This Weather Trend Is Overpowering Global Warming - Storm of the Century

I remember seeing pictures of my grandmother waiving on a snowy hillside... NOPE she was on their roof.

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.

As a gardener, I feel this. Spring seems sooner, but you have to be careful because if a sudden cold snap comes...

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Everytime I see you, young lady, on this channel, I know that it's going to be a knowledgeable and informative video! Thanks

I really, really like Maiya May's presentation and the content on this channel. Thanks!

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 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.

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.