Today's global warming snapshot: Northern roads *melting*

[Newsjock]

http://www.cbc.ca/north/story/roadclose281205.html

CBC News

Parks Canada has temporarily closed the road between Fort Smith, N.W.T. and the northern Alberta community of Fort Chipewyan because of severe overflow on the Peace River.

... Another winter road, which joins Fort Chipewyan and other northern communities to the rest of Alberta from the south, has also been closed due to melting and unsafe conditions.

Wes Holobniuk, manager of road operations for the vicinity, says he can't remember a time when the road has melted so extensively and early.

"We have had a couple winters where we would have a day or two of above zero and then it would cool right down but this stretch has been well over a week now, so some people enjoy it and some people are saying 'Oh no.' We don't have a lot of snow cover either, just an inch and a half, to two inches of snow."

Average temperatures for the area are -20 C but temperatures have been hovering around and above zero in December.

more

[Tempest]

1. It was raining in northern New Hampshire on Xmas

The temperature was in the 40s.

According to my mom, the weather hasn't been that warm or wet (rainy) in 30 years or more.

[NashVegas]

4. The Northeast Has Been Back And Forth All Over Since 1980

Christmas 1980, in the lower Adirondacks, it was in the 50s. NE winters were mild most of that decade, until 1993, then they came back w/a vengeance.

[roguevalley]

2. its about thirty here, blue skies, about eight inches of snow. if the

north pole keeps drifting, siberia will have the auroras, not us up here in Alaska

[symbolman]

3. haha!

I lived in Fairbanks for 10 years, and in case you don't know Siberia is on the same lattitude as Alaska, and Fairbanks is in the middle of the state, a BIG ass state, which loses more coastline at low tide than all of the land of Texas (we like to stick that up Texans butts when they come up there bragging)..

And the Northern Lights aren't over just one place, if you have a look at the photos NASA takes the Borealis is a RING around the TOP of the planet, what you are seeing in Alaska is just a little portion of the same Ring being seen by people in Siberia, Finland, and other northern lattitudes..

I'd be more worried about the permafrost melting, and the oil companies should be too.. if that melts they won't be able to create ANY Roads between their rigs, and the rigs themselves could topple over..

I did core samples for Oil Companies up there, went gold mining for two summers, and spent two summers looking for Uranium for the Dept of Energy by Helicopter, saw every square mile of Alaska east and west and north of Fairbanks, even crashed in the Tundra and was lost for three days, when they KNEW where we were!

Gonna write a book about the Helicopter job, got some stories to tell :)