when the upper midwest is under hundreds of feet of glacial ice, we'll start talking ice age. we DO, that is DO KNOW.. what constitutes an ice age. one of most obvious symptoms is that you get lots of ice. glaciers grow, tundra expands southward, the mid latitudes get squeezed southward.. etc but hey, aren't glaciers receding everywhere in the northern hemisphere? yep. it's probably not the right analogy to be making.
winters were cooler in the '60s through the early '80s than they have been for the last couple of decades. that's overall.. an extremely cold month or two has generally been offset by warm periods in recent winters.
it's always a good idea not to sound like one of the articles that you might see on the AP wires about how some scientific study sees drastic climate change... really most any environmentally-related story in the media.. they tend to be overly dramatic and project horrible circumstances.. they ALWAYS harp on negative effects.
reality is never as simple. kinda like, since 1995 we've been marveling at how active hurricane seasons have been, and saying things like 'boy, at least they aren't making landfall...'
of course in 2004 we ran out of luck. overall conditions haven't been all that different when you get down to it, but shift that east coast trough position ten or fifteen degrees...
a'ite man, getting off the pulpit.. really this stuff belongs over in an 'other events' forum.. but it isn't september and nothing is active. really all of the site traffic is relegated to the main board right now.
HF 2304z16november