On the Nature of Things | Forum

ST | Sledding on roof: Alaska buried in mounds of snow

ANCHORAGE — The most intense winter anyone in Alaska can remember has piled snow so high that windows are blocked, fuel has been delayed, roofs have been turned into sled runs and boats have sunk.

While snow depths are below normal in most of the nation, Alaska is buried. More than twice as much snow as usual has fallen on the state's largest city, National Guard troops are digging out a fishing community and snow shovels are at a premium.

As a Russian tanker carrying much-needed fuel continued to crawl toward the iced-in coastal community of Nome, weather-weary Alaskans awoke Thursday to more snowfall.

Enough is enough.

Are you affected by this snowfall, Marcus?

Near record breaking cold in Alaska.

IEEE | A Perfect Storm of Planetary Proportions

The approach of the solar maximum is an urgent reminder that power grids everywhere are more vulnerable than ever to geomagnetic effects.

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Hope all the Yanks in Tornado Alley, including our own posters, avoid the worst.

Violent tornado rampage in 11 [US] states leaves 31 dead

Here in Bowling Green the wind was making moaning noises all afternoon. It was like the sky was alive and it was groaning to everyone below. When the sirens went off it was one of those surreal moments, there were no birds singing, no dogs barking only the soft whurr of the sirens and the groaning of the wind in the upper atmosphere. I picked up my son from afterschool and had to go down into the school shelter to retrieve him, the same for my daughter who kept asking me what that noise was. When we turned down Louisville Road the rain was hitting us dead on. My daughter told me "Hey Dad that looks like the weather on TV!". We never lost power but we knew that there was the possibility of some really bad weather. It looks like March has come in like a lion, I do hope that it leaves like a lamb.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_lore#Lion_and_lamb

[17m in Hokkaido]

Typhoon wrote: [17m in Hokkaido]

2 cm in Calgary. 27C yesterday in Ottawa.

Well, it's pleasant, dangerous and weird here : we have (by our standards) a severe drought in southern and eastern England. The worst for 30 years and in some places for over 100.

Sunshine every day - cold at night, but up to 15-16 C in the day, well above average for March. Not England as one knows it.

Of course, where Noddy comes from, it is nothing, where "average rainfall" seems to consist of two years of floods followed by ten years of sod all. But we are not used to it.

Wetterschadenfreude

The glee felt by people in colder, snowy regions (i.e. Upstate New York,) when other (generally warmer,) areas get pounded with a violent snowstorm that misses the notoriously cold region.

While Upstate New York enjoyed unseasonably warm temperatures in January, Philadelphia had three feet of snow, sparking a feeling of wetterschadenfreude from Albany to Buffalo.

~ Urban Dictionary

That nasty looking storm that went through the midwest this past week. I was in Lafayette IN watching the dispatch screen, got the hell out of there before it hit. Temperature dropped about 30*F in about two minutes. Thought about hanging out to watch it rain (haven't seen much of that down here) but thought it better to get moving back south.

Hoosiernorm wrote:

That nasty looking storm that went through the midwest this past week. I was in Lafayette IN watching the dispatch screen, got the hell out of there before it hit. Temperature dropped about 30*F in about two minutes. Thought about hanging out to watch it rain (haven't seen much of that down here) but thought it better to get moving back south.

Ah, memories of the US MIdwest.

They say that this is what global warming looks like.

At least it doesn't look like Kevin Costner.

Demon of Undoing wrote:They say that this is what global warming looks like.

At least it doesn't look like Kevin Costner.

Every cold front is natural variability.

Every warm front is man-made global warming.

In this case it was a Derecho

Wikipedia: Derecho

It's probably a bigger deal than usual as it impacted the chattering classes on the East Coast.

Not unlike smacking a cage of budgies with a 2 x 4

Condolences to those still without electric power.

Being hit by a derecho front while sailing on Lake MIchigan, hitting boat speed with nothing but a tiny storm sail, made me appreciate that Great Lakes sailing could put one's seamanship to a real test.

22:32 14 July

240,000 people told to evacuate in rain-hit southwestern Japan

FUKUOKA, July 14, Kyodo

Some 240,000 people were told to evacuate from areas in southwestern Japan on Saturday, as torrential rain continued to batter the region for the third straight day, causing flooding and mudslides that have already claimed 22 lives.

The heavy rain drenched northern parts of the Kyushu region, halting bullet-train services, forcing the closure of expressways and causing power blackouts affecting about 7,000 households.

Police and local authorities said eight people are still missing as a result of intermittent rain that began hammering the region Thursday.

I spent an afternoon in a Thunderstorm in a lake in Tennessee. Watching lightning directly overhead while floating on your back is wonderful.

A new Ice Age to wreck the Olympics?

Boris Johnson more in his previous incarnation as a humourist than as Mayor of London, and certainly not as climatologist.

It has certainly been totally crap ever since April (we did have summer, it was in March) . Today is typical, temperature a miserable 16 deg C (heating on again this evening) and pouring with rain. Little ice Age apart, it may be all the fault of you Yanks again, the high pressure over the eastern US which provided such a heatwave sent the jet stream up to Greenland, where is bounced back down from the Arctic High, and overshot - it' is way too far south for July, over England, France and northern Germany. Conversely there has been no rain in normally sodden northern Scotland and Norway, although they have has unseasonal cold under sunny skies.

Some signs that the Jet stream may move north by the end of the month, this weather is getting depressing (although still better than 40 degree heat)

Yeah, I've seen that. Paris weather sucks this year and so does Hamburg's. On the other hand, yesterday we had 38C in Bucharest. Today the temperature is down to a modest 34C and, holy lavender!, we might even see 30C tomorrow.

Enki wrote:I spent an afternoon in a Thunderstorm in a lake in Tennessee. Watching lightning directly overhead while floating on your back is wonderful.

Last time I was on a body of water during as thunderstorm I spent my time, between dealing with wind gusts, reflecting on the fact that the tallest thing around for many kilometres is the 10 metre tall aluminum mast . . .

From the left center field cam at the local minor league stadium.

Sea foam blown up on the beach in Australia.

Where I found this they claimed it was caused by pollutants.

NASA reports that melt in Greenland is unprecedented.

Ice Island twice as big as Manhattan broke off off of Greenland.

Typhoon wrote:

Enki wrote:I spent an afternoon in a Thunderstorm in a lake in Tennessee. Watching lightning directly overhead while floating on your back is wonderful.

Last time I was on a body of water during as thunderstorm I spent my time, between dealing with wind gusts, reflecting on the fact that the tallest thing around for many kilometres is the 10 metre tall aluminum mast . . .

I am going to assume you were in Salt Water, which I wasn't. I was in a forest where there were trees around, and also the lightning only went from cloud to cloud, didn't touch down.