Snowtober in Wantagh October 30, 2011

What was billed as “Snowtober” was “Rain-and-snowtober” or “Wintry mix-tober” in Wantagh for much of yesterday and last night.  Just to the north and west (within Nassau County), more wet snow fell.  The precipitation changed to all wet snow after 11PM.

What fell at my house only stuck to the cars in the driveway and to parts of the grass.  Any cold surface accumulated snow.

Since it was the first snow we had in seven months, I took out my camera and took a few pictures.  The first three pics are from around noon:

The last two were taken at 11:30, nearly twelve hours later:

A bigger concern for me was the strong gusty winds.  The National Weather Service issued a High Wind Warning for Nassau and Suffolk until 6:00 this morning.  This was, after all, a Nor’easter.  So between that and wet snow accumulating on tree limbs, I feared downed trees, limbs, and power lines.  I simultaneously flashed back to the Nor’easter of March 2010 and Irene of nine weeks ago.  But the worrying was for nothing.  The winds died down early this morning and the power never went out.  That’s not to say it didn’t go out elsewhere on Long Island, but it wasn’t on the scale of either storms I flashed back to.  I wish I could say the same for people north and west of the Island (2/11/13 UPDATE: The page I linked to in the previous sentence no longer exists).

11/3 UPDATE: Somehow, a link was made between this storm and climate change last night on NBC Nightly News:

BRIAN WILLIAMS, anchor: Everybody out East said the same thing about this freak snowstorm, “This kind of thing didn’t used to happen. This never happened before.” And while that is true, it may also be true that we’ll all have to start getting used to this kind of thing over the long haul.

I didn’t hear that.  What I heard is what is noted later in Noel Sheppard’s NewsBusters post:

Yet October snows in the northeast though infrequent do occur. As AccuWeather reported Monday:

The last time that Central Park recorded measurable snow was on Oct. 21, 1952 when 0.5 of an inch fell. Prior to that, 0.8 of an inch fell on Oct. 30, 1925. […]

A record snowfall of 6.0 inches was set at Bangor, Maine, on Sunday. This broke the old record of 5.0 inches set back in 1963.

The point being that it does snow in this region in October.

…

One can only imagine what kind of storms hit this region during the Little Ice Age of the 16th through 19th centuries. But since Williams and Thompson weren’t alive, and snowfall records began in 1869, weather events earlier than that seem unimportant.

This of course is common for climate alarmists, so we shouldn’t be the slightest bit surprised.

In their view, whatever is happening today couldn’t possibly have happened before records starting being kept, and therefore all weather events outside “the norm” are considered extreme and therefore proof of climate change.

You think those still without power in Connecticut, New Jersey, and other affected areas care about that?  Of course not.  They just want their power back.

12/30 UPDATE: This storm was the #2 tri-state area news story in WCBS 880’s countdown of the top 11 stories of 2011:

Nineteen inches of snow in October? Even WCBS 880’s cautious chief meteorologist Craig Allen couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“There’s no way you can play this down based upon these weather maps. Almost everything is in agreement,” Allen reported.

And these flakes were falling on full foliage. All it took was a couple of inches of snow to start bringing branches down.

Hundred-year-old trees snapped like twigs. Mother Nature’s mischief night was the Halloween snowstorm of 2011.

Three million people lost electricity. …

You can read and listen to the rest here.