How was your weather today?

[Ozark Wizard]

Now that right there is funny, I don't care who you are!

 

[Corncobcon]

It was in the 60's Today. I took the dog for a walk and even smoked my pipe along the way.

 

[Thistleoak]

We got 10 more inches last night.... roads drifted over, school cancelled for day.

 

[KevinM]

10 degrees out on the deck this morning here in Central CT. No wind, though. Too cold for outdoor piping. Maybe four inches of snow on the ground. Everything is shoveled that can be shoveled. The birdies are mad, because I need to replenish their feeders. Some reports are predicting snow this p.m., others aren’t. I have sweaters and fleece to ward off the cold, but I do despise it getting dark at 4:45. Might as well wear my flannel jammies all day. Grrr.

 

[DrT999]

Bright and sunny, but a bit too windy for briars and a bit too cold for meers. Good thing cobs and clays are up to it!

 

[Corncobcon]

We got 10 more inches last night.... roads drifted over, school cancelled for day.

Ain't that the truth!

New Jersey in the winter: :evil:
Western North Carolina in the winter: :affraid:

Kansas and Missouri in the winter: :santa: :cheers:

 

[Brewdude]

We got 10 more inches last night.... roads drifted over, school cancelled for day.

Ain't that the truth!

When I was a cheesehead, snow never stopped us. The roads were ploughed and salted pretty well and many had snow tires. And we all knew how to drive in the snow. In fact just after I got my licence it was winter, so I learned right away how to deal with it. That has stood me in good stead all these years.

Now out here in the Pac NW, even a light snow spells disaster for those not used to it. Especially the Bubba's with the bigass 4-wheel pick-em-up trucks who think they're invincible.  

Problem out here is that the infrastructure isn't the same. Meaning that they don't have nearly enough vehicles designed for snow removal, and they don't salt here (which is a mixed blessing). Yes they spread grit/sand but it's not the same thing.

All to say that getting around in the dead of winter is far more challenging than back in Wiz-gan-sin! This last winter as an example saw record snowfalls at my elevation, and such that I could not get into my cul-de-sac due to some 18" snow. The county does not plough cul-de-sacs due to budget cuts. So there were several occasions I simply could not get home as there's no place to park anywhere else. Spent several nights at the brewery as a result!

OK, rant over. Now into a rainy pattern here with temps more like normal. 6"-12" snow in the upper elevations. Guess that will be visiting me before long.

All I can say is that if everything goes to plan, I'll be in sunny S. Arizona by this time next year, and they can have this nonsense here!

:silent:


Cheers,

RR

 

[Ozark Wizard]

It took all day (00:30 to 1900 Central Time) to rain a half inch today.

Next week is clear and highs of 60+/- F.

 

[Brewdude]

Might have 4" by tomorrow morning. The white stuff, that is!

:suspect:


No Cheers,

RR

 

[Blackhorse]

Christmas Eve and it snowed here in Portland on the valley floor. Amazing! :santa:

 

[Brewdude]

I had 3 or 4 inches when I got off my hill early this AM, and it was still coming down most of the morning.

No problem getting off my long hill, but there was a spun out car just at the bottom of a steep S-curve with a tow truck pulling him out of the ditch. The local police were also there and asked me to wait, which only took about 10 min until he had the car out of the way for me.

It was a mini-van, and there were 2 young couples standing on the side of the road, the car being towed obviously theirs. There were late-teens/early 20's by my reckoning and dressed for a formal party. The guys had suits and ties, the chicks long dresses. None of them had hats or gloves, and their thin coats bespoke of them being ill-prepared for this snow.

Looked like they were all unhurt though, so that's the main thing. In fact one of the chicks was apologizing for making me wait. I told her not to worry, and being safe was more important. Their mini-van looked like it had a pretty good crease on one of the doors though! That car was still there on the side of the road when I came home much later, so perhaps it wouldn't start or something.

Looks like we got around 6" total at my elevation. Getting back up my hill wasn't too bad as the ploughs and sanders had been through. I still slipped around a little on the steeper bits. And I have chains which I will certainly put on if conditions worsen. Good thing I grew up driving in Wiz-gan-sin, so am very familiar with how to drive in the snow. Plus, I got 4 new tires this past autumn.

Snow stopped around noon, and now it's calm and cold with upper 20's at night. It was around 34 when I got off my hill. And the weather man isn't predicting any more appreciable accumulation anytime soon.

Guess we got our white Christmas after all! I had to work today, as usual. NBD.


Cheers?


RR

 

[Brewdude]

Conditions have improved somewhat. Higher temps have melted most of the snow on my elevation. Still gnarly in my driveway and cul-de-sac though.

Bare pavement on the way out and lower elevations, so that's a good thing. And no forecast of more snow in the next little while. At least until Sunday!





Cheers,

RR

 

[Ozark Wizard]

14 and dry. Nice day. Low temps around 12. Lots of static!

 

[Vito]

http://www.southerncaliforniaweatherforce.com/2018/01/08/tornado-and-severe-thunderstorm-watch/

We're at the extreme upper right hand corner of the red zone. So far, no twisters here.

When I was a noobie in SoCal, I didn't know about the severe winds that can happen here. I was barely aware of even the notorious Santa Ana winds...until I experienced them.

But tornadoes? Well, yeah. They're not the huge 1.5-mile-wide F5 monsters that afflict the folx in Tornado Alley, but atmospheric vortices can happen anywhere. I've had near misses on two of them—one at my former office in Newport Beach, and another one here in my neighborhood that snapped off the tops of some eucalyptus trees (very hard wood) like broken matchsticks and relieved some neighbors' roofs of their concrete tiles.

The tornado watch is over now, but "Major Pacific Storm Nikita" is still moving through, the first significant rainfall we've had in the past 11 months or so..."significant" in this case being 1.26 inches. In normal places that's a shower; here it's a big deal.

Actually, any rain at all can be a nasty problem for folks who are in recent burn areas. There are always "recent burn areas" somewhere in SoCal, but this year it's worse than usual onna counta the massive late-season fires we had in December. With no vegetation to soak up the rain, flash floods and mud slides are a certainty with even moderate rainfall.

Anyhow, we dodged the bullet this time.

 

[Brewdude]

Good gravy Veet, I never figured SoCal for tornadoes but there ya go! Glad you dodged that bullet this time. I used to be a cheesehead and am well familiar with killer tornadoes.

Ya the Santa Anna's seem pretty brutal, including and especially how they fed the recent wave of wildfires. And now the rains will bring the mudslides and associated misery. :no:

Hope you can stay out of harm's way going forward.

As for me in the Pac NW, we're back in a rain pattern with a possible windstorm forecast for Thurs. We'll see how that plays out soon!  :|



Cheers,

RR

 

[Vito]

RR:

Truth be told, I'm more than a bit envious of y'all's lush northwestern rainforesty climate. If we got one-tenth of the rain you get up there, we'd be in great shape. For one thing, we wouldn't have the kind of crackling dry conditions that make most of SoCal an almost explosively combustible tinder box.

That's what happened in December. I lost count of the number of fires...prolly because the Thomas fire dwarfed all the others — 281,893 acres...the largest wildfire in California history. Add the Santa Ana winds into the mix, and it gets nasty. There's no way to stop it.

Those poor folks who had to deal with the fires already had enough trouble. As bad as the plethora of fires was, the rain is making it worse. As of the last time I heard (today), the mud slides caused by the current storm have killed 13 people. That's more fatalities than the death toll from some of the humongous tornadoes they get in the midwest.

We're feeling pretty lucky, and very un-cocky...counting our blessings that so far we've come through it OK.

 

[bosun1]

Watching the local news this AM. Weather guy comes on. Expected Friday weather. "One computer program says its going to do this (no snow), another computer program is saying its going to do something totally different (lots of snow). I'll keep watching the situation". Why is the TV station paying you $100K/year to tell me what a computer is saying? Must be an intern able to do the job for free!

 

[Vito]

bosun1: Weather is a complex system. In this case, "complex" means more than merely "complicated". It means it's a system whose behavior cannot be accurately modeled and predicted by a finite algorithm (equation).

But that's exactly what computer programs that model the weather and thereby attempt to predict it do; they're an attempt to reduce a complex system to a simple one so a computer can cough up a prediction. And that's exactly why they don't work.

The dunderheads who pass themselves off as meteorologists and "climate scientists" don't understand complexity. Like other actual sciences, it's not spoon fed to them in the progressive college curriculum.

Yet, while they demonstrate daily that they can't even predict the weather accurately 10 days in advance, they have somehow managed to bamboozle a political majority into believing that they can predict changes in the climate (another complex system) 10 or 100 or 1,000 years in advance.

I could represent the extent of their idiocy prosaically, but I'll save myself the keystrokes and describe it graphically:

 

[Brewdude]

Veet, in light of your last post I submit this for amusement. And no, it's not meant to rain on any ethnic group-



This from the founding and now retired principal of Oxford Academy which one of the top ten high schools in the country per Newsweek Magazine.


       *Cold Winter Ahead*

       It’s late fall and the Indians on a remote reservation in North Dakota
       asked their new chief if the coming winter was going to be cold or mild.

       Since he was a chief in this modern society, he had never been taught the
       old secrets.  When he looked at the sky, he couldn’t tell what the winter
       was going to be like.

       Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, he told his tribe that the winter was
       indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect
       firewood to be prepared.

       But, being a practical leader, after several days, he got an idea.  He went
       to the phone booth, called the National Weather Service and asked, “Is the
       coming winter going to be cold?”

       “It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold,” the meteorologist at
       the weather service responded.

       So the chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more
       firewood in order to be prepared.

       A week later, he called the National Weather Service again.  “Does it still
       look like it is going to be a very cold winter?”

       “Yes,” the man at National Weather Service again replied, “it’s going to be
       a very cold winter.”

       The chief again went back to his people and ordered them to collect every
       scrap of firewood they could find.

       Two weeks later, the chief called the National Weather Service again.  “Are
       you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be extremely cold?”

       “Absolutely,” the man replied. “It’s looking more and more like it is going
       to be one of the coldest winters we’ve ever seen.”

       “How can you be so sure?” the chief asked.

       The weatherman replied, “The Indians are collecting a shitload of firewood.”


:cherry:


Cheers,

RR

 

[Ozark Wizard]

60 this morning until about four pm. Then the bottom dropped out. 20 now, and windy as, well, you know......