I posted earlier on the 1st snow in Euorope & the fact that there was a chunk of Arctic Ice that survived the GW Summer..BUTTT..the Ice cap is shrinking faster than predicted. Can anyone tell me different? Would love to hear any disclaimers, but as much as I have been a GW Poo Paw'er, its for real! Questions come to mind like..If all this warming is taking place...how do we still see these early cold weather events? How has the Snow averages increased over the past few years up in our mid atlantic highlands? How will the total loss of Ice affect the weather in the mid Atlantic? Will elevation soften the blow? Will the air above the surface still cool enough to bring snow & skiing to the Alpps? As the ice melts in the Arctic & the darker waters suck up even more solar radiation the ice over Greenland will melt also....This has happened before...How does it get cooler again like it has in the past? The Antarctic melts & forms every year as will the Artic in the future...Does this mean later winter starts because of the fact that it will take longer for the cold energy to build up north?....Enquiring minds NEED to know....Wuzz Uppp?

Well, one of your questions is easy to answer at least. Regarding mid-Atlantic snowfall: the Great Lakes have been warming. That means the Great Lakes have a longer "lake effect" season. As the precipitation from the Great Lakes falls later and later into the winter, more of it will fall as snow, even if temperatures are warming in the Mid-A (which, incidentally, the Mid-A has seen less documented change in temperature over the last 50 years compared to other regions). So West Virginia gets more snow.

This just goes back to my earlier argument that West Virginia skiers should be all for global warming! At the rate that the world is warming, there should be glaciers forming on MPC about the time that the last of Greenland slucks off into a giant salty margarita in the Newfoundland Bay. (just kidding)

Me thinks Mr. Z. is is rooting for Global Warming so he can have beach-front property in Kansas!

If that happens, I guess the WV Alpps would be an island... Kind of like New Zealand.

I'd love to remark on skiing & Prairie Dogs in Kansas but i'm not drunk enough!

Sing along now, John- "I've got some, ocean front property in Kansas City..."

Andy- I'd love to retract my statement about skiing in Kansas and prairie dogs but I'm not sober enough...

Actually, I think that kansas has a fairly high (I mean it's not 100ft) elevation, what is yours Roger?

Interestingly for my "ocean front property" Lex Luther-like scheme, I am on the low end of the state. It's about 900 feet here. The elevation doesn't change much from here to Salina, 2 1/2 hours away- it's about 1,200 feet out there. From Salina, though, you pass through the Smoky Hills and you begin the steady ascent to the crest just east of Denver in Genoa, CO (which is around 5,600 feet), then you coast down to the Front Range cities and head into the Rockies.

I make it sound like it's two hours away, don't I?