet zooming around the bottom of the upper air trough spread out as it moved away, which created suction aloft that helped the warm air, which wants to rise anyway, rise faster. This stuff, called “divergence” and “diffluence”, is all very fascinating, but doesn’t necessarily translate into a good forecast.

They were predicting 4-6 inches by the morning of December 2 here, but I was wary, using my old fashioned concepts of warm fronts. I know that warm fronts give us southeast winds which run up against our east-facing hills and increase uplift, which means we can get more rain or snow than folk down on the flatlands. Also air cools as it rises, so we can see the snow change to rain far later than the warm front changes things, at the coast in Boston. If temperatures begin cold enough, the snow may never change to rain or sleet at all. As it was 13 ° (-11.5 Cesius) at dawn on December 1, when the high clouds first started moving in, I knew we had the available cold. Last but not least, over on his blog at Weatherbell, Joseph D’Aleo was focusing on some of the computer models that showed the warm front could dump a stripe of deep snow over southern New Hampshire. So I was forewarned, even if the weather bureau slipped up, and we got more than the 4-6 inches they predicted. I just wasn’t forewarned enough.

Even 4 inches (10 cm) means I have to arise early to snow-blow the Farm-Childcare driveway, and in the pitch dark of December 2 the first thing I glanced at was the weather radar. It was clear the front was clobbering us and wasn’t going to change to rain.

Turning on the porch light I saw the steps made smooth by snow, and guessed we’d had ten inches, (25 cm), but as I stepped off the lower step and had snow pour into my boots I realized we had 18 (46 cm). It was the start of a long ordeal, as the snowblower had to crawl along at its slowest to deal with that depth, but even though I was late clearing the Childcare’s entry and lot, the few customers who made it through the snow were also late. The snow-removal crews (besides myself) seemed also taken by surprise; they were late to start plowing and had a hard time catching up, even working all night, because the snow fell with such intensity.

The snow became light after sunrise, but all eyes were on the heavy precipitation down around New York City, in the above map. There was an idea a secondary would form and roll towards Cape Cod and then up into the Gulf of Maine, and some forecasts stated we could get six more inches as it rolled past. Fortunately we only got a dusting all day, for around town a lot of equipment was breaking down. My snowblower snapped a cable controlling the transmission, and I worked with unfeeling fingers jury-rigging a repair made of electrical wire, before finishing the drive to the barn and various paths to fire-escapes. I didn’t get to study maps as much as I like, but could utilize my cell phone to check the radar, on guard for heavier snow driven inland from the Gulf of Maine. But no storm appeared there. In fact the swath of heavy snow and rain associated with the warm front took off to the northeast with (to me) astonishing speed. I had the sense that a lot of energy that might have gone into a secondary low was being “robbed” by a low developing up past Nova Scotia. I’ve seen such “robbery” occur many times in the past, turning forecast storms into non-events, and it seemed to be happening again. The forecast six inches never materialized, and we got about a quarter inch. This gave me time to attend to the edges and corners I neglected in my first frantic attempts to open my Childcare, and also attend to my chickens, who had never seen snow before and were severely traumatized by 18 inches. (My older and wiser goats just hunkered down under the barn.) The recovery seemed to be going well until I noticed, in the afternoon, the light, falling snow seemed to stop getting lighter and lighter, and the sky stopped getting brighter and brighter as well. Slightly nervous, I checked the animated weather-radar, and noticed an ominous (and also very-cool) thing:

Even though the winds had been southeast, on the radar-map precipitation had been tracking southwest to northeast, as if in a hurry to follow the warm front up towards Labrador, but now it was all slowing, and out to sea was turning around and moving east-to-west. Was a secondary developing after all? To top it off, one mother picking up her child had heard a forecast different from the other mothers. Most opined we’d have flurries over night, but one stated she’d heard we’d get four inches.

This troubled me, for it suggested I might have to snow-blow the whole danged place all over again. So I was in a hurry to get home to my computer, but at the door I was met by the dog, who informed me with a pained expression she had been severely neglected, so I took her out.

Some state dogs can warn you in advance about events such as earthquakes. My dog ran about barking at snowflakes to an absurd degree, which is exactly how she behaved the night before. This should have alerted me. Instead I judged my dog insane, and after she had annoyed the neighbors for a period I decided might stress the limits of their tolerance, I dragged her in, fed her, and hurried to my computer, to seek the “weather updates” of every nearby station I could access.

The forecasters who were using old copy, or who had recorded their forecasts early to hurry off to watch Monday Night Football, were still predicting barely a dusting overnight, but the more active and animated forecasters were forecasting 4 inches (10 cm) [Hmm…where have I heard that before?] The most accurate forecast turned out to be in the old blog posting by Joseph D’Aleo, which should have been like day-old-bread. In his assessment of possibilities he described exactly what happened.

In the far-above radar shot you can see the circulation associated with the upper air low far to the west, moving from Indiana to Ohio. It was so far west it could delay the development of the coastal low, turning a single event into two events.

I kept shining a flashlight out the window during dinner, only slightly annoying my wife, who, though she wished my full attention, understands I’m like our dog, and on occasion have accurately predicted earthquakes. I could see that, although the snow was only intermittently moderate, we already had an inch on our steps, and the forecasters watching Monday Night Football were going to be embarrassed in the morning. I was convinced I was going to have to get up early and snow-blow four inches, and retired to bed early and glum.

When I got up I turned on the porch light even before I checked the radar. My jaw dropped. Once again the front steps were smooth. Wading out to my car I estimated we’d had a little over a foot. Those who the TV stations consult stated we’d had 14 inches (35.6 cm) which gave us a total of 32 inches (81 cm).

It took me 45 minutes just to shovel a short path to the street in darkness, so I could drive to the Childcare to snow-blow the entrance and lot, so customers could come. But I did it. Only six children showed up, and all were late.

Radar showed the storm indeed did develop and move up into the Gulf of Maine, giving us “backlash” snows.

It was a case of perfect positioning and alignment. Quite often such storms cycle the precipitation into the White Mountains, and the air is robbed of moisture and is down-sloping by the time it gets around to us, so we get only flurries. But this time the radar showed the precipitation come straight in from the ocean and then take a sharp left just inland of Portland, and then move south-southeast east of Concord, largely over coastal plains, so the air stayed juicy and then was uplifted when it hit our hills. This created a “perfect storm” scenario, and is why our storm totals were so high when Concord only got six inches.

In Atlanta life may grind to a halt when there is 3 inches of snow, but up here we can’t get away with that. Maybe we would if we could, but we can’t. If we let a little snow stop us, we’d all be unemployed from November to April, and likely would starve in the process.

It is like a fifteen-round-fight to keep roads open, when snowfall is over a foot, and after such a battle the warriors desire rest. Very seldom does a second snowfall-over-a-foot happen the very next day. Around here the warriors just faced the music, and without rest fought a second fifteen-round-fight. The roads stayed open, as did my Childcare. (After all, someone must care for the children of the men who clear the roads, as their wives work in hospitals caring for those who slip off the snowy roads).

One redeeming thing about having to go out in such weather is the views one sees. There are times you don’t even want to clean up the snow, because it will spoil the view. For example, who left the back, screen-porch-door open after thanksgiving dinner?

There was very little wind with this storm. Check out the railing at my home’s front entrance:

A new state-law insists you can’t drive with heaps of snow on your car roof, and my wife is law-abiding. Yet she is reluctant to clear 32 inches off her car and have it fall in her own parking place. So she backs her car to where the person who plows our short, private road will have to plow it.

The reason my wife can do such a thing is because our eldest son plows the small, private road, but the reason I had to shovel my way out earlier was because he hadn’t been able to get to our road, despite working without sleep. Nor would he find time before afternoon. But what if an ambulance had to head up that road? Because I was busy cleaning snow from the Childcare, he turned to his father-in-law, who showed up in a small pick-up and cleared just enough and no more.

By afternoon the snow at long last stopped, the low sun peeked out, the copious amounts of salt state crews sprinkled on the highway in front of our street began to melt the tar from white to black, my sleepless son appeared and made our small road look better, and we had once again demonstrated there is one thing we don’t entirely do when faced with a winter storm.

To conclude, I cannot resist a political dig at certain Alarmists who call me a “denier”. The comment below is for them.

I am well aware you Alarmists are attempting to switch the goal posts, and make the term “Global Warming” politically incorrect while stressing that the term “Climate Change” is the only term now allowed, but I must remind you what you insisted, fifteen years ago. Your so-called “climate experts” announced, “Our children are not going to know what snow is.” You did not dare disagree, but my grandson (and his buddy) would dare disagree and beg to differ with you.

So is my grandson a “denier”, or is it you?

The most amazing (and perhaps disconcerting) thing about this snowy situation is that winter hasn’t even started yet. The solstice is still more than two weeks away.

SNOWY NIGHT SONNET

We have had a doozy of a double-barreled snowstorm, 18 inches to clean up on Monday morning, and 14 more to clean up Tuesday morning. No drifts, as the snow was oddly windless. I wrote this sipping coffee in the dark before dawn, before heading out on the second morning.

With night’s snow fell a silence. It was deep
As the snow was deep; grew deeper as snow
Grew deeper. The world did not go to sleep
But was wary, waiting. I do not know
What it awaited. Anticipation,
Like a small boy restless in a cold bed,
Impatient for Christmas, breathed steam that hung
In the dark stillness. No blue, green or red
Christmas lights blinked. The power was out.
No furnace rumbled and no fridge hummed.
No sledding-hill’s child freed a far-off shout.
What broke silence was me. My fingers drummed
As I awaited the soft light of dawn
And the Power we need to turn back on.