It is summer down under, peak car washing season. Argentine car washers blame poor weather forecasting for bad business A summer brawl has surfaced in Buenos Aires between the car washers’ industry and the Argentine Meteorological service that are blamed for their poor forecasts which scares customers from the outlets. The story goes on to say, The dispute came to light when the Argentine Chamber of Automatic and Manual Automobile Washing, Calama, criticized the weather forecasters in an open letter addressed to one of Buenos Aires newspapers. However the Argentine National Meteorological Service tried to downplay the controversy. The director of the service Hector Ciappesoni in statements to another daily said that the mistakes are “even” both when announcing rainfall and when anticipating good weather. “In any case the owners of the car washing stations must understand that 2012 was the fourth rainiest year since 1900”, indicated Ciappesoni. In the letter the cham...

Earlier, I asked why the Centers for Disease Control was telling us what to do if a pipe burst . Now, we have the (useless) Department of Homeland Security telling us to : - Stay indoors during the storm. - Walk carefully on snow, icy, walkways.   Why DHS has to do this, I don't know. Perhaps it has to do with a nefarious terrorist plot to sell fake rock salt that doesn't really melt the snow. Sounds to me like we know two agencies that have so little real, mission-related work that they can be the first to have their budgets cut to help with the huge federal deficit.

Look out Atlanta as an ice storm may be on tap. This is the probability of 0.10 inches or more of glaze ice accumulating. If you are planning to travel through Atlanta's airport Friday, you may want to work out alternate plans. For tips, please see my Airline Crisis Survival Guide . Farther north, snow is likely. AccuWeather has more details .

In the posting immediately below, I discuss President Obama's remarks pertaining to climate in his Inaugural Address Monday. While I believe the science does not support the President's comment, there is no doubt man affects the weather. Here is an example via the National Weather Services in Pittsburgh that occurred yesterday. The smokestack is indicated by the red circle. The plume of snow showers is indicated by the yellow arrows. This is a radar image of a plume of snow created by the steam stack at the Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Plant near Shippingport, PA. The warm steam rises into the very cold air and almost immediately turns to snow which is blown downwind. As much as an inch of snow fell under the plume. Humans affect the weather through the emission of greenhouse gasses (carbon dioxide, methane), through land use changes (center pivot irrigation in the Plains), heat islands created by large cities, and in many other ways. There are natural changes that...

Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.  I'm sorry to have to disagree with our President the first day of his second term in office but the above statement is simply unsupported by the science. President Obama used the word, "impact." The U.N.'s Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its latest Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events (SREX) in December. The IPCC is the group that was the co-recipient of the Nobel Prize along with Al Gore. Using its "Summary for Policymakers" here is what the latest science says pertaining to  "impacts." Long-term trends in economic disaster losses adjusted for wealth and population increases have not been attributed to climate change, but a role for climate change has not been excluded.  (page 8) No increased losses attributable to climate ch...

Amazon is out of When the Sirens Were Silent  again. I'll post when Amazon has it back in stock. In the meantime, the ebook Kindle version is available .

I have been bombarded with questions and comments (some pleasant, some snarky) about President Obama's statement regarding climate change in yesterday's Inaugural Address. Unfortunately, I am swamped with my AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions work at the moment. Later this evening or tomorrow morning I will post my thoughts. Stay tuned.