13 votes

Climate of North American cities will shift hundreds of miles in one generation

6 comments

  1. [6]
    Amarok
    Link
    This is already happening and plain as day to anyone living in new york. Our winters here are an absolute joke compared to what they used to be. Snow used to show up in September and that same...

    This is already happening and plain as day to anyone living in new york. Our winters here are an absolute joke compared to what they used to be. Snow used to show up in September and that same exact snow would stick around until April in most cases, and we'd get feet of it. Now, our winters are just a 'rainy season' with occasional blizzards that melt away in no time. Winter is now a jan-feb hiccup rather than a nov-march marathon. Every couple years we get a year with almost no snow at all, a 'wet winter'... and once in a while the old school noreasters make a comeback and we get a full on proper winter, but that's happening less and less frequently. Spring starts a month or two early now.

    Meanwhile all the snow we used to get is burying washington state and virginia. Not that I'm complaining - the only drawback to the change is that it is so damn wet all the time now. It's been two full years since the ground around where I live dried out enough not to be a muddy mess.

    11 votes
    1. [4]
      Shhushhie
      Link Parent
      Totally agree, here in Colorado I can remember getting out first snow fall in October and never seeing the grass again untill late March. Now 15 years later we get our first temps below 40 in...

      Totally agree, here in Colorado I can remember getting out first snow fall in October and never seeing the grass again untill late March. Now 15 years later we get our first temps below 40 in January. Even the resorts such as copper mountain, Vail and Loveland are having issues keeping enough snow on mountain to stay open

      2 votes
      1. [2]
        Amarok
        Link Parent
        I wonder if anyone has measured how hard it's been over the years for various ski resorts to keep up. Not your typical climate change data.

        I wonder if anyone has measured how hard it's been over the years for various ski resorts to keep up. Not your typical climate change data.

        4 votes
        1. esrever
          Link Parent
          Perhaps a little off-topic, but I know that at least one ski resort here is now using synthetic surfaces for year-round skiing now until it gets cold enough to start producing and maintaining...

          Perhaps a little off-topic, but I know that at least one ski resort here is now using synthetic surfaces for year-round skiing now until it gets cold enough to start producing and maintaining artificial snow.

          1 vote
      2. alyaza
        Link Parent
        this has been my experience too. the past few winters on the front range haven't really felt like winters most of the time just because of how mild it is, and even though we've gotten a decent...

        Totally agree, here in Colorado I can remember getting out first snow fall in October and never seeing the grass again untill late March. Now 15 years later we get our first temps below 40 in January. Even the resorts such as copper mountain, Vail and Loveland are having issues keeping enough snow on mountain to stay open

        this has been my experience too. the past few winters on the front range haven't really felt like winters most of the time just because of how mild it is, and even though we've gotten a decent amount of snow this year, it's still been seemingly above average for most of this winter. for example: yesterday, it was literally 60 degrees out when the average is normally 40. it's also gotten distinctly less snowy, even compared to ten years ago, particularly on the mountains. it used to be that until april or may you were often unable to see the ground on the mountains because normally it'd be too cold for the snow to melt or there'd just be so many snow days there wouldn't be a chance for the snow to melt enough for that to happen--right now, i'm looking out the window and you can still see clear spots, and it's february.

        2 votes
    2. [2]
      Comment removed by site admin
      Link Parent
      1. Ephemere
        Link Parent
        Thank you for linking to that, the visualizations were indeed awesome. I wish it had some means of estimating change in precipitation too, though of course that would be vastly more difficult to...

        Thank you for linking to that, the visualizations were indeed awesome. I wish it had some means of estimating change in precipitation too, though of course that would be vastly more difficult to calculate.

        3 votes