Mix of good news and bad news on the overall winter in the northern hemisphere. First, ice cover, much discussed by our beloved Fish:
http://www.socc.ca/seaice/seaice_current_e.cfmAlthough ice cover has returned to near-normal levels, the site notes that a lot of multi-year icepack has been replaced with a thin, annual icepack, which to me means it's highly likely to melt come springtime.
Now, snowcover:
http://moe.met.fsu.edu/snow/Note in particular that since 2003, there has been a slight but steady decline in peak snow cover and it hasn't been above 24% of the northern hemisphere land surface, until this year. Most of that appears to be from a break-out that began earlier in the month. I'm not sure about snow depth and how that stacks up, doesn't appear to be on the website, though it's a very important issue for spring runoff. NOAA covers the United States, don't know who looks at other places.
edit- even more interesting, we have the highest snow cover in the last 10 years this winter. That's kind of cool! No pun intended!
So, I guess, the news is a general mix for this particular winter. The one-year data is nice, but longterm trends are more depressing. Maybe if next winter is similar to this one, we might start seeing some rebuild in the icepack... but I'm not betting on this two years in a row.
