CANADA’S FLEETING WARMTH TO END WITH CRASHING TEMPERATURES AND HEAVY SNOW
Blowing snow, blizzards and historically-low temperatures have been the theme this winter/early-spring across much of Canada, with the nation failing to post a 20C (68F) reading in the second week of April–one of the latest occurrences on record.
After several provinces are finally getting a taste of spring warmth this week, incoming Arctic air, riding south on a buckling low solar activity-induced meridional jet stream flow, will return swathes of Canada, and indeed the U.S., to winter-like conditions.
Daytime highs could near 30C (86F) in a few spots over the coming days, but then will struggle to break north of the freezing mark barely a week later — a true spring rollercoaster ride, a textbook ‘swing between extremes‘.
The warmth will be enjoyed most in southern Ontario, where daily highs are already touching the upper 20s.
Below is the Thursday forecast, courtesy of The Weather Network:
As the system advances into Ontario, a heavy dumping of snow is forecast for province’s northwestern region, where totals are expected to exceed 40 cm (1.31 ft).
Wet snow will also make its way into southern Ontario and southern Quebec early next week, with a shot of colder, potentially record-breaking cold following close behind.
The mass of anomalous cold looks quite encompassing, and by April 25 is forecast to have pushed well south of the border and into the majority of the Lower 48–as visualized below:
GFS 2m Temperature Anomalies (C) April 25 [].
EUROPE’S ENERGY CRISIS DEEPENS
Europe’s winter overall held mild –though was book-ended by outbreaks of extreme lows and heavy snows– which helped the continent’s failing energy infrastructure cope. However, the issues remain; in fact, they’ve gotten worse…
Reserves of oil and gas held up okay this past winter, but mainly because spiraling costs priced many homes and businesses out of the market.
The UK government issued more than five million Cold Weather Payments totaling over £130 million between November 2022 and the end of March — 430 times more than it had originally planned to as Brits struggled to keep the wolf from the door.
Such payments are a mere band-aid, though.
During the first quarter of 2023, shortfalls in Europe’s hydro and nuclear output easily offset the expansion of wind and solar sites, leaving the continent extremely vulnerable to acute energy shortages for the second year running.
Faced with the prospect of ‘the end of the world’ (that’s either via global warming or Russian annihilation — take your pick), European leaders were coerced, blackmailed and remunerated into fast-tracking renewable energy capacity development.
The continent successfully upped its renewable supply by a record 57,290 megawatts in 2022, or nearly 9%, according to the International Energy Agency, amid a desperate scramble to replace Russian gas with the added bonus of saving the planet.
However, steep drops in both hydro and nuclear output mean that Europe is an even worse spot than a year ago when the energy shock first hit. The establishment’s nonsensical drive to eradicate ALL energy solutions but for wind and solar is inexcusably idiotic at best; intentionally destructive at worst.
Europe’s total electricity generation over the first quarter of 2023 was 1,213 terawatt hours, which is some 6.4% less than during the same period in 2022, according to data from think tank Ember.
And with efforts underway to try and revive activity at scores of European factories, industrial plants and production lines that were shuttered or curtailed in 2022, Europe’s electricity demand is only set to increase for the remainder of the year.
Russian gas isn’t really an option — not politically or physically. This means Europe’s power producers will need to deploy alternative methods. However, wind and solar are the only options on the table. Hydro and nuclear may be green and may have accounted for 40% of the total electricity generation in Europe from 2000 to 2020, but they are now out of favor. This indicates that the establishment may not be seeking a fix here, rather a controlled demolition — what other explanation is there…?
In 2022, generation from hydro and nuclear dropped to less than 35% in 2022, in no small part due to shutdowns of aging nuclear plants. France, in particular, Europe’s top nuclear power producer, is enduring sharply lower nuclear generation, by 6.2% in the first three months of 2023 from the same period in 2022, and by 18% from the average of the years 2019 through 2021.
Delving into the data, hydro and nuclear lost 43 terawatt hours of electricity generation versus the same period in 2022, with wind and solar adding just 11 terawatt hours. Quickly running the math …. that equals disastrous planning by European officials.
If hydro and nuclear output remains curtailed and barring a political return from fairyland where nation’s recommission their retired coal plants–as we did recently see in the UK–this will spell disaster come the winter of 2023-24 for a great many Europeans.
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