New York’s Holiday Blizzard 2010

7th Avenue Park Slope, Brooklyn (on December 26th, 2010)

Welcome back from the Saturnalia…er…Christmas break.  This year is winding down fast. Later on this week we’ll do some 2010 wrap-up, but for right now let’s concentrate on what everyone else is concentrating on—the crazy weather.

Yesterday and last night New York City was socked by the worst blizzard I have ever seen here.  Around 9:00 PM last night I walked out along 7^th avenue in Park Slope to be confronted with a snowscape straight out of a Jack London story (I braved this fearsome weather to return Despicable Me to the video store on time).  Evil winds whipped great sheets of snow into my face and reduced visibility down to 10 meters or less.  Huge snow drifts blocked the roads and made travel impossible.  The BMWs and Audis of Park Slope’s worthy burghers were rendered useless.  A great dim shape looming in the white waste was revealed to be an abandoned city bus trapped in a drift with its emergency blinkers turned on–a restlessly dozing behemoth.  This morning there was a snow drift in my room formed by snow blowing through the crack under the garden door.

The same bus was still there this morning on 7th Avenue.

I made my way to work this morning walking down the middle of the road—no vehicles were operating.  I had to hike through the drifts and ice to a distant train since the F was not operating (and probably still isn’t).   Even Rockefeller Center seemed empty.  Sitting in a plaza amidst impassible streets the great Christmas tree is half covered in snow and hoarfrost.

The Rockefeller Tree seen from the break-room at my office this morning. Note the absence of traffic!

All told, New York received 20 inches of snow (more in some places) with winds gusting up to 40 miles per hour.  According to the US National Weather Service the blizzard was the result of a low pressure system which originated off North Carolina which means Georgia and South Carolina have had their first white Christmas in over a century.  Holiday travelers are stuck where they are–since airports all along the coast are closed.  I shudder to think of people returning to New York from Europe–which was hit by its own blizzards last week.

My Garden this morning....

So what is up with this weather?  Park Slope Brooklyn has been hit with a tornado, a hailstorm (which I didn’t blog about but which flattened the autumn remnants of my garden with gumball sized hail), and this blizzard.  We had some fearsomely hot days this summer as well—which I didn’t think to mention since I kind of like them.  Since global climate scientists have no definitive answers, neither do I–however it bears remembering that 2010 was a year of greater than average volcanic activity.  Not only did Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland disrupt Europe’s air traffic for weeks by erupting directly in the Jet stream.  It was joined by Mount Merapi erupting in Indonesia and various Siberian and Chilean volcanic events (you can review dramatic photos of the year in eruptions on NASA’s website). These eruptions come in a time of extremely strange solar weather and, in the bigger picture, a great ice age is still ending (not to mention whatever climate change we have caused with our love of fossil fuels and our stubborn refusal to move forward researching and funding nuclear power options).

Ash from Eyjafjallajökull drifts over an Icelandic village in Spring of 2010

Of course this is anecdotal speculation on my part. I am certainly not an atmospheric scientist, but merely a hapless office drone with extremely cold wet feet.  Even so, I hope you will buzz back to Ferrebeekeeper this week so we can look back over the year and think about what is coming.  In the mean time stay warm out there!

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