Blork rubs it in

Blork, in Montreal, is lamenting that he's getting record warm temperatures for this time in May. He then goes on to mention how he noticed Calgary got snow on Thursday.

Uh, yea dude - and out here an extra hour west, we've had snow several times this week! Including about 6 or 8 cm on the Victoria Day holiday on Monday.

I do have sympathy for you having to ride in that heat because of the transit strike, Blork, but as for the warm weather? Yea, send me some a dat. My mom was at the cottage near Ottawa for the weekend - bet it was glorious.

I did notice that Blork mentions one of the things that infuriates me about the "global warming" discussion - namely the use of that term. Like him, I keep hearing people scoff at the concept by pointing out, for example, that we got a great deal more snow this year, or that certain areas had especially cold weather this winter. As if some places being cold negates the reality of global warming.

Out here. we exclusively refer to it as 'climate change" as well, because that more closely describes the phenomenon. And boy do we see it here. Just looking at pictures of the glaciers in the mountains from a few decades ago compared to now makes it pretty clear.

I was up at the Columbia Icefield two weeks ago with my visiting sister and her family. That's them goofing in front of the Athabasca Glacier - a tongue of the Columbia Icefield (click to enlarge). The stats and photos show the Athabasca Glacier alone has receded by kilometres in the last hundred years, greatly accelerated in recent decades. Scary when you consider how much of the Prairies' water is supplied from that Icefield.

Here is a full shot of the Glacier (click to embiggen). It's a little hard to tell from the perspective how far back the toe of the glacier is from the furthest moraine (the hill of gravel) but it's quite a ways. The glacier used to come down further than the Icefields Parkway, the road visible in the foreground.

And just for Blork, here's an example of how much we snow we get out here. That's a snow bank. In mid-May. Cut out by a blower, not plowed up. Sunshine Village, the ski area near where I work, got over 7 metres of snowfall this winter. (They just closed last weekend.)

Comments

[blork]

I'm not complaining about the heat, I'm complaining about that much heat in May. It ain't right. It ain't normal! You're welcome to it, although I can imagine the state of your glaciers after a few years with 30° temperatures in May!

(But I'm sure glad we didn't get your snow -- that would have made it really difficult to bike across the bridge!)

[Anne]

This is the time of year that my lawn should be starting to whither and die . . . instead we are having a monsoon, and the lawn thinks it is a rainforest.

I am very bothered that the majority of people do not seem to find this odd.