22
votes
Maybe we should talk about the weather
Here is a place to post about extreme weather events or just what it’s like where you are.
Here is a place to post about extreme weather events or just what it’s like where you are.
It's so interesting how we've actually made it to the part of climate change people have been warning us about for the last 50+ years. We've made a lot (a lot) of scientific progress, but unfortuantely I don't think we're anywhere near being able to deal with this - mother nature is just too strong. I'm curious to see how this continues in the next 10-15 years now that the effects are so much more visible
Well, some of it will be mundane. For the Bay Area, I expect this is going to push a lot of people into installing air conditioning. We will likely do that fairly soon.
We have a portable air conditioner but until recently relied mostly on open windows and fans. That’s not so great when there is often bad air quality due to smoke.
There's a certain Simpsons-ice-cube-in-the-ocean-esque irony about ameliorating record-breaking heat with more fossil-fuel-powered electricity consumption.
FYI that was Futurama, not Simpsons
"There by solving the problem for ever"
"Bu.."
"FOREVER"
I’m wondering if there is any air conditioning system that would work directly with the unreliable electricity from solar panels. It would be a shame to need batteries for this application since it could just cool down the house a bit more when there is more sun.
It would be sort of like the old windmills that would pump water when the wind blows.
Yes. We purchased a new A/C unit 3 years ago, and they had offers for installing solar just for the A/C unit. They also do it for commercial buildings from what I understand.
I'm in Colorado. It was 90 something today and will be snowing tomorrow 😳
I'm in Fort Collins and it's raining ash and has been very dark all day. It looks post-apocalyptic right now. We were out covering the garden for the snow while ash covered us.
Also in Colorado, between the smoke, snowing ash, actual snow, and temp swings it really feels apocalyptic.
I heard about that. It's nuts! Sounds like it's not really unprecedented there, but still seems like an extreme swing.
God we are just not having the same experience. For me the heat is miserable and the poisonous air is distressing. Without A/C, it feels like neither inside nor outside is safe. I wish I had your perspective on it.
It’s very Blade Runner 2049, right now.
It's so weird. The week was supposed to be mid-90s to low 100s here in Los Angeles. It started out that way, but since the smoke is blocking out the sun now, it's only been in the low to mid-80s. My spouse is very sensitive to bad air quality, so we have several air filters in our house which, along with the A/C makes it bearable. We already can't go out due to COVID, so it's more of the same. We did spend Sunday with all of the lights and appliances (except for A/C, refrigerator, and unplugged laptops) off for most of the day to help avoid rolling black-outs.
Wildfires force several National Forests to close down in California
If this is going to be Climate Change oriented, here is our obligatory xkcd. I think it's particularly relevant, long-term, because basically, humans don't have long enough memories.
https://xkcd.com/1321/
I genuinely love winter. I love snow and cold and all of that. It is slowly breaking my heart that our winters are getting more mild. I haven't even lived in my current region for that long and I can already tell the difference from when I first arrived to now.
Every time I bring it up people either seem to think I'm finding a pattern where none exists, or they just see less cold and snow as good things.
I’m in the same boat. I moved to NYC 5 years ago and in that timeframe I’ve seen Winter go from a typical few days of flurries to barely reaching freezing temperature. We had one day of snow last year. One day.
I assumed it couldn’t all be climate change related as the few degrees the Earth is warming don’t directly lead to 10-20° increases year over year. That being said, I do feel like winters may just become a thing of the past...
Wow, I love that. Thanks for sharing.
They've also made this chart on the issue. It makes it obvious this time climate change now is different than the change at the end of the ice age or in the wake of a supervolcano.
I've noticed we're getting pressure systems from tropical storms in southern California. My brothers, twin's fiancee and I went to Indio when we were being rocked by one, and it didn't get below 80 where the timeshare we were borrowing was. down in Indio. Joshua Tree felt right, but I think we were climbing out of the high pressure area, as Indio is at -26 feet, between relatively large mountain ranges for the area.
This week, at home in Orange County, we've got another. Two ~110 degree days. Typically we'd get one weekend or two, and higher temps leading into fall with the Santa Anas Winds. Plus the aforementioned fires, which seem to be creating a smoke cloud to take the edge off in the city and are fed by the now-dry growth from the last good rainy season.
Northern Utah just got hammered by hurricane level winds, with gusts reaching 110+ miles per hour over by the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
Trees have been toppled, roads are shut down, trucks are flipped over on the freeway, and 170k people are without electricity with many of them not expected to get power back for a few more days. It's a mess. On the positive side, it cleared out all the smoke that built up in the valley from the nearby wildfires.
Check out /r/SaltLakeCity for some fun pics of the aftermath. As far as I know, nobody was killed fortunately.
These are a somewhat regular occurrence here. We had a similarly bad windstorm in 2011, and a lesser one in 2016, always around this time of year.
They are caused by cold fronts that come down from the arctic on the eastern side of the mountains. When enough cold air builds up there, it spills over the top and comes rushing down the west side of the mountains with incredible force.
‘Extremely dangerous’ fire threat in West after historic weekend heat while the Rockies await freak snow
2 1/2 years ago, I moved from Milwaukee, WI to Sopron, Hungary. A couple months after I moved here, we got a hard rain, the kind where you flip the wipers up to 'high', put your nose up against the windshield, and drive slow 'cuz you still can't hardly see.
That kind of rain is uncommon but normal in WI, so I didn't think anything of it. But here, it was like one of those "500-year" events. Parts of the city saw 2+ meter flooding, 'cuz their sewer system wasn't designed for it.
Normally, it "rains" here a lot, but just barely; what a Wisconsinite would call light drizzle, and most often for just 10-20 min.
The past two winters have both been, apparently (according to the locals) extremely mild. Very little snow, temps mostly just below freezing , interspersed with a couple of very cold-and-snowy spells.
"Normal" winters here used to be almost (SE-) Wisconsin-like, a few weeks shorter and milder, but similar, less snow but still significant.
My first two summers here were normal-ish, I think. This past summer, however has been, by contrast, suspiciously cool. Lots of crop/harvest issues, produce much more expensive, etc.
California's wildfires have already burned 2.2 million acres this year, a new record, and it's not even the worst part of "fire season" yet, which is usually October and November.
California's wildfire complexes have also set new records - the three largest fires burning right now (August, SCU Lightning, and LNU Lightning) are as of now the largest, third largest, and fourth largest complexes in recorded California history.
The second largest complex was the Mendocino Complex in 2018.
Here’s a Twitter thread about US weather patterns.
Apparently, Denver is at 90 degrees (32 Celsius) and they are forecasting snow in the morning.
The temp has dropped significantly already and the winds have picked up. Hoping the snow helps combat the fires.
My dad already described the weather in Salem (north-central Oregon?) as "Californian and smoky."
Fast-Moving Wildfire Destroys 80% Of Small Town In Eastern Washington State
Wow. That's crazy to me. I have a house that's just a few miles from one of the "small" (6000+ acres since it started last night) fires in Oregon. I've often looked at less forested places farther East that look a whole lot like Malden in terms of vegetation. I would have thought somewhere with probably 10% of the tree density as my current place would have been pretty safe. Guess not.
Seems like anywhere in the Western US you have to choose between living in an urban core, living somewhere with absolutely no trees, or facing a significant risk from wildfire these days.
It seems that today is the day when everyone in the bay area posts a Mars photo.
If you are having trouble, the trick is to adjust white balance manually to how it's supposed to look. Camera phones are not designed for Mars.
Three firefighters have been airlifted to Fresno after fire station burns as Dolan Fire in Big Sur doubles in size.
All National Forests in California will be closed as of 5pm today.
https://mobile.twitter.com/usfs_r5/status/1303771607890944000
It's a nice day outside, very warm and pretty sunny.
How do you guys view the weather? I use some of NOAA's resources. The first link is the hub for weather satellite images, It's more complex but the images are beautiful. Less helpful because I don't know much weather science. The second link is just a minimal weather radar for the U.S.
I mostly look at images other people share. The National Weather Service has a Twitter account for each region, such as
@NWSBayArea. Also, for California, Daniel Swain’s Twitter account (@WeatherWest) and blog are good places to start.Last year there were large fires in the Amazon rainforest and the smoke got all the way down to São Paulo and it looked like this at 3 PM. Here's what the rain looked like. It's not like California now, but it is very bad.
This has actually been like a pretty ok year for weather so far where I am from. It wasn't too hot, nor too dry. I didn't look at the news too much the past few days so I had no idea that so much of the US is turning into hell on earth again.
Why the Bay Area sky has a yellow glow but it doesn't smell like smoke
Air quality seems to be getting worse though. Maybe we will go back to Monterey.
Today is less orange in the Bay Area, but air quality is considerably worse according to Purple Air and little improvement is expected.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Weather_West/status/1304091473420271616
https://mobile.twitter.com/Weather_West/status/1304131787140939776
Dozens missing as firefighters battle two large Oregon fires
Edit: story corrected.
Here's a story about the screwup:
Oregon initially said 500,000 people had been evacuated because of wildfires. The numbers didn’t add up -- and the state backtracked
Oregon wildfires rage on as ‘dozens’ are missing, tens of thousands evacuated; weather now favors firefighters but 8 large fires expected to burn for months, state officials say
Medford, Oregon under evacuation alerts from fast-moving fire