Record Snows Blanket Northeast

Thousands Powerless, Flights Delayed, School Cancelled, As Temperatures Drop

(CBS/AP)  Snow fell across parts of New England for the third day in a row Wednesday, adding to last month's record accumulations and closing schools.

Flurries also extended into the Ohio Valley, and some children had an extra holiday as classes were canceled in parts of West Virginia and Ohio.

Temperatures fell to freezing levels as far south as the Florida Panhandle, and wind chill readings were below zero in parts of northern Kentucky.

Following the snowiest December on record, many areas of New Hampshire got about a foot of snow on New Year's Day, with a couple of inches added during the night and a couple more likely Wednesday. Storm totals could reach 18 inches in parts of Maine and New Hampshire and up to a foot in Vermont.

The latest snowfall in New England followed a storm on Monday that made for the area's snowiest December in decades. December's snowfall at Concord, N.H., totaled 44.5 inches, toppling a record of 43 inches that had stood since 1876. Burlington, Vt., got 45.7 inches, far above its 17.2-inch December average, and Portland, Maine, amassed 37.7 inches for its third-snowiest December on record.

"It's been unbelievable. It just keeps coming," said Bill Swain, spokesman for Maine's Sugarloaf USA ski area, which got 70 inches of snow in December.

The snowfall delayed the start of the 2008 state legislative session in Augusta, Maine, from Wednesday morning until the afternoon.

On the southern fringes of the storm on Wednesday, show was scattered from Ohio through eastern Kentucky and West Virginia into parts of Virginia and Maryland.

Up to 6 inches of snow was possible Wednesday at higher elevations of West Virginia and eastern Kentucky, although 1- to 2-inch accumulations were likely in most areas, the weather service said.

At least 40 of West Virginia's 55 counties closed all public schools Wednesday because of snow-covered roads and freezing temperatures.

Dozens of schools also were closed Wednesday in southeastern Michigan, where a six-hour burst of snow early Tuesday dumped as much as 16 inches in a three-county area north of Detroit, the weather service said.

"This will be a memorable storm for the amount of snow it dumped in such a short amount of time," weather service meteorologist David Shuler said. He said it was the region's heaviest New Year's Day snowstorm on record.

The storm blacked out 10,000 customers Tuesday in northeast Ohio, where 15 inches of snow fell at in Pierpont, east of Cleveland. About 4,000 more lost power Tuesday evening in southwest Ohio when circuit breakers failed because of the cold.

North of Detroit, the snow fell at the rate of two to four inches an hour, Weather Channel meteorologist Mike Seidel told CBS' The Early Show.

There were no immediate reports of deaths blamed on the weather. Snow covered a highway in northeast Indiana where a van overturned early Wednesday, killing two women, but State Police Cpl. Derek Fisher said he could not say if the weather contributed to the crash.

From the keynote address of the 1979 World Climate Conference: "In recent years we have come to appreciate that the activities of humanity can and do affect climate. We now change the radiative processes of the atmosphere... The potential consequences of increasing atmospheric CO2 resulting from fossil fuel combustion are already a major concern...". "The implications of further projected increases [in CO2] are uncertain, but the weight of scientific predicts a significant global surface temperature increase."

[mrmazerati]

Thanks for the scientific comments from mesosphere73.

[tango6722]

Let''s cut through the B*llS**T, First it''s an impending ICE AGE, Then it''s Global Warming, Now it''s Climate Change! with AL Gore leading the way to enlightenment and Laughing all the way to the BANK! Sure I''m all for saving the environment, BUT don''t P**S on back and tell me it''s raining!!

[rushlimpdrug]

Not complicate the matter for you but water vapor is also a greenhouse gas. That is the big catch with the cloud-cover theory. There is also the problem of a sustainable civilization in a world of extreme flood and drought.
Posted by mesosphere73 at 08:02 PM

Congrats, you''ve just told the world you''re a ***.

[mesosphere73]

Not complicate the matter for you but water vapor is also a greenhouse gas. That is the big catch with the cloud-cover theory. There is also the problem of a sustainable civilization in a world of extreme flood and drought.

[actiscenei]

For those who think a cold snap means that there is no Global Warming, you don''t understand much about science. Do you believe that when the stock market goes down for two days that we''re not doing well in the financial markets. Look for trends...

Here in the southeast, we are having very chilly weather today, but that doesn''t mean that there''s a trend toward cooler weather throughout the year. In fact, the southeast is in the midst of a drought. According to you, if we have two days of precipitation, we''re actually not in a drought at all.

Pick up a science book to read about weather patterns. Or do you not believe in science? You: "Me no monkey. Me no like evolution. me smart. me know everything, even when me wrong."

[mesosphere73]

"...would that not help reflect more heat back from the sun?"

That is a theory. The problem is that the poles are actually deserts. There is very little precipitation in the extreme north or south. What people think of as storms in those regions is actually wind whipping the snow up off the ground. Any snowfall in the rest of the world is already mostly turned away from the sun and won''t be a significant influence.

A more hopeful idea for you to hold on to is that the increased cloud cover does the same thing. The hope is that the white backs of all these clouds would reflect more radiation back into space, balancing the warming effects. This is a possible development. We wouldn''t be talking about the same world we know today, but a world at least.

[mrmazerati]

I have what could be an overly optimistic observation: if boiling off more ocean water creates more precipitation in the form of snow in the north, and if that snow stays on the ground, would that not help reflect more heat back from the sun? Even a little? I''m seriously asking; professional replies only, please.

[mesosphere73]

"National Geographic Magazine Sept. 1978"

In 1979 Motorola released its 68000 series of microprocessor which revolutionized the industry by allowing blazing new processing speeds of up to 8mhz.

I would think that we can assume there have been some considerable advances in weather science since 1978.

[three-o-six]

Weather like this and the environmental alarmists might as well run around crying "the sky is falling" -- it might make more sense