Weather

[lizkat]

We're back in that Arctic breeze again. It was a little below zero even at 8am today, never got past 12ºF on the upswing in the sunshine. More subzero tonight, a little warmer Tuesday, then a windy Wednesday as the warm front battles its way back up here to resume the Februrary thaw for awhile.

And as much as balmy temps of high 40s and low 50s sound appealing, our next issue is that heavy rain is forecast for Thursday overnight. After two days of snowpack melt, even though the rivers are low right now, the ice on the creeks that feed them has been thick due to all those subzero overnights we've had. As that ice breaks up, lifts and rushes downstream during the thaw, ice jams and local flooding are common, grabbing fallen trees and old doghouses and other stuff along the way, all to complicate the next freeze and thaw cycle. Heh, and more nice ice rinks in the driveways later. Makes winter even more exciting...

 

[Yoused]

Looks like winter may be done here (famous last words). It is not unusual for us to see the end of the brutal cold by this point. Ornamental plums in the parking lot at work have been known to bloom, as though they have calendars, always on March first.

Still, the next four months will mostly be a slog through wet tedium.

 

[lizkat]

Looks like winter may be done here (famous last words). It is not unusual for us to see the end of the brutal cold by this point. Ornamental plums in the parking lot at work have been known to bloom, as though they have calendars, always on March first.

Still, the next four months will mostly be a slog through wet tedium.

Yes, the flowering trees and massed plantings of bulbs all in bloom are wonderful in spring... 'but the mud'....

I like the thaws in February as a break from brutal cold, but have to say that spring itself, whenever it arrives, usually mid-April or early May in the Catskill mountains, is not my favorite season. There's gardening work to be done but mostly it's too wet to do it, and yet one has become bored of what for awhile during winter was a great time for rest and relaxation, either in winter sport or just hanging out in a cozy spot with books and movies indoors.

Still I like to start a few seedlings for this or that later transplant to pots or the garden. I mean I have to justify all that time poring over seed catalogs somehow. And I'm always reminded that spring is afoot whenever I reach into the dark of the potato bin in mid-March and feel the rascals starting to sprout!

 

[Herdfan]

It is a cold 50 degrees out. The sun is nice, but offset by a more than gentle breeze.

 

[Yoused]

but the mud

In reading about the Battle of Stalingrad, I learned a new word, «Распутица», a Russian ally which is sometimes translated as "season of bad roads".

 

[lizkat]

It is a cold 50 degrees out. The sun is nice, but offset by a more than gentle breeze.

Yah we're battening down the hatches at this point, it's 40º which should feel balmy compared to subzero last night, but the wind is straight from the south now at around 25mph with 40mph gusts, which makes it seem more like a bad hair day in the summer when a hailstorm has just passed through. Here comes the rain, there goes the snow and the whole state's on a flood watch.

 

[lizkat]

We just had what the NWS calls a "snow squall" and locals just call "a whiteout". Zero visibility, and I can't even see there's a road out there, if I look out the window all I see is what you'd see if you ran really hot water in the sink in a really cold room and so the windows fog up instantly. But the windows aren't foggy, it's all happening outside in swirls and gusts of 30-40mph driving the snow everywhere. Wow!

After 20 minutes it has started to let up a little, but piling up really fast, so far leaving about two inches of fresh snow on the ground. Of course it's drifting and then sticking wherever it lands, since it's only around 15 or 18ºF outside. Hope the plow crews had the sense to already be in the sheds because if not, it will take them awhile to get there on these roads. There are places not far from here where a one-inch snowfall drifts to a foot on the roads inside of half an hour when the wind is right. All those wrinkly hills in the edges of the Catskills make for swirling winds during snowdumps like this.

​

 

[SuperMatt]

We just had what the NWS calls a "snow squall" and locals just call "a whiteout". Zero visibility, and I can't even see there's a road out there, if I look out the window all I see is what you'd see if you ran really hot water in the sink in a really cold room and so the windows fog up instantly. But the windows aren't foggy, it's all happening outside in swirls and gusts of 30-40mph driving the snow everywhere. Wow!

After 20 minutes it has started to let up a little, but piling up really fast, so far leaving about two inches of fresh snow on the ground. Of course it's drifting and then sticking wherever it lands, since it's only around 15 or 18ºF outside. Hope the plow crews had the sense to already be in the sheds because if not, it will take them awhile to get there on these roads. There are places not far from here where a one-inch snowfall drifts to a foot on the roads inside of half an hour when the wind is right. All those wrinkly hills in the edges of the Catskills make for swirling winds during snowdumps like this.

View attachment 11804

​

As a kid growing up in WNY, a whiteout was usually the only way we’d get a snow day. With heavy snow being a near certainty every year, the society became very effective in quickly clearing it.

 

[lizkat]

As a kid growing up in WNY, a whiteout was usually the only way we’d get a snow day. With heavy snow being a near certainty every year, the society became very effective in quickly clearing it.

Same up on the shores of Lake Ontario... hah, as kids we prayed for the plows to break down but that all too rarely happened...

 

[Yoused]

Hope the plow crews had the sense to already be in the sheds because if not, it will take them awhile to get there on these roads.

OT, I had this musing of what the country would be like if some enterprising inventor had keyed on the results of an Air Force experiment in the late '40s and gone on to develop and successfully market a practical personal use hovercraft. In my scenario, around '53 or so, the addition of "crab rails" improves handling in cross-winds and gusts, and stylish balloon skirts improve safety to the threshhold of popularity.

By the early sixties more than 60%, and rising, of personal vehicles are HCs. The priority of paving and building bridges falls dramatically. Freeways start to look more like channeled leas than ribbons of stone. And naturally, snow removal becomes a non-issue (not to mention flooding).

The question that arises from this is how our national fuel usage would compare. HCs would tend to burn more fuel in typical day-to-day use, but the amount of fuel that gtes into road building and upkeep and deicing (not to mention tire manufacture) might well make up the difference. We might even come out ahead.

 

[lizkat]

^^ but would our manners while commuting have improved? One may well wonder. I have visions of airborne shoot-em-outs while maneuvering a hovercraft into one of too few parking slots outside some strip mall or suburban office complex.

At the moment though I'm just wondering whether my snow plowing guy will decide to clean up local driveways or figure his customers who need to go somewhere (before Monday's thaw rolls in) can manage to blast out of whatever little (mostly little?) drifts have occurred with this snowblast.

That shift in weather sure did put a damper on local Saturday afternoon shopping. I haven't seen one car go by since that squall went through here. The plows have gone through a couple times chasing recurring drifts, and have now laid down salt so I guess we're done with today's snow story.

I hope that groundhog's sense of what means "six more weeks of winter" from February 2 was not too far off the mark. I like snow but I like grocery deliveries too and we keep getting these new snow or slush top-offs every time the grass so much as spots daylight. I'm ready for the March thaw and one that lasts a little longer than these two-day teasers!

 

[Deleted member 215]

It’s officially the driest January and February in California history, beating 1872, which formerly held the record.

 

[Arkitect]

Snow showers passing by us to the south…

We've had no snow this year. I do like a bit of snow. Granted not snowed in for weeks as the US and Canada are used to. Just a bit of wintryness.

 

[DT]

 

[Arkitect]

View attachment 12012

21°C? Not bad!

 

[Huntn]

It’s 44F outside and we are huddled in our house, like we are in a cabin out in the back woods and it’s -10F.

 

[Huntn]

21°C? Not bad!

That’s how I used to keep it straight in my head when working with metric regularly 10c-50F, 20c- 70F, 30c -90F… close enough.

 

[DT]

That’s how I used to keep it straight in my head when working with metric regularly 10c-50F, 20c- 70F, 30c -90F… close enough.

Other than memorizing a few reference temps, you can also use this as an estimate:

(C * 2) + 30 = F
(F - 30) / 2 = C

So like my 70° F is 7-30 = 40 / 2 = ~20° C

Or the other way 20° C, 20 * 2 = 40 + 30 = 70

Again, give or a take a degree or two

 

[Yoused]

When I was a teenager, I wrote a letter to Texas Instruments for information, or perhaps to lobby them to include RPN models, and i got back a full color poster that illustrated some metric equivalents, the largest image being "Body temperature is exactly 37°C" – I leave it to your imagination what that somewhat grainy image was.

 

[lizkat]

The month of March is already shaping up to be as weird as February. Was talking earlier to a friend in Ithaca, where the forecast temperature for the Friday overnight is 8ºF but on Sunday it's supposed to be 66ºF, then back to the 20s.

Anyone seen that gnarly woodchuck lately with his forecast of "only" six weeks more of winter? Time's almost up but the weather gods don't seem to be paying attention.