This Weather Trend Is Overpowering Global Warming - Storm of the Century
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- Опубликовано: 3 май 2024
- 2024 was the warmest winter on record, so big winter storms are a thing of the past, right? Not quite…a new study reveals that there is a winter-weather trend that OVERPOWERS CLIMATE CHANGE. To better understand this, we are taking it back to March of 1993 to look at The Storm of the Century, which brought record breaking cold temperatures and 20 INCHES OF SNOW to ALABAMA! By going back, we can better answer questions like: What causes this set up to occur in our atmosphere? And why are we still seeing extreme cold and SNOW IN THE SOUTH? Buckle up as our experts talk the jet stream, polar vortex, and this stubborn cold exception so we can answer the ultimate question: Are these winter storms here to stay? Watch this episode to find out.
Read Judah Cohen’s study here: www.nature.com/articles/s4324...
Weathered is a show hosted by weather expert Maiya May and produced by Balance Media that helps explain the most common natural disasters, what causes them, how they’re changing, and what we can do to prepare.
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I remember seeing pictures of my grandmother waiving on a snowy hillside... NOPE she was on their roof.
That's not my grandmother, that's a goat!
@@RealBradMiller you got a problem with goat Grandma's you got a problem with me and I suggest you let that one marinate.
Ya look at record snow in the 22 23 in the northern sierras
Look at the blizzards in china this year stranding thousands on the freeways
Look at mongols 4.2 million animals died of starvation and froze to death being so cold
As a gardener, I feel this. Spring seems sooner, but you have to be careful because if a sudden cold snap comes...
World over. One can get a late frost and an early frost. One kills the blossoms for fruit and ruin developing fruit. Not just fruit of course. Even had a late spring/ early summer drought. All here in New Zealand. (Southern hemisphere.)
@@McfreddoYes. The fake early spring seems to encourage everything to come up andflower, and then when it's in that vulnerable state, you get a sudden wintery storm with absurdly high winds and the temperatures plummet, and everything dies!
@@charlotteinnocent8752
Empty two liter coke bottles with the bottoms cut off to cover vulnerable plants.
@@SyrnianEntire beds though? I bought plastic sheeting and pulled it over hoops over a bed and the winds ripped them apart. Winds are a serious storm problem here. And we never used to get those strong winds past the end of March. Used to.
My elephant ears 😭
My family moved us from Idaho to Alabama in the autumn of 92. We hadn't bothered to get much in the way of firewood for the fireplace, because the central heating was doing fine, and house temperatures of 74 degrees F were quite mild to us who had lived on the weather side of the mountains in Idaho for years. We had time to get settled in our new house and be comfortable. But then James Spann went on air to warn about the winter storm, and my parents became serious. Dad was glad we had brought all our snow gear south with us, because we had snow shovels and tire chains, and my brother and I were glad because we had sleds, snow boots, and snow pants. None of us thought it would be very bad, though. We got well over a foot of snow, and we lost power for about a week and a half. The snowstorm was also accompanied with ice that coated the tree limbs in nearly an inch of frozen water, weighing them down so much that they cracked off the trees and fell into the yard. My brother and I had to venture out into the yard and run the gauntlet under the trees, picking up branches and whatever pieces of wood we could get so we could burn them in the fireplace.
I had a green iguana at the time, and because we had no power, he got too cold before we remembered him. I brought him into the living room by the fireplace, and he stretched himself out on the hearth rock as close to the fire grate as he possibly could. I still have the scars from the gouges his claws gave my arm as he had desperately clung to it for heat en route. Thankfully, he was fine after that. We were blowing bubbles into the fish aquarium to desperately keep it oxygenated enough for them. The dogs loved the snow, and they played outside with us kids.
Mom and dad moved the freezers outside and left them open. The refrigerated food was also frozen, for the most part, and we grilled whatever we could over the fire in the fireplace. Despite all the snow, we had still gotten well over a half a foot of rain along with it, and our basement flooded badly. I remember the water being up to my knees down there at the time. It ruined everything that wasn't impermeable.
Somehow, we managed. But we had to help our neighbors too, who were even less prepared than we were. Nobody had a generator. Nobody had kerosene heaters. We all had to burn wet wood that fell from the trees, because none of us had a strong supply of fire logs. We moved in the 93 year old next door neighbor lady in with us so she could sleep in a warm room, because she didn't have a fireplace or anything else to keep her warm. By the time we finally regained power, we had scoured our yard and hers for every stick and branch we could find, and we had begun hacksawing them down off of the trees too. Then we got power again, and we had to clean up the aftermath.
It was a wild time, and I'm glad I was a kid then, because if I'd been an adult, I'd have been properly terrified.
Living the adventure of LIFE🎯⚡❤😎☕
So living the world as a kid is very entertaining
Great story telling. Thank you.
@@ranggaajibaskara1809 Depends on the parents. My parents shielded me and my brother from the real dangers of our existence until we were in our early teens. Not sure if that was right or wrong, but it's how they handled things.
What a great story! That storm gave you the gifts of resourcefulness and the need to be prepared.
This was so insanely well edited and she is so capitivating. But the editors really pieced all the interviews together in a seamless way! So shes great. But the editors deserve kudos too
Well said! Totally agree! 👍🏼
But did they explain the mechanism of what drives the Gulf Stream south?
Would have thought that was a key question to answer.
@pencilpauli9442 I agree that this was magnificently edited, & the topic was mostly well covered. But I was quite disappointed that no mention was made of the effect of warming our oceans has on the instability of the jet stream. Does the "great conveyor belt" changing make these extremes more frequent?
@@snowsim
Well put.
You know what they say, “Every video should be an hour long so you can include easily google-able data points”.
I well remember the 1993 snowstorm here in the northern suburbs of Atlanta. I went outside and measured 19 inches of snow using a yardstick! This was in the middle of our very open front yard - without snowdrifts.
Never have we had any amount close to that again.
That was a once in a century blizzard. There was a polar vortex, the jetstream pushed the cold from the north directly into an El Nino if memory serves, almost like a snow tropical storm, it was insane.
2 ft deep in most places here, 18 inches was the lowest point in spite of that being the official record, we had drifts upwards of 7 ft deep in my back yard, 150 miles north of the Gulf.
Normally I'd tuck my jeans into my workboots if it was nasty outside to keep my pants dry. In this case I wore them normally, jeans over boots, otherwise my boots filled with snow.
Here in the Appalachians (Asheville, NC) we were unable to get down our hill for over a week because of the snow.
I think it snow in Northern Florida, I remember it being really cold, 1993, I was 32 years old.
@@tonycollazorappo Mobile bay and Pensacola were iced over, nasty slush mix. I remember Clark and Choctaw counties south of us got hit decently hard, especially some of the hilly areas. The drifts just filled the roads in the valleys, 25 ft drop between two hills and it was virtually flat. Saw pics of it on Facebook or somewhere, wish I had saved them.
My mother accounts my brother’s temperament to the fact he was born in March 1993 in Atlanta. It was crazy how much snow ❄️ ⛄️ fell. I was not more than 5
Living in the Midwest, I'm always thankful that our infrastructure was already made for both extremes in temperatures, and now it's just being tested with both those extremes getting MORE extreme, instead of being entirely unprepared for one entire end of the temperature spectrum. Everyone has to be more prepared to get walloped with extreme cold AND extreme heat now, and it bites when you're only set up for one of those.
This winter was weird here, though, and it really demonstrated how these swings in temperature in the middle of the continent have inverted. You can normally count on two things: 1) the last week of January will be cold and untravelable due to winter weather (easy to track because I have a couple family birthdays that week, and they always get snowed out), and 2) February will be disgusting and slushy except for a week or so of gorgeous weather that gives you hope for an early spring, immediately followed by an extra nasty wave of cold winter weather. This year was completely inverted. The last week of January was in the 40's-50's and dry, and February was mostly in the 50's with one snap week of cold, immediately followed by temperatures in the 60's-low 70's. I've tried to enjoy the nice weather, but it's been so ominous. My usual joke is that there's 3 weeks in spring and 3 weeks in fall that make living here the rest of the year worth it, but we're already over that quota and we've just hit spring equinox. It doesn't bode well for the rest of the year.
😂😂You ready for this next snow storm coming?? I just brought in 2 pickup loads in basement, since hubby is working out of town.
It has been weird especially when it goes from 50 to 70 4 weeks ago, following we had -15 the week after.. Weird, but that first snow storm is the best. Love it on the trees, then it's time to be a kid again. Always go out make snow angels, snowman and sledding
They named it wrong. Instead of 'Global Warming, or 'Climate Change', it should be called, "Global Erratic Climate Syndrome".
@@ravenstone366 Prepare for tree branches coming down and car accidents. Thanks to the pandemic working from home will help. But yeah it'll be great for ground moisture, lake levels, and for kids - snow forts and snowball fights. Then it'll be gone.
yeah this winter was definitely weird, it was still 50s / 60 here in California, which is not normal weather at all, even the last few weeks went to 70 then down to 60s, the past few years were odd too
I will never forget the ice storm in ‘94!! I live in a suburb of Memphis. So it goes without saying that our little community was not prepared to wake up to find nearly three inches of solid ice had accumulated on absolutely everything. Power was out and we were without power for a little over two weeks. Luckily, we had a wood burning stove for a fireplace so we would cook on the top of it and it kept the entire house warm, sometimes too warm.
We were lucky though. When power was restored and we were watching the local news, my heart sank to find out just how many elderly, disabled, homeless, and small children and babies had lost their lives from freezing to death.
The ice storm of 1994 is forever etched into the memories of those Memphians who experienced that storm.
1993 and 1994 was hard on the south
Why are Memphibians so dramatic about weather?
@@Legionnaire_777 Well first of all, I don’t know how people from Memphis have done to cause you such disdain and condescension towards them but whatever floats your boat.
Second of all, down here in the Midsouth, it’s extremely rare that massive winter storms occur. So understandably our infrastructure wasn’t prepared for a major ice storm of that magnitude. So I’m sure, if you’re being intellectually honest with yourself and not just to look for ways to mock and ridicule people you have never met, you’ll understand why that ice storm has left an impression on the people who lost friends, family members, and even their children.
Almost 30 years later in 2021 we got “Snovid” in Texas; it was something we were not used to. The power went out for most people, and it was even harder to stay with those who did have power because of the pandemic. It was something my generation had never seen before. I don’t think any of us have. It was pretty intense.
that was more of an ice storm than a snowstorm it seemed like, which is honestly even worse. you guys were a good 10° colder than up here in NY state for several days. was weird seeing that for sure lol
@@daver00lzd00d trust me. Even one inch of snow is enough to shut us down. We’re literally not used to that. On top of that, yes, you’re right, there was ice added to the mix (on top of the snow) which our infrastructure is literally not designed for anything of that. Look up the pileup in Dallas (Fort Worth). It’s horrific.
@@jakeinstereo1670 the one where the truck landed on top of a semi after launching over another car? I def remember lol the videos of people eating it after trying to walk down their stairs or driveways while they were an ice rink were all over twitter lmao and yea I know you guys are def not at all prepared for any of that. I live right near Buffalo, last year we had nearly 50 people die over Christmas weekend in a 2 day blizzard that was legit the wildest I've ever seen in my life. almost 48 hours of complete whiteout, negative windchills, nearly 5 feet of snow with almost constant 60mph winds I legit couldn't have gotten out of my house if I wanted. whole area was buried for over 5 days, people froze to death in their cars after getting stuck all over the place, in their houses when the power was out. was unreal lol
this year it was 55° and I grilled steaks outside in a hoodie for Christmas. we haven't had snow more than a couple times, which is including now on the first day of spring lmao winters showing up hella late
I was in Houston at the time. It was a bit of snow and ice (a lot for Houston but not more than 1-2" total) but the real problem was the COLD. It was in the teens and STAYED there for a couple of days. It was like 3 or 4 days straight below freezing. With power grid failure it was painful for all and deadly for some.
I lived in Atlanta during the 93 storm and in Dallas during the 2021 storm. I don't know that one was worse than the other. I saw much much more snow in the 93 storm and the wind was more intense as well. The issue with the Texas storm was that it just wouldn't relent. The snow that came down on Valentine's Day just sat there for a week. Actually I think the Metroplex handled the snow pretty well. All the major roads were plowed pretty quickly. It was the unrelenting cold combined with the outages that really made that storm bad. In 93, we were pretty much back to normal after a few days.
I was in grad school at UMass Amherst during this. I was due to go to campus and hop a bus with my fellow architecture students to work with Habitat for Humanity down in North Carolina that Saturday. I was a little older than a trad and lived in my house about 40 miles north of Amherst in Brattleboro, VT. We heard about snow, but this time of year, it was usually 8 inches or less - not enough in those days to ban travel.
After a loud, roaring wind all night heard through muffling effect of snow, I woke up to 43 inches! The storm doors on my house opened out, so I was penned in. It was going to take hours to get out and get the car uncovered. I called some on campus colleagues who said, "What? It's only like 5 inches - what are you talking about?" I let them know, it was armpit deep for me. I wasn't making the bus.
It was the coldest, fluffiest snow I'd ever seen. Being 25 and stupid, I climbed up on the railing of my second story deck and stage-dived back-first into the snow. I landed in a perfect outline of myself .... about 3 ft deep. Then I found I couldn't get up. Powder doesn't hold your weight ... you just sink in. It took my wife hanging over the railing with a large custodian broom on a rope to hoist me up out of the snow hole so I could get to the walk-out basement door. At least that one opened in.
I’m from the Hudson valley in NY and was a senior in high school. I remember the storm but it was nothing remarkable. Definitely not feet of snow.
Sometime in the early 90's we had a giant snow in Northern California. We had one of those huge satellite dishes for TV reception and it had filled with snow. I went out with a broom to knock it off and got stuck in the deep snow. I had to lay the top of my body on the waist-deep snow and wiggled and finally was able to "swim" out. Just like they tell you to do if ever you get caught in quicksand.
Germany here. Our February was 5 degree celsius warmer than average. After the first week of Janurary where we had an epic snowstorm that lasted three days.
We just moved back to the US from Germany in December. I was in Germany from 2017 to 2023, and just in that time, the snow had lessened dramatically.
In SE England we've had one day of settling snow (and even that was mediocre and lasted all of one hour before melting) and in February it reached over 15C
Fr Digga, so verrückt
@@jolu1012is a digga a Deutsche 🙋🏿♂️?
no, it comes from the word “Dicker”, which is something like “dude” in English
The polar vortex coming as far south as the Midwest & midsouth was very rare in the latter 20th century. But polar vortex intrusion into the US seems to becoming more & more common. Even though the average winter temp is rising, the polar vortex brings much colder temps than we are accustomed to.
and it's happening precisely because we have disrupted the balance of the atmosphere enough to destabilize the jet stream. yet we have people who see that happening and go off about "climate scam! it's record cold right now in _______ it's all a lie" 🤦♂️ the vortex should not be getting down here like that. we are in trouble
it's due to Alaska being so warm, pushes all that cold air from the vortex down
which simply implies how much warmer it must be the rest of the time to send the averages up and up.
Yes, global warming makes is cold! Duh!!!
Global warming, means that the average temperature is higher. Which means overall hotter summers and milder winters. Turns out that a week of below freezing weather doesn't bring the average down when the rest of the year is 5 degrees warmer than the average used to be.
The initial point i wanted to make though is that it's rather annoying to have nearly a month of weather above 60 degrees and then have a 40 degree drop followed by a further 20 degree drop, with wind-chill down to -30, the day afterwards. But, honestly, if a kick in the head like that doesn't make you want to have every homeless person housed and every poor person warm in winter and cool in summer, you were never issued a heart.
I am seventy years old and remember the winters in mid to late sixties. In the suburbs north of St. Louis we owned Ice Skates and played hockey on local lakes. We owned wooden sleds and had races on steep hills every winter. Twenty years later as I had two kids in the same area, it never got cold enough long enough to freeze the lakes to a safe thickness. And it snowed so seldom that we only bought plastic discs for the few snow events as wooden sleds were too expensive for the rare snow storm. However we did have some memorable events of bitter cold and snow. I remember flying into St. Louis Lambert Field on Christmas Eve of 1983 and it being ten below zero with thirty mph winds and finding my car with a dead battery and four flat tires it was so cold. I had only been out of state for three weeks at the time. I also remember a thunder snow storm in 1976 when we had snow drifts on an interstate highway over two feet deep. The lightning strikes were incredible to see and the flakes were huge and many. Yet the trend was always warmer each year and less frozen stuff as time went by, but the threat of a severe event was always there.
Exactly! I live in St Louis too. I really miss winter because if we get 3 or 4 days a year now, it's a lot to everyone. No more ice skating on ponds or changes to go sledding. My kids are in their 20's and 30's and have never seen a really decent snowstorm.
It feels disingenuous to say the bomb cyclone "overpowers" climate warming. It is more of a symptom of it. As the climate warms, more warm air pushes far north, think temps above 30°F at the North Pole in January. As a result, the cold arctic air becomes displaced and erratic. This is simple entropy, energy spreading to places with less. If more energy gets introduced to a system, it will make the system unstable as a new equilibrium is developed.
The blizzard of '93 was the best birthday present I've ever gotten. Got to skip school and play in the snow all day, even made a large snowman (which is pretty crazy for central AL). Kept our house warm and cooked because we had gas. I think only one guy on the street had a generator back then. (no I'm not a paid gas supporter)
I was up in Blount county in Hayden. felt like we were out of school a week😄
@@jasonwhitley8605 I was east of you in St. Clair - Odenville, farm sitting while my friend and his family were in Hawaii! lol
It was an experience, for sure!
In Atlanta..our weatherman announced the coming storm on my birthday...a few days later...woke up ecstatic..😂👍
I wish I could get a snow for my birthday present. My birthday is January and I have yet to see it snow on my birthday in NC in the last 29 years of my lifetime so far.
Yes, volatility gonna be off the roof. And food will be hard to produce. It is how it is gonna end.
If someone expected it will be just warm and cozy, I have sad news for you.
It is wild to me that we just say things like this because we know what the problem is - It's burning fossil fuels and it's legislature that makes it cheaper for companies to produce and use fossil fuels and blocks out green and nuclear energy transition. The problem is politicians taking money from fossil fuel lobbyist groups. The problem is the rich not wanting to do anything to reduce the amount of money they're making, even if it meant transitioning to a green future that would fix the climate or at least stop the worst scenarios.
As a society, we would rather throw up our hands and just accept it rather than stopping the people that are sacrificing all of our future so they can get rich now.
@@Monechettiit is because our society (at least in the US, and increasingly elsewhere) views the only good as making money. Then those with money buy politicians and judges to only represent their own interests, and spend billions convincing poorer people to vote against their own interests.
Short term profit trumps long term planning for these people (people often have trouble with long term thinking anyway). I assume they also believe their money will protect them from consequences too.
It has always been the case that the state protects the powerful.
We will only see concerted action when it is clear to the ultra rich that they risk losing power, money and status, and their reactionary attempts to keep power are failing.
it's going to be hotter every year & famine will kill us
Did you ever look at the weather of the 20th century or do you just listen the the MSN????
@@Acccountablethis is not msn
🤦🏼♂️🤦🏼♂️grow up
Everytime I see you, young lady, on this channel, I know that it's going to be a knowledgeable and informative video! Thanks
It’s really this simple, one side wants to address the problem and make changes to avoid disaster and the other side just wants to keep on wasting energy and be “comfortable”. Ain’t no comfort with your head in the sand though, just being part of the problem
I’m not saying one way or another but here is one thing to remember. Poor people are horrible for the environment. Natural gas is better then wood or coal heat in the home but you take away natural gas and make people pay to heat there homes on a over burden grid with electric heat they are going to choose wood and coal over freezing or starving. Take away mobility because our electric grid can’t support electric cars or trucks and people will resist. Take away food because there isn’t enough electricity to move goods and people will start rioting. The solution is smart decisions that don’t make your citizens poor and hungry. Green energy where it makes sense. Invest in 3rd world countries to get to our standard not burning coal and firewood.
Then by all means go off the grid that means no EVs either because they require fossil fuels to charge and build the batteries
..
It's way more simple than that, climate change is inevitable on this planet. Adapt or die.....
@@truckercowboyed2638 you do understand that there is this thing called middle ground?
All or nothing mentality doesn't help anyone.
There is no addressing the problem, climate changes it's in the name.
13' that's adorable. In Minnesota we might call that the storm of the season.
What I think is that you did a good job explaining this.
What worries me is the accumulation of extreme events. Not only do they do damage, they also take time to get over. It takes an awful lot of time to fully recover from such things as floodings and wildfires.
I really, really like Maiya May's presentation and the content on this channel. Thanks!
First I thought they put a pretty girl there to make the show better. But now I learned what a wonderful scientist she is, someone who is really deeply interested in connecting with nature, finding out stuff and passing out her knowledge.
They did.
This is a performer, not a scientist. That being said, the script is excellent.
Note her title.
@@MikeCarrickSeriously? You two would see a young Neil DeGrasse Tyson and dismiss him as a "performer," just because the first thing you notice is someone's looks? People don't go into science communications if they're not scientists or educators (like my grandma, he was a planetarium director).
How do you know this meteorologist/geography graduate whose science degree is probably better than yours, who worked at multiple weather stations including the Weather Channel before deciding she wanted to be a science communicator like Neil and David Attenborough rather than presenting the weather, didn't write it herself?
It’s call DEI. We are giving her a chance!
I would also mention Mount Pinatubo’s violent eruption in 1991 and smaller eruption in 1992, along with global warming messing with the arctic jet stream, had a significant impact on lowering global temperatures in the early 90s for ~3 years.
I lived northeast of Birmingham, Alabama back in 1993. It was warm that Friday afternoon after work. It was Apocalyptic that late evening to point that we had to abandon the house. Most southern homes are simply not built for a Minnesota like snow event.
Most of us that experienced that event could each write story's of what we witnessed, experienced and did. For me, it was how everyone did their best to help each other out, is what I not only witnessed, but took part in the experience of.
I recall making a spaghetti dinner for some probably 30 people, with garlic toast on a wood stove, as my friends dad was out on his backhoe tractor collecting up neighbors from probably a 3 mile radius.
Living now, in the mountains of Colorado for many years, one plans for and expects to be snowed in for a good week or more. One should plan on it.
That blizzard event in Alabama was like being teleported to another planet.
Prepare for the worst and hope the best, whether it's flooding, fires, tornadoes, hurricanes or even a weird snow event. We all seem to be more vulnerable to one of these now, more often than not.
Another great, informative video. You're the best! I recall a very cold snap here in MN in late January to early February 2021. Coldest ive ever experienced here.
A characteristic of global warming is more extreme weather and temprature fluctuations. This can result in record cold and heat, but the average of these record cold and heat trends up.
I'm from Pennsylvania. They came out with tshirts that said "I survived the blizzard of '93". Another possible example is Hurricane Sandy. It happened in October and collided with a Nor'Easter coming down from Canada. The central parts of Maryland and Pennsylvania got hit with over a foot of snow, which is uncommon for that time of year.
I was in Mexico for this storm, and the jet stream dipped so far south, our train trip through the Copper Canyon of Mexico was cancelled because the train got stuck in the snow and it was over a month before the train was able to get out of its snow bank in the canyon.
Friends still living in the Eastern US had an extra week of spring break, and none of us knew what the rest had experienced until we started sharing stories at reunions....
Sometimes things are just in our faces : Polar vortex find it easier to move on continental masses since water is warmer. Theses types of events are to be normal in a close future.
and the people who can't grasp reality or are too dense in the head will be screaming about how it's proof that climate change isn't real because it's cold AF 🤦♂️ make it make sense lol
I was a junior in college in Wisconsin. I wasn’t interested in Florida that year. I wanted to see the desert SW, and NO ONE wanted to go with me. I finally convinced a friend to buy into my plan to ‘drive south and west until it gets hot, get out, get a sunburn and come back.’ We made it to Oklahoma City that first day of driving, slept in the car at a rest stop. Woke up freezing with a layer of snow on the car. F it, I said, we’re no longer going west, we’re going south. Ended up at the southern tip of Texas, but it was still grey and cold, so we went over the border into Mexico and the sun was out and it was warm and we had a BLAST. Ate mangoes in the plaza, drank cheap tequila, got sunburnt, ate street tacos, went dancing, it was awesome. Drove home to Wisconsin, and we were the only people who got sun. What happened? And all my classmates told me how they got caught by the storm in Tennessee and Kentucky and spent spring break in interstate hotels eating all their meals at truck stops. Should’ve come with me!
Sounds like my kind of adventure!
Lol, sucks to be them 😂
This was the first time I wore shorts most of the season. I don’t even think we had any ice warnings on the roads this year. At least during m-f commute
I remember that night in March, going outside in New Orleans and it was above freezing but we were getting flurries with every gust of wind.
anyone else reminded of the weather pylon in the old Land of the Lost series from the mid 1970s? we sure are in for a ride.
Historical records and archeological evidence shows that the warmer it gets the more likely it is for ocean currents to cease circulating. This could cause the dips in the jet streams to allow it to go much further south like we've seen the ice sheets do in the past.
I was in the 5th Mob at Warner Robbins AFB. We had just gotten back from a training exercise on that Friday. Saturday we wake up to the snow. The unit gathered our military generators and took them to nursing homes to help provide power.
Ms. May; I really like the way you presented and narrated the story. Keep up the good work!
I feel like you could have spent more time on the weakening of the polar vortex due to climate change. You didn’t really explain that.
Ya know, I realize that the 2021 deep freeze that hit Texas and the 144 hours of below freezing we had was bad. But in December of 1983, we had, at least here in Austin, 140 hours of below freezing and that blew in fast and hard. Back then some bank had a line with a time and temp number and you could hang up and call right back and it would've dropped another degree or two in just that long. Granted, I probably wasn't the only one calling them, but I was calling. I was sort of lucky, my roommate had taken the bus to her mother's because her step-father had passed away right at the start of the freeze - yes his death could be partly attributed to the below freezing temps and the fact the place he and her mother were living in had a giant hole in the front of the house the landlord refused to repair. They lived in a really backwater unincorporated village in Louisiana where nobody was going to make the jerk fix things. I would sit right in front of the heater and my back was warm but the rest was freezing. I had an electric blanket the cats and I shared and, on the worst night, my folks invited me to stay there. It was still freezing the day we drove up to my brother's house.
But NOBODY talks about it!!!
Small world.... I was in Austin for the winter of 83/84. Still have newspaper clippings and pictures. Texas, as a state, was so unprepared to deal with extreme cold weather and might be even to this day
@@theHyghwayman Oh, absolutely NOT ready. Heck, there were reports that the power might go out both last summer and when we had a couple of days below freezing. We were lucky at my house in '21 and didn't lose power, I'm not sure what we'd've done about my wife's dialysis if it had gone out.
I'm in the San Antonio area, we were also lucky to have power mostly during the '21 event. Rolling black outs for us for a couple of days and we had a wood burning fire place. I'm a gardener and always looking out for weather ahead, so we were stocked up thankfully.
I grew up in Oklahoma and can remember my father talking about a massive blizzard when I was young. He said he was in Austin and set to fly back home. It was in the 70s when he left Austin and said there was snow on the ground in OkC when he landed and conditions quickly deteriorated from there. I'm thinking that must be the '83 storm you're referring to. I was thinking that story was from the late 70s, but I'm seeing other commenters from Missouri and other surrounding states mentioning 1983 also.
@@dawnmitchell11 My sister was in OKC in '83. I remember the folks telling her to stay there for Christmas. I don't remember if she did. My brother lived in Lewisville TX then, almost half way. We never lost power or anything that time, but we were not in the heavy power usage as we are today.
As for '21, we were fine, since we had power. We could've still cooked since we have a gas range. Sadly, there wasn't any water to boil noodles with (my favorite food.) We also live in a neighborhood built in the early 1970s, maybe even '68 and '69, but with underground electric and cable, so we were good, unlike some who lost power do to downed power lines.
I love learning about how these weather patterns work. And the way this is presented is excellent! Maiya May does an outstanding job. 👍Thank you .
Ms May provided an intelligent yet understandable narration about this subject. It's obvious she knows her stuff and is not just a talking head. Thank you.
thank you. Could you add as a component of appreciating complexity, the question of aerosols in the atmosphere and how their presence or absence may impact climate extremes?
I had so much fun in that 1993 blizzard… we pulled a truck bed out and used it as a sled… northeastern Birmingham is so beautiful when covered in snow… also I remember James Spann visiting my school all the time… this story feels so special to me
We got 18 inches of snow in our yard in eastern Tennessee. The plus was that the yard got a deep watering from the melt and our spring blooms were absolutely gorgeous that year.
LOVE that you guys brought on James Spann!!!!!
Very interesting information. Well done
Recently discovered this channel and love it! Interesting and well researched topics, great presenters and editing. Keep up the good work!
Love this video series. Thank you for producing. Always informative. I remember this storm!
I thought I had heard that global warming makes the arctic air less stable and more likely to dip south and cause these events. I don't think that was mentioned in the video though, maybe it was just conjecture when I heard it? Still, it seems unlikely that polar vortex storms in the US are completely random and not related to global warming since the arctic is warming very rapidly overall. From the video: "Sometimes it can get disrupted or stretched" ... I have to ask, how and why does the polar vortex get disrupted and stretched? What effect does global warming have on polar vortex stretching and disruption? If we know the answer, this info should have been in the video.
This was my understanding as well. I think I saw it in a thread from a climate scientist on Twitter.
CC weakens the polar vortex which essentially makes it more "lazy". Weakening ocean currents like AMOC also compound the problem by having colder water slowly moving south as sea ice melts and ocean temps become more equalized around the planet.
I don't think PBS Terra does a very good job at presenting climate information and they sometimes include intentionally misleading data like using 1980-2020 as running mean to show rising temperatures rather than the pre-industrial average before 1850. If you take the rise of temps using 1980-2020 global average temps rose by 0.92°C if you use what climate scientists actually use which is the pre-industrial 1850 temps rose 1.52°C about average last year.
@@socialrose3070thank you for the info!
@@deandracarter8468 CC is the issue I'm most informed about, always happy to provide info.
You're not informed you're a clown......the polar vortex changes over time, I mean it definitely dipped down during the last ice age......@@socialrose3070
What I took away from this video is that no matter our bickering in America we will put aside our differences and come together in times of crisis. 🇺🇸 🫡
I wonder if that's still true after CoV.
" As our climate continues to change." I love it when people don't use the word "IF" in this sentence
There's no if, it is always changing. The questions are how fast and what direction.
Climate is always changing whether it's human induced or not
Yeah, but watch the video to understand what I'm talking about exactly
They gotta stir up the hysteria in the sheep somehow lol
Because all scientists are grown from pods in George Soros' basement and oil mega-corporations would never spread anti-science propaganda.
Here in the Mid Atlantic winter snows don't LAST, they are washed away by Rain - making floods the death threat! And the soil can be DRY by late May! Drought, despite all that rain earlier!
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My family was driving north from Miami to Atlanta after spring break. The skies over Florida were purple with sustained lightning and tornadoes warnings were continuous on the radio. We got to Valdosta GA where I-75 was closed and we couldn't go any farther. It was amazing to me that the state of Georgia had only a handful of snow plows and they were in the far north of the state. Atlanta was virtually closed for days!
Hold the phone, let me give yea a little fact checker sticker here
, as a part time marine biologist here, this winter was one if the coldest water temp in years if not decades.. surface tempe holding 30f or -1.5-3c and sea floor holding out at -5c for all of January and February, the surface temps are now at or just breaking above freezing and the seafloor is almost 30f -/+ depending on depths from 15-100+ foot in my serves in mid sw NS which is 6c colder then previous years in my studys
all of this is easily looked up. maybe you should find a different job lmao
@@daver00lzd00d and give up working on the ocean, nahhh can't find a better job anyway 😆 it's nice to be my own boss too
@@BurchellAtTheWharf I meant give up on acting like you know what you're talking about because you have been underwater wherever you live 🤷♂️ just because your spot wasnt boiling doesn't mean the rest of the planet isnt. you know that though, right?
@@daver00lzd00d it's a data point that is just as important as all the others, science looks at all the data points, not just a handful
@@daver00lzd00d the water were warm here , like a Canadian Flavored Florida, but this year, well actually sence Vid19 the waters have cooled immensely, almost like the fact that there was less air traffic has something to do with water temperatures and global warming 🤔
These are not extreme weather patterns, these are normal. Every 30 to 40 years we are hits with extreme cold and wet system locally. Unless you were born and spent your entire life in my area you would never know it.
Locally we just had the blizzard and according to the news it was extreme weather , danger Mr Robinson! but if you live in this area for multiple Generations then you know that this happens every rough 100 years. We have multiple historic news stories of this exact same thing happening. The Donner Party is a good example.
Texas once in a great while plunges into a deep freeze. The last time people literally froze to death while standing. That weather pattern makes the current extream weather pattern seem like spring break. That was actually multiple States.
What is happening now has happened before and it will happen again. Pay attention to the past and you will know what to do in the future.
I saw this man's forecast and took it seriously. I worked on a small cruise ship that sailed into the Gulf of Mexico.
Thank God the cruise was canceled at the last minute.
I clearly remember this storm. We normally get snow where I live, but I clearly remember being able to walk on top of the snow. It had a crust of ice that did not break unless you jumped on it.
Don't be daft. it is just messing with the Jet stream. not worth a video, every school kid should know this just by watching the weather reports!
13" in snow in the 93 blizzard...laughs in NY.
same from russia. don't understand why it worth mentioning. it's just a snow, it doesn't bite
@@user-kg4fr9jr7v Down there, however, they don't have plows, don't use sand or salt. So roads stay a nightmare for quite a while. Lived down in Charlotte NC in the late 90s, it was an experience when it snowed.
We get a bunch of those most years in New England
So you could easily handle multiple 110+ days right?
Your location isn’t built to handle those temps long term just like how AL isn’t built to handle a foot of snow.
AL doesn't have the infrastructure for snow because it's a rare event. NY does, because it's not a rare event.
What does AL do infrastructure-wise for heat? Nothing.
So--not sure what point you're making, beyond not liking my joke.
Thank you for sharing. These are the best deep dives; I never miss an episode.
I could listen to her talk forever! Great and informative video - thanks!
This channel should be named PBS US, not Terra.
I agree. Is so annoying.
commenters freaking out that a company that was founded in the US, employs US citizens, and is mostly viewed in the US, has a decent amount of US based content
Literally gets some of its funding from the US government too lol
Do you know the meaning of "terra?"
@@greatedges Yes, I know. I even know how to speak your language, because "terra" is a common word of my language.
Love these videos. Great job explaining such complex topics
I lived in Central Alabama in 1993. Some snow drifts were 10-15 foot deep. I was 9 but my father was prepared. Propane heat, generator. He used his brand new Massey Ferguson tractor to clear the roads to town.
We are very fortunate here in Atlantic Canada. According to the weather maps that were shown, the storm stopped at the Maine/New Brunswick border.
Really nicely explained and presented. Such a difference from alarmists who just want to frighten people by shouting at them. This convinces me! And in central 🇬🇧 my lawn has been cut 3 times in last 5 weeks. Well done .. keep it up.
Thank god you guys are FINALLY linking your sources. I mean i only learned that in MIDDLE SCHOOL, it was only a matter of time the PBS organization would catch on. Good job lil bros.
Omg I grew up in Huntsville, Al (granddad helped design that rocket you can walk under and see from the highway) and the most we got was some ice from freezing rain. I'd never seen real snow until I moved to DC!
I moved in 92, the year before the big one hit
I'm from Dalton, Ga & we had 25" of snow in the March 13, 1993 snow storm. 10 days before my 16th birthday & I remember it like it was yesterday.
Somewhere I have a picture from that event of my kids playing in the snow in Pensacola Florida. We occasionally get some snow flurries and some freezing rain, but nothing like that event. We had several inches of snow on the ground, in March, in Northwest Florida.
Maiya presented the information with such poise and clarity that I stayed with the feed until the end. Often I can lose interest when a presenter doesn't seem comfortable or adept with the content they are offering. Of course, as one of the authors of the content, it is no surprise she would impress.
This video also confirms what I have been telling the skeptics for some time, which is that as the globe warms the heat makes the atmosphere more energetic and increases the variability of the weather in virtually every way. And though it seems counterintuitive, cold weather related extremes are also part of the equation.
I live in the foothills of the Appalachians in western NC.... I was 13 and my sister was home from college for Easter break we woke up cold the power was out and we piled into my parents bed to keep warm, the power went out shortly after my father left for work and luckily came back on around noon.... my father who was a former marine got up basically in the middle of it to go to work.... he knew what was forecast.... it didn't matter, if he could go he did.... 45 miles later in 15" to 24" of snow he got to work only to find out that the roof of his plant/factory had collapsed from the wet heavy snow igniting the gaslines of the heaters mounted on the ceiling.... him and the few others that made it helped the fire fighters finish up and then spent the next month removing the wreckage by hand / shovel..... meanwhile about 20 miles west my aunt, uncle, and cousins who were coming in from Minnesota 😂 for Easter were stranded on I-40 and ended up walking roughly a mile to the next exit where they found a packed dinner the stayed open all night to provide food and shelter for the stranded people.... about 40 miles west the national guard were called in to rescue people or drop supplies by helicopter (and occasionally by Humvee when possible) to those in and around the various state and national parks buried in snow....
I remember the super Storm of 93. I was 13 years old living in Chattanooga, TN. We ended up with 21 inches of snow ❄️. Very memorable....
I look forward to these videos, I learn so much!
I am old enough to vividly remember both the winters of 1977 and 1993; both severe where I live, in the snow belt of NW PA. Are these two winters connected?
Yeah, I'm going to do it, too...
I'm a New Yorker, and I was at school in southern Virginia when that storm hit. We didn't get much snow (by NY standards), maybe 2-3 inches. But we DID get a ton of freezing rain and ice that layered up on trees and power lines. Because it was VA, everything was already in full bloom and some trees were already beginning to leaf out, so an incredible number of venerable trees (that had survived many other storms) came down, and basically anything fruit-bearing, didn't, that year.
Power outages were widespread, and my university closed for 3 days-- they just didn't have the capacity to deal with that much ice. (If there was a wing plow or sander anywhere in the county, I would've been shocked.) Luckily, the temps rebounded as quickly as they'd dropped, so everything melted relatively quickly.
I love the presenter and the editing. Simply excellent videos each time, great job!
I remember that storm!!! My sister was tiny (born Jan '92) and we got several inches of snow in Gautier (little city on the Gulf Coast). People were freaking out, and to be honest even I was astonished. We'd moved from western Texas, where the temps would get in the negatives but you still didn't get SNOW because it was the desert. The humidity of my first Mississippi summer - I thought I was going to die. To then see more snow at once that I'd EVER seen in Texas was - well it wasn't scary but it was weird for sure. I was in high school and every one of my classmates had wild stories to tell, about having to pull out hurricane supplies, and huddling together with their families in their kitchens or in front of fireplaces that had always been decorative...
But the man in the blue shirt is absolutely right. We've got to plan for the worst extremes, we HAVE to accommodate and expect hotter summers and nastier storms at every time of year. There's more energy in the system: EVERYthing is going to get more intense until the system rebalances. It's on us to make sure we survive, that our animals and crops survive.
We were basically stuck in our house in Northern Virginia for almost a week because of the deep snow. Thankfully we had a wood burning stove because the power was out for days. Once the plows finally managed to get to the main roads, you'd drive along with mountains of snow piled on either side and you could hardly tell where you were because all you could see was the snow piles.
I lived in Louisiana in 1993, and that storm was rough! It was the worst snow/ice I've ever witnessed. That's still the longest I've ever been without power. Luckily we didn't have any pipes burst, but a lot of houses around us did. I forgot all about depending on the radio until you mentioned it.
I was in middle school, so I thought it was cool getting a week off. We were using trash can lids and boards as sleds on the highway, because nobody was even trying to drive.
You guys do a great job!
Joining the Maiya May fan club. Seriously well-prepared, she presents the science, info and history in an engaging and human way... things we need to know and understand. Thank you!
mother nature is quite the lady and so are you.
❤❤❤
The best part of videos like this, is how to convince people, that colder temperatures mean global warming.
The simplest conclusion from that graph is, the 2001-2010 decade was the warmest since 1960, and now is the cooling trend (which agrees with the solar activity decreasing since about 2015).
My family moved to the San Francisco bay area in '91 after almost 30 years in Wisconsin and 6 years in Colorado. Polar vortex? Ha ha, missed me! Seriously, another well done video. I'm proud to be a subscriber.
This is the kind of videos I love from this channel
That is a very interesting finding! My personal story is that I don't particularly remember the storm of 1993. I was/am in central NJ near Philadelphia. My son was born a few months later in July. I DO remember the 1996 or 1997 storm when he was 3 or 4 years old: I remember measuring 22" or 23" in my yard. Got some great video of my son in that storm. I'm going to have to go back and see if I have any pictures from 1993. Great reporting!
Yes, I was there. I shoveled 3 feet of snow out my driveway in the Catskill Moutains of NY and tried to drive to Syracuse, where I went to college. I made it all the way up to Canajoharie, but they had closed I-90. I finally got to campus the next day after a night in a motel, but they cancelled classes for the first time in SU's history. All this in a front wheel drive Ford Taurus.
Fascinating, as always!
I was living in Allentown PA in 1993, the snow fell on Saturday, I went out a few times to shovel on Saturday to keep ahead if it, but it was blowing so hard I decided I had to wait until the snow ended. Sunday I spent most of the day shoveling the driveway and sidewalks, we had something like 21 to 23 inches of snow. I had everything finished before dark Sunday, so Monday morning I drove in to work as usual, turns out they had closed (for the first time ever!) because of the snow. I worked for awhile and then went home. I guess for areas that aren’t used to snow (like Alabama) it was a problem, but for areas that see 2’+ snowfall every other decade or so it wasn’t that big a deal.
We had an awful flood in Kansas that summer too. There are still water marks on the hills and trees to this day.
At 54 I've seen climate change quite a bit in Iowa. Winters in north central and central Iowa even 30 years ago USED to mean snow and cold. Ice fishing, snowmobiling, cross country skiing were feasible roughly from the end of November to the middle of February or begining of March. Now snowmobiles are rare unless you haul to northern minnesota or to the Rockies and Ice fishing season is measured in weeks instead of months.
Excellent presentation that used the animated graphic data extremely effectively. With this type of presentation maybe more people will start to understand where global climate change is going: widespread increasing warming with occasional extreme record weather events in both the hot & cold direction. Then there's the increased energy & moisture in hurricanes & storms, plus high wind events on otherwise warmer than normal sunny days.
The way we build houses, other structures and utility services is simply not prepared for these extreme weather events. Anyone paying attention is taking a good hard look at their current situation and considering ways to improve resilience, backup systems and recovery.
I live in alabama..i was 11yrs old and i remember hearing the trees popping in the woods. And we ate sandwiches for a whole week.
I was a freshman in HS when that blizzard happened... it was wild... you would go outside and it was just dead quit everywhere, no cars, no power for days, no light, as a kid I found it very peaceful, but youth paints with a different brush
This is the best series!!!
Well done, thank you
I was born in 86, so was 7 years old, northeast Georgia, we got more ice than snow but had like 3 inches of ice, snow, the ice, then snow. Thank god for atvs and wood stoves
Great video! Very informative. Thank you.
Thanks for getting us up to date with climate change. I've never heard such an in-depth exposé. If we are interested in survival, we really need this info. Thanks.
I was in Baltimore in 93 and I remember our doberman running away. In the middle of the day it was like dusk. I wasn't going to chase that dog in the deep snow, so I tried everything you can imagine to get him to come back. Finally I stood on the front porch and ran the can opener. He was only out for about a half an hour but it was very stressful for me. Dobermans have really thin fur.
27” of tight wind locked drifted snow…we used dozers, backhoes and heavy tractors to move the stuff…I remember it well!
The thing that scares me the most about climate change is how people don't seem to discuss these types of eventualities. Thank you for bringing this info to a more public setting. If humanity wants to continue in it's ways, we need to find a way to make our architecture adaptable. The type of technology and design for vast but slow temperature swings is not the same as vast and fast temperature swings. I fear for my fellow humans that are in areas that are used to having consistent weather patterns, hopefully their infrastructure's dependability will surprise us. I fear for my surrounding ecosystem, the natural protection against disease and pests that lasts for 3 months barely lasted a week.
How about agriculture? Add to that, the already catastrophic dying off of insects and plants? People can't survive without food and growing food depends on climate and soil.
I remember the superstorm of 93, I was living in Ringgold, GA, I was like 3 and I wasn't even in school yet, our power was out for nearly a week, the snow was over my head, you couldn't see the roads, sounds of sirens, chainsaws and trucks day and night for several days after the snow ended. The town and surrounding towns of towns were completely paralyzed from the otherworldly amount of snow for the south. Snowdrifts several feet high, over 10ft high in some spots. I honestly believe we aren't very far off from another one like it.