In a follow-up comment to Kevin's anguished cry of frustration at politicians forming (or justifying) their position in opposition to climate change legislation based on the amount of snow outside their offices, I said that science would expect heavier snowfall in a warming world. Today in Wunder Blog, Dr. Jeff Masters explains further:

Another interesting result from the Changnon et al. (2006) paper (Figure 2) is the relationship between heavy snowstorms and the average winter temperature. For the contiguous U.S. between 1900 - 2001, the authors found that 61% - 80% of all heavy snowstorms of 6+ inches occurred during winters with above normal temperatures. In other words, the old adage, "it's too cold to snow", has some truth to it. The authors also found that 61% - 85% of all heavy snowstorms of 6+ inches occurred during winters that were wetter than average.

Take climate change out of the equation for a moment, and just observe that some winters are warmer than others. All precipitation, rain or snow, requires water vapor to be in the atmosphere. The warmer the air temperature, the more water vapor the atmosphere can hold. In a relatively warm winter, when local temperature are still below the freezing mark, more snowfall would be expected.

If the average temperature before global warming was 28 degrees, and the average temperature after global warming is now 30 degrees, guess what? It's still cold enough to snow!

But even this argument gives too much credence to the cave-man level comprehension skills at work here: its warm right now, so there's global warming! It's cold right now, so global warming is a hoax! There is a difference between weather and climate. They are micro- and macro- effects. Think in terms of the economy: its bad right now, but you personally might still have a job. The economy is the climate. The job is the weather. Or maybe, as with all things, I should simply let the Daily Show explain it: