Tell me about it! I thought last winter lasted a long time but this is getting ridiculous. DH and I were running errands today and driving through the Olympia area when we were hit with what seemed like a blizzard of mixed snow and rain. It's hard to think of springtime and vegetable planting when it's still dipping into the 20's at night!

Unusual cold is part of global warming.

It would be Climate Change if cold were involved. Luckily they were able to change the name of the terrible destruction that will wreak havoc with our lives so that they're still right.

;)

Let's have another ice age. The last time we had one, glaciers deposited some nice rocks all over my property. I wouldn't mind having a few more of those.

What is going to affect gardening and everything else here that depends on a good supply of water is the diminishing of the Cascade Mountains snowpack. Most of our water comes from lower mountains that are going to go bald in coming decades. UW weather scientists predict severe reduction in snowpack by 2040.

Unfortunately a return would run the inconvenient risk of Al, the bore escaping from his lock box. My vote would be to keep the pathetic little twit locked away playing with his nobel oscar and surfing on his other invention ;-)

The Cascade Mts water is overflowing into the lowlands. Global warming ain't happening in my back yard.

Next you can look in your back yard for salmon-eating polar bears.

The polar bear has been taxidermed and clients have it stuffed in their mansion.

Hate the snow, hate the cold. Hate the snow, hate the cold...
did I mention that I hate the snow & cold?

Came across a dendochronology lecture dating from 2006 on UW TV early this morning. During the Halocene it was hotter in summer and colder in winter here. Western red cedar and hemlock did not become prevalent near a lake out on the coast until after this period was over. During that time it was all Douglas fir and red alder, indicating frequent fires.

During the talk a development of a hotter and wetter period was predicted, with a 3 degree rise by 2040 (same point at which UW climate experts predict Cascade snow pack will be about half what it is now). Almost as hot as when it was during the Halocene, and representing nearly a 1 degree rise every 10 years.

Which melts the ice caps, which cools off our warm little current that keeps us toasty, and turns us into the %# Vermont that we would be without it. Thus, Global Warming freezes our backsides.

I'll have to send and e-mail to the UW Climate Center telling them that it's not going to warm up here afterall.

Channel 9 is showing an interview with Cliff Mass (The Weather of the Pacific Northwest) where he says they don't have enough information yet to project how storm, rainfall etc. patterns are going to be affected by global warming in this region. He did also say that those predicting more hurricane activity are probably right because hurricanes are fed by warm water.

Notice that he is not saying there is no global warming, just that it's too early to tell what's going to happen here in this area.

Well yesterday we had another dump of snow but then rain washed it away, the ground is still frozen in my garden. l'm a home town gal and lived in my present location since 1965. Never have we had a winter like this last one that I can recall. Although we've had lots of snow (most years very little) we've been minus the heavy rains we usually get in Jan/Feb.
There doesn't seem to be much of a snow pack in the mountains, not a good thing. Looks like we may have a water shortage this summer. Usually by this time gardening is in full swing but not this year :o(.

1990 was the worst winter in 30 years down this way. Before that perhaps the most amazing year was 1955, when it was like winter all summer, followed by a month of summer weather in October which gave way overnight to an Arctic Front. Even some native trees froze back.

When it was still publicly accessible I used to look up plants in the card files of the Seattle arboretum. Card after card with "killed 1955", "found dead 1956" (or equivalent comment) written on it.

I remember the winter of 1955-56. It was the first time I saw clothes freeze dry on the line. They were stiff as a board for a few days in Oct. and then they were flapping in the wind without temps coming anywhere near up to the freezing point.
That was the year I also kept track of the high and low temperatures posted in the P.I. for each day from Sept. to June. I was in the sixth grade and fascinated with graphs.
That summer we moved to a farm north of Spokane where freeze drying in the winter was pretty common.