Great Lakes sailors, the thaw is just about to happen
- Thread starter RECESS
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Having lived and sailed in Michigan for the past decade, I've found it best not to think about spring. Just keep your head down and do your job, until it ends. Natives tell me that this weather is typical of when they were kids. We all just got used to the slow global warming effect over the past decade, and this year is the throw-back. Doug is right that we could use several feet of lake level in the Michigan-Huron system. The lack of lake ice for the past decade is one of the reasons for the low levels. You salt water people may have to worry about tide tables, but it's low tide here year-round.
Just to correct a few issues, this isn't a good old fachioned winter that the senile seem to remember. Lake ice has been tracked since 1963 and only three previous times has the ice cover exceeded 90%. This year we are at 95% which is a record never before seen. This is what I had up on another thread from Jim Cantore of The Weather Channel and the NWS. We had -5 this morning which is about 35 degrees below normal. On the global climate change, this is exactly the type of strange weather we can expect. With increased heating along the equator and tropical regions the rising air creates a vacuum that sucks the polar air southward and the warm air is transported above to the poles resulting in their warming and ice melt. The huge convection current in the sky so to speak. Not much fun for any of us unfortunately. Our sanity long ago disappeared. No sane person would live in this frozen eigth circle of hell.
Global weather is a system and like any other system, the more input / the more output. Dump heat energy into the atmosphere and watch the frequency and amplitude increase. More frequent, larger storms and the shift in the Gulf Stream which brings the cold farther south and ends up pounding the British Isles. We haven't seen the end of the longer cold snaps and drought in the southwest.
Paraphrasing a great old quote from Rogers Hornsby:
People ask me what I do in winter when there's no sailing. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.
Nonsense. There is no vertical airmass circulation from increased equatorial heating or any other cause. Coriolis forces dominate and would rip any such current apart before it could get started.
From the link:
"Contrary to the impression given in the simplified diagram, the vast bulk of the vertical motion occurs in the Hadley cell"
"It is a closed circulation loop, which begins at the equator with warm, moist air lifted aloft in equatorial low pressure areas (the Intertropical Convergence Zone, ITCZ) to the tropopause and carried poleward. At about 30°N/S latitude, it descends in a high pressure area."
"Contrary to the impression given in the simplified diagram, the vast bulk of the vertical motion occurs in the Hadley cell"
"It is a closed circulation loop, which begins at the equator with warm, moist air lifted aloft in equatorial low pressure areas (the Intertropical Convergence Zone, ITCZ) to the tropopause and carried poleward. At about 30°N/S latitude, it descends in a high pressure area."
They usually start putting the mooring buoys in the harbors around mid march. Probably be sometime in April before the ice melts at this rate. Just hope it doesn't delay getting my boat in the water. Lived in Chicago for over 20 years and never shoveled this much snow.
Let's hope it doesn't melt too fast. 2 weeks ago on the Rocky River at Cleveland Yacht Club. Yikes! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v17022kFfOw
http://www.climate.gov/news-feature...tex-brings-cold-here-and-there-not-everywhere If it doesn't start to warm soon this is going to be one short season.
Here's another rumor: Because of the higher than normal tempts in the western pacific pushing the air masses around the US west coast, the artic cold air is being forced into the midwest/east coast. 
As bad as that looked, I couldn't watch the whole video from such crappy videography. couldn't focus on one thing for more than 1 sec.
So you are contending that if it is cold in Baltimore then the rest of the planet is cold as well?