Weather

[DT]

Amazing drone video from the day after Nicole, this is right at my front door (so to speak).

 

[DT]

Oh my stars!

 

[Alli]

Oh my stars!

View attachment 19378

We’re heading your way on Tuesday. Doesn’t look like much fun.

 

[Yoused]

You guys are such lightweights. We have been having a rime of frost on the ground until 10am every day here (which is about to change to the 40~55 range with lots of rain next week, just in time for PissyFamilyDay). Fortunately, we never get your thousand percent humidity in March, or even August – I could never deal with that on a regular basis.

 

[lizkat]

Buffalo, NY is having a major snow event now through Sunday, up to 4 feet when done. Looks like the winter elves opened a freezer door someplace up top the planet, and a large swath of the USA is getting a free reminder that summer is really over.

Unusual weather pattern brings "crippling" snow to New York, cold temperatures across U.S.

A total of 238 million Americans saw temperatures at or below 32°F on Thursday morning.

www.axios.com

We're not having anything like that in the Catskills but we've had four to six inches of snow this week and it's cold enough so it did not all turn to slush as initially predicted. Time to get out the parkas, I guess!

 

[Renzatic]

Looks like the winter elves opened a freezer door someplace up top the planet, and a large swath of the USA is getting a free reminder that summer is really over.

It’s too damn cold! It actually frosted over last night!

 

[lizkat]

It’s too damn cold! It actually frosted over last night!

Yah, the paradoxes of global warming. One of them is apparently colder winters in US latitudes... at least this year we got a break with a warm and long fall season.

Thanks to high fuel prices, everybody I know chopped a hundred gallons off their pre-buy for the 2022-23 heating season. We all bundled up in layers of clothes and shawls or blankets in the evening, just to avoid turning on home heating until mid-November instead of mid-October. Weird to see houses with nothing coming out of chimneys until recently.

 

[Alli]

Went down to 34 last night. We sat home in front of a fire. Meanwhile, the rest of my family has left Florida for Chicago for a Bar Mitzvah. I chose not to go. Guess who they’re now touting as being the smart one.

 

[lizkat]

Buffalo area got whacked by a snow dump (widely advertised in advance). Orchard Park: 77 inches (1.96 meters). Of course travel bans immediately got smacked into place with six feet of snowfall before drifting... and as usual lots of people proceeded to demonstrate how exceptional Americans are by staying on the roads in the face of the oncoming storm and by getting on the roads thereafter, to great exasperation of snow removal and emergency response crews.

"One of the problems that we're seeing is that commercial vehicles, tractor-trailers, have been getting off the Thruway but then trying to get into our region by going up Route 5, Route 20, other routes and getting stuck," Poloncarz said.

Plow drivers and first responders encountered "terrible problems" on Routes 5 and 20 with jackknifed trucks. A vehicle was even struck by a train, but there were no injuries because the train was moving so slow, Poloncarz said.

Travel bans in South Buffalo, Lackawanna and many of the Southtowns that were in effect most of Friday remain in place.

"Travel ban means no travel," Poloncarz said at the 9 p.m. snowstorm briefing.

Poloncarz said employers cannot force their employees to violate a travel ban by driving to work unless the employees are essential emergency personnel.

[ Rule of law my ass. We're living through years of a certain guy trying to demo that the law itself is an ass, so... ]​

Anyway good luck to all those trying to shovel out after a record-breaking snowfall in late autumn.

 

[lizkat]

Bizarre weather pattern here: rollercoaster territory for temperatures, looking to persist into December.

Went to bed last night with outside temps having climbed instead of falling after dark as the wind shifted around to come from the southwest. Woke up and it was already 40ºF (instead of normal high 20s), watched it climb up to around 50º in pale sunshine and then start falling as some rain showers began.

Now tonight it's back down down to just about freezing, and the rain is turning to snow flurries. I actually hope the temps stay on the downside. If it's a bunch more rain overnight instead, then the next two days will be a pain in the neck: the highs are only forecast to be in the 20s, so we'll all be skating to the damn mailboxes since the ground is starting to set up a little and not absorb rain.

So far only the deer are really loving this stuff. Hunting season has opened but no snow is sticking long enough to make tracking easy. The older deer are all way, way up in the hills where a lot of wood-lot owners post their land anyway until late in the season, when most of the hunters from downstate have already given up and gone back home.

 

[Yoused]

We had a donut of snow yesterday. You know, like the fine coat of powdered sugar they put on a donut. Just enough to lighten up the ground, and then gone by afternoon. Now, tonight, it is acting a bit like it means it. We might have a few inches by morning. Too early for it to have real staying power, though. It will be gone in less than a week.

 

[Alli]

Yesterday was t-shirt and shorts. Today is sweatshirt. I don’t get it.

 

[lizkat]

Yesterday was t-shirt and shorts. Today is sweatshirt. I don’t get it.

We had your missing warm weather for awhile but we must have shipped it on up into Quebec.

Y'all had sent it this far with south winds gusting up into the 40mph range... before it ominously quit and then started up again, but from the west and now from northwest. Whatever you guys have today in the way of colder weather, we ended up doubled down on that in the overnight. Brrrrr!

Whatever I said yesterday about snow not sticking, forget that. The deer better stay put or they'll end up tracked by hunters for sure. I saw a bunch of deer tracks going down and up my east driveway early this morning plain as day. They head down for water before dawn and then back up hoping to be safe in the forests on the ridge all day. It's a really steep climb for any hunters who give it a try from gentler sloping meadows to the east, and the deer seem to have that figured out by now.

All I know is it's a good day to stick in the house and add a wool sweater to the mix of clothing layers!

 

[Yoused]

When the big colorful map tells you it is 18°F in Paradise, you have to have second thoughts.

 

[Alli]

We have now had a week of daily “dense fog advisories.” As if you can’t tell there’s dense fog when you look out the window and can’t see the back yard.

 

[lizkat]

We have now had a week of daily “dense fog advisories.” As if you can’t tell there’s dense fog when you look out the window and can’t see the back yard.

Ugh. Fog is the worst of the worst for highway accidents. People do tend to slow down for it on local roads but it almost always takes a pileup to make that happen on interstate highways. It's just the nature of the traffic flow on those roads. Slow down and someone will pass...

Last March in Missouri, 135 vehicles including big rigs piled up in fog on interstate 57, killed 6 people and had first responders coming in from two adjoining states

6 dead after massive pileup on Missouri highway: report

The crash happened on Interstate 57 near Charleston when a driver hit the breaks in foggy conditions, starting a chain reaction, officials told KFVS.

nypost.com

 

[Herdfan]

@lizkat,

Is that a whole lot of reds and pinks in the Catskills for Christmas?

 

[lizkat]

@lizkat,

Is that a whole lot of reds and pinks in the Catskills for Christmas?

Yeah we'll be in that snow barrel now for awhile, making up for lost time I guess. Not so much more snow due here right away, but really chilly: it was apparently 8ºF this morning, but thanks to a "heat wave" during the day, it's back up to 19 right now; temperatures are shifting towards the snow-making zone on Thursday and Friday. The summer to winter transition was really abrupt this year, so 19 feels downright cold and I'm glad I slept through whenever it was only 8.

Still, it has cleared off again tonight and 19 degrees = good enough excuse to peer out a window upstairs at the Geminid meteor shower this year, instead of venturing outside as I do on peak Geminids night some balmier years. The moon is still bright enough to make the show less spectacular anyway.

WSJ had a little writeup today on the Geminids (paywall removed) and even included instructions on how to avail oneself of best viewing. They lost me somewhere around "Lie on your back with your feet facing south." I'd be making snow angels, so no thanks.

So this is the last West Virginia winter for you guys and then it's all sunshine all the time in AZ?

 

[Herdfan]

So this is the last West Virginia winter for you guys and then it's all sunshine all the time in AZ?

YES!

We were actually out there last weekend and I was looking forward to seeing the night sky in a Dark Sky community. But that dang moon had to show up and ruin it.

It is cloud covered today with a low ceiling. Really can't wait for the all the time sunshine for sure. Here is a sunrise and sunset from the house.

 

[Alli]

Today is the first time in a week we have not had a dense fog advisory. Instead we have a coastal flood advisory.