Would someone please nudge Al Gore and wake him up to face reality.

As we all know, our former Vice President and the most celebrated loser of the 2000 race for the White House (as well as the self-proclaimed “inventor” of the Internet) won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change.

At that time, Gore was quoted as saying, “Global warming is the greatest challenge we’ve ever faced. We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity.”

Al….welcome to the winter of 2010.

If our globe is warming at an alarming rate, then please explain why this year’s winter is one of the worst in recent memory.

How does Al explain the fact that on Friday (Feb. 12), 49 states reported snow on the ground at the same time. The only holdout was Hawaii, but even that was deemed as odd as the Mauna Kea volcano, located on the “big island,” peaks at 13,800 feet (taller than Mt. Everest) and often times has snow on it. A meteorologist at the Mauna Kea Weather Center told the Associated Press the mountain had been without snow for a few weeks and none is in the forecast.

There is no recorded history where all 50 states have experienced snow on the ground at the same time. The last report of this occurring in 49 states was January 19, 1977 (South Carolina was the lone holdout).

According to the National Weather Service, 67.1 percent of the United States’ total land area was covered by snow as of Friday. That far exceeds the 40 to 50 percent normally seen this time of year.

Also on Friday, Dallas, Texas recorded an improbable 12.5 inches of snow, breaking records for the date and pushing the city to its second snowiest winter on record and its snowiest in 32 years.

Not to be left out, snow was on the ground in Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia and even the Florida Panhandle on Friday.

And how does Al Gore explain “Snowmageddon?” That’s the term used in a massive snowstorm that dumped over two feet of snow on Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and Baltimore and other mid-Atlantic cities on the weekend of Feb. 6. There were reports of three feet of snow in the Allegany area of Maryland.

The biggest storm in official records for Washington D.C. was in 1922. The “knickerbocker storm” as it is known buried the capital under 28 inches of snow. Baltimore’s all-time record snowfall was 26.8 inches which occurred on Presidents Day 2003. Prior to that, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson discussed a storm in their diaries in 1772 that dumped as much as three feet of snow.

Even the long-range forecast isn’t promising, according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac. They project a colder and wetter than normal winter for our region. March isn’t projected to be any better with temperatures running 3.5 degrees below normal. The Almanac even goes as far to suggest that this summer will be cooler than normal.

In the meantime, there’s “snow on the ground, snow on the ground; Al looks like a fool with snow on the ground.”

Cal Bryant is Editor of the Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald and Gates County Index. He can be contacted at cal.bryant@r-cnews.com or 252-332-7207.