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Couldn't resist!

Neither can HE! It's just his way, but you know that!
I'm hoping for a few weeks of good weather so I can make some good money. No, I really didn't expect it mid January, but with all the delays.........So come on weather in mid February! Then I could afford to ski! Geez, I hate paying those prices after having passes for so many years!

What kind of work are you talking KB? I think maybe next year I'll be ready to try skiing again! maybe...it's been 13 years since I skied last! Ugh...

This one was interesting! Fair and balanced, even.

Arctic Sea Ice Re-Freezing at Record Pace
After Record Summer Melt, Recovery Still Lags

The record melting of Arctic sea ice observed this summer and fall led to record-low levels of ice in both September and October, but a record-setting pace of re-freezing in November, according to the NASA Earth Observatory. Some 58,000 square miles of ice formed per day for 10 days in late October and early November, a new record.

Still, the extent of sea ice recorded in November was well shy of the median extent observed over the past quarter century, as the image from Nov. 14 (above, right) shows. The dramatic increase in ice is evident, when compared to the record-low amount observed Sept. 16 (below, right). In both images, 100% sea ice is shown in white, and the yellow line encompasses the area ion which there was at least 15% ice cover in at least half of the 25-year record for the given month.

The record melting of Arctic sea ice this summer was widely viewed as a harbinger of global warming, though unusual wind patterns played a role and many factors affecting fluctuations in Arctic ice are poorly understood by scientists. Still, so much ice melted that the fabled Northwest passage opened for the first time in history, and the melting broke a record, set just two years ago and by a country mile, that at the time was seen as unprecedented and worrying.

The area of persistent open water north of Alaska and eastern Siberia, according to NASA, is unusual for this time of year, though not unprecedented. This area was also largely free of ice in November 2002 and especially November 2006.

Here's how NASA explains the record re-growth of ice over that 10-day period in October and November:

Record sea ice growth rates after a record low may sound surprising at first, but it is not completely unexpected. The more ice that survives the summer melt, the less open water there is for new ice to grow. When summertime ice extent hits a record low, on the other hand, large areas of open water provide room for the ice to grow once temperatures cool off enough. While summer warming of the upper ocean surface can cause wintertime sea ice regrowth to lag initially, as the fall season progresses and sunlight weakens, the rate of energy loss from the ocean increases. That heat loss coupled with a large area of open water creates ideal conditions for sea ice to form rapidly over large areas.

Find this article at: http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/ar...

Mitty....The next good chance of snow/rain at the earliest will be between January 23-January 27th.

After next weekend for sure?

Mitty, when it comes to the weather in particular, and Mother Nature in general, nothing is for sure. Things can change in a hurry.

All you can do is take all of the information that you have, at that moment in time, and make the best educated guess possible.

But, hopefully, yes.

Hi, Yes, I know Fly, but I'm going to be doing lots of driving on Friday and want the weather to be good. So I just thought I'd ask for selfish reasons. Wishing for stormy weather after Friday.

Ok Mitty, it looks like Friday will be a good day! Unless of course Bruce's TTF kicks in if I show up in the area.

TTF?

He calls it, The Tinker Factor. If I show up, it's going to snow!

Can you just come for Superbowl Tink? That would be a good time for weather and weight loss!

Now that sounds like fun KB! Whose having a party? Though I'd miss any pregame fun since I work til 3:30.

Coral: the point of observing melting ice is that it hasn't happened in humanity's span. The ecosystem associated with ice which produces food for whales et al is gone from their summer breeding areas. They have changed to other food in other areas representing a major disruption. The ice refreezing does not restore the ecosystems or restore those animals which depended on the food and have now died out. Even more obvious, humans who have depended on hunting, trapping and fishing have had to leave their homes to find new lives.

Oh yes, I remember now. TTF.

Yes..the next chance of precip will for sure be after this Friday.

Speaking of articles appearing daily about polar ice conditions…
Here's an excerpt from an article in today's Washington Post

Escalating Ice Loss Found in Antarctica
Sheets Melting in an Area Once Thought to Be Unaffected by Global Warming

By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 14, 2008; Page A01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008...

Climatic changes appear to be destabilizing vast ice sheets of western Antarctica that had previously seemed relatively protected from global warming, researchers reported yesterday, raising the prospect of faster sea-level rise than current estimates.

While the overall loss is a tiny fraction of the miles-deep ice that covers much of Antarctica, scientists said the new finding is important because the continent holds about 90 percent of Earth's ice, and until now, large-scale ice loss there had been limited to the peninsula that juts out toward the tip of South America. In addition, researchers found that the rate of ice loss in the affected areas has accelerated over the past 10 years -- as it has on most glaciers and ice sheets around the world.

"Without doubt, Antarctica as a whole is now losing ice yearly, and each year it's losing more," said Eric Rignot, lead author of a paper published online in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The Antarctic ice sheet is shrinking despite land temperatures for the continent remaining essentially unchanged, except for the fast-warming peninsula.

The cause, Rignot said, may be changes in the flow of the warmer water of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current that circles much of the continent. Because of changed wind patterns and less-well-understood dynamics of the submerged current, its water is coming closer to land in some sectors and melting the edges of glaciers deep underwater.

"Something must be changing the ocean to trigger such changes," said Rignot, a senior scientist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We believe it is related to global climate forcing."

Rignot said the tonnage of yearly ice loss in Antarctica is approaching that of Greenland, where ice sheets are known to be melting rapidly in some parts and where ancient glaciers have been in retreat. He said the change in Antarctica could become considerably more dramatic because the continent's western shelf, an expanse of ice and snow roughly the size of Texas, is largely below sea level and has broad and flat expanses of ice that could move quickly. Much of Greenland's ice flows through relatively narrow valleys in mountainous terrain, which slows its motion.

The new finding comes days after the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the group's next report should look at the "frightening" possibility that ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica could melt rapidly at the same time.

"Both Greenland and the West Antarctic ice sheet are huge bodies of ice and snow, which are sitting on land," said Rajendra Pachauri, chief of the IPCC, the United Nations' scientific advisory group. "If, through a process of melting, they collapse and are submerged in the sea, then we really are talking about sea-level rises of several meters." (A meter is about a yard.) Last year, the IPCC tentatively estimated that sea levels would rise by eight inches to two feet by the end of the century, assuming no melting in West Antarctica.