January 2, 2007: Nebraska ice storm

[rnx]

Originally Posted by Sheldonrs

I guess the rumors about global warming were exagerated.

Well, freezing ice storms happen at temperatures below 0 at the grow and higher in the atmosphere. What happens is this:
Global temperatures rise, atmosphere temperature rises
More evaporation occur in the large bodies of water (hence places where they get more snow)

Since the atmosphere temperature rises, two things can then happen:
It'll rain, and the rain will freeze because of clouds (remember the evaporation)
-or-
if no clouds form, temperature at surface will be equal to the one in the atmosphere (hence warmer)

It depends where you are located.
Normally, where I live, winter with snow starts around November 15th and ends around February 15th. This year, there wasn't any snow until December 25th. And it melted. So winter hasn't officially started yet for me

And YET - in my old city, winter started 2 months early, and the temperatures are WELL below season normals.

So yeah, global warming doesn't necessarily mean warmer seasons