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posted by martyb on Friday October 11 2019, @02:29PM   Printer-friendly
from the Brrrr! dept.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/10/09/winter-storm-aubrey-historic-snow-cold-forecast-central-us/3918343002/

A "potentially historic" winter storm will slam the north-central USA over the next few days with up to 2 feet of snow possible in some areas.

Snow will accumulate from eastern Washington and Montana to Colorado, the Dakotas, Minnesota and northern Wisconsin, the Weather Channel said. Record low temperatures are also possible Thursday and Friday across the western USA.

The system will produce severe storms and heavy rain Thursday in the southern Plains and critical-to-extreme fire weather threats from the central and southern Rockies to California, the National Weather Service said.

The size and intensity of this snowstorm are unheard of for October, according to AccuWeather.

[...] A slew of winter storm warnings, watches and freeze warnings were in effect across parts of seven states as the storm ramped up Wednesday, AccuWeather said.

[...] The storm will have two parts, the first of which is targeting the northern and central Rockies and High Plains on Wednesday into Thursday. The second part will bring snow to the eastern and central portions of the Dakotas and western Minnesota by week's end.

"Near-blizzard to full-fledged blizzard conditions are possible across portions of central North Dakota Friday afternoon into Saturday morning," the weather service in Bismarck said. "Expect high impacts and dangerous to impossible travel conditions."

The weather service called it a "potentially historic October winter storm."

Meanwhile, locations in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, India, and Australia (among others) reported temperatures well over 100°F (38 C)!


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  • (Score: 2) by looorg on Friday October 11 2019, @02:45PM (42 children)

    by looorg (578) on Friday October 11 2019, @02:45PM (#905777)

    I'd rather have two feet of snow then 38C. I'd rather have four feet of snow then 38C. I'd rather have the blizzard of the century, polarbears roaming the streets, santas elfs freezing their balls off then having 38C. But perhaps that is just me.

    Why? I can always heat my house more, I can always put on more clothes but I can't get more naked then naked and I don't want to live inside my fridge just to stay cool.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @03:00PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @03:00PM (#905791)

      I'd rather have it over 100°F. That's when women start peeling off their clothes.

      • (Score: 2, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 11 2019, @05:27PM (1 child)

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 11 2019, @05:27PM (#905913) Journal

        Odd. Some of us have experienced women peeling their clothes off at temperatures below zero - both Celsius and Farenheit. You must be another incel.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @06:44PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @06:44PM (#905979)

          I live in SoCal. We rented a room to my (live in) girlfriends hot friends. I kept the heater on during Santa Ana's.

    • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @03:01PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @03:01PM (#905792)

      So basically you want everything outside the tropics to be a barren wasteland like Siberia, just how it was 20 thousand years ago.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 11 2019, @03:13PM (1 child)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 11 2019, @03:13PM (#905807) Journal
        Then the mammoth riders will hunt your scrawny ass for sport! Good times.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @03:22PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @03:22PM (#905820)

          Well, it's less about sport, than eliminating the crud in the gene pool. Still, lotsa fun, good booze afterward, and the women swarm us because we're so exciting to them!

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by fadrian on Friday October 11 2019, @03:24PM (35 children)

      by fadrian (3194) on Friday October 11 2019, @03:24PM (#905823) Homepage

      Well that's the beautiful thing about what current climate models say - because of the larger amount of energy in the atmosphere, you'll get both. There will be more atmospheric instability, which will lead to more extremes. So you'll both freeze your ass off in Winter with more severe, longer storms AND get baked in Summer by the longer, more severe heat waves. But here I am talking about climate change when there's still hydrocarbons to be burned...

      --
      That is all.
      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @03:59PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @03:59PM (#905846)

        Current climate models predict the exact same thing as what to expect during a Grand Solar minimum:

        Shortened growing season

        The food that IS produced is less nutritious, ie wheat contains less protein

        Lack of feed for livestock

        Parasites (i.e. fusarium nivale), which thrived under snow cover, devastated crops.

        Grain storage in cool damp conditions produced fungus (Ergot Blight). Contaminated grains when consumed caused an illness (St. Anthony’s Fire) producing convulsions, hallucinations, gangrenous rotting of extremities.

        Glacier advance swallowed up entire alpine villages.

        Ruptured glacial ice dams produced deadly floods.

        Drastic increase in seismic activity (earthquakes)

        Dramatic increase in volcanic activity

        Hugely increased atmospheric electric charge (fatal lightning strikes, positive lightning, sprites, noctilucent clouds, northern lights) (#gsmElec)

        Wildfires of extreme heat (reference Dobler's Abrupt Earth Changes) (#gsmFire)

        Violent, damaging wind events

        Influenza epidemics.

        Reoccurrence of plagues such as the Black Plague.

        Flooding created swamplands that became mosquito breeding grounds and introduced tropical diseases such as malaria throughout Europe.

        Extreme atmospheric thermal differentials produced killer hailstorms (hailstones that could kill a cow).

        Higher frequency of powerful storms produced major devastations.

        Regions of massive rainfall and flooding

        Limited regions experienced droughts

        http://wiki.iceagefarmer.com/wiki/Grand_Solar_Minimum_Symptoms [iceagefarmer.com]

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 11 2019, @04:14PM (20 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 11 2019, @04:14PM (#905857) Journal

        Well that's the beautiful thing about what current climate models say - because of the larger amount of energy in the atmosphere, you'll get both.

        I wonder what "current climate models" will say in the future? It's easy to rationalize atmospheric/weather phenomena after the fact.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @05:09PM (18 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @05:09PM (#905897)

          Hindsight is alway 20/20. Just how do you expect them to tune the models?

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 11 2019, @05:12PM (17 children)

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 11 2019, @05:12PM (#905901) Journal

            Just how do you expect them to tune the models?

            Future data. Else you're just overadapting the model to known data, both the data that you generated the model with and the data you then "tuned" it with.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @05:27PM (8 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @05:27PM (#905914)

              Take some courses in Numerical Modeling and Atmospheric Physics.

              • (Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Friday October 11 2019, @05:36PM (7 children)

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 11 2019, @05:36PM (#905920) Journal
                I have.
                • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @08:40PM (6 children)

                  by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @08:40PM (#906037)

                  I don't believe you. What textbooks did you use?

                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @10:02PM

                    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @10:02PM (#906070)

                    Who the hell learns from textbooks instead of source code and scientific publications? Textbooks are too dumbed down to be of any use to anyone who wants to do more than parrot anything they are told.

                  • (Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Saturday October 12 2019, @03:41AM (4 children)

                    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday October 12 2019, @03:41AM (#906211) Journal
                    Sorry, don't remember the textbooks, but I had 3 semesters of numerical analysis, through finite difference of PDEs, and some numerical linear algebra, mostly at the graduate level FWIW. Don't have atmospheric physics, but I did pick up some graduate courses in fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, and dynamical mechanics, plus my undergraduate degree was in physics.

                    Now that I have browbeaten you with the strength of my internet expert creds, could we please discuss this subject rationally?

                    A key problem here is that much of the alleged warming is severely backloaded. For example, if you consider present day greenhouse gases increases versus measured global warming through today, you get warming on the order of 1.5 C per doubling of CO2. That's short term warming and is in line with the radiative model that started this way back when. The dire predictions of the IPCC and others is based on long term feedbacks, many which haven't kicked in yet - and may never kick in. The time lag on this delayed additional warming is anywhere from a few decades to a few millennia (perhaps with parts at both extremes of the lag scale). That means that there isn't a climate model in existence which yet has a testable hypothesis concerning long term global warming (aside from some ridiculous extremes where we melt face or go full ice age in a few decades) simply because we haven't observed for long enough to get an idea of what that is going to be.

                    Meanwhile there is this peculiar phenomena where research magically comes out to support the latest talking points (classic example is Mann and Jones "Hockey Stick" paper of 1999 which purported to show that the Medieval Warm Period was a local not global phenomenon, and which came out right when the IPCC needed to claim that the present day global warming was unprecedented). And stuff that isn't convenient to the narrative gets ignored (like tree ring records after 1960 - no one has bothered to determine why those aren't working as expected in the near present).

                    That's what got me to the present state of skepticism: research on demand and suppression of any problems or concerns that didn't fit the narrative, combined with conveniently untestable claims if we don't act right now.
                    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @04:49PM

                      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @04:49PM (#906376)

                      And yet yer still a dumbass.

                      Proof that colleges are not the liberal propaganda farms dumbasses think they are.

                    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @05:40PM (2 children)

                      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @05:40PM (#906392)

                      So did you work at NCAR of Fleet Numerical? Besides a degree in Physical Oceanography, I worked with the people doing the modeling, monitored the model runs and did some gound truthing the data for the models.

                      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 12 2019, @09:30PM

                        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday October 12 2019, @09:30PM (#906430) Journal
                        And? I wasn't the one who started this.
                      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 14 2019, @04:21PM

                        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday October 14 2019, @04:21PM (#906997) Journal
                        Also, this is the fallacy of credentials, a particular flavor of argument from authority. Here, no matter how much learning/experience you have, what impressive people you know, or how shiny your credentials, you can't ground truth future data until it becomes present day data.

                        The previous AC tried to shut down debate by claiming that I needed this sort of education in order to have anything to say about the subject. Then when it turned out that I did have the necessary level of education, they issued some face-saving insults and ran away. If one needs to be in the field to understand climate change and the need for solutions to it, then the field is not mature enough to make decisions for billions of people. It's that simple. You need to present evidence that a normal person can understand - I'm not taking your word for it.

                        Show me the evidence or get lost. Here, too much is reliant on models that haven't been tested against the only data one can't fabricate or bias, the future. For an example from a few months to a year ago, someone was predicting the end of chocolate based on such untested computer models and the vapid assumption that production wouldn't move.
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @05:39PM (7 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @05:39PM (#905925)

              Future data is what they use when it become current data.

              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 11 2019, @05:47PM (6 children)

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 11 2019, @05:47PM (#905933) Journal

                Future data is what they use when it become current data.

                Meaning? My use of "future data" is simply that we run the clock for a while and then check to see if predictions match outcome. Not that we just keep tweaking the old model so that it fits the new data and yields the desired far future predictions, and then gloss over past errors.

                As an aside, now that we have models which predict present extreme weather better, how long till we get models that will accurately portray the increased heat loss to space from this extreme weather?

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @08:52PM (1 child)

                  by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @08:52PM (#906040)

                  They're doing the best they can with the computers that currently exist.

                  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 12 2019, @03:36PM

                    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday October 12 2019, @03:36PM (#906347) Journal

                    They're doing the best they can with the computers that currently exist.

                    A quadrillion times more computing power still doesn't test whether the model works in the future. Sure, there's a lot that could be done with vastly faster computer systems. But they still have the problem that the only source of data to test against all of their predictions is in the future.

                    This isn't merely a argument from ignorance fallacy. The claims of genuine harm are conveniently in the far future where they won't be testable for at least decades. For example, only half of the global warming (or perhaps less, there's some papers out there predicting considerably more) that is supposed to happen for the present day level of greenhouse gases has actually happened. When is the rest going to happen? They're conveniently vague about that.

                    Meanwhile, we have both conflict of interest - a lot of researchers depend on this narrative for their funding and signs that the conflicts of interest going against the science. For example, the famous controversy of the "Hockey Stick" paper by Mann and Jones 1999 which had the important consequence of showing the Medeival Warm Period wasn't as warm as today, just in time for the next IPCC report on climate. It turns out a few years later that the data had been passed through a filter which was biased to show the hockey stick shape. Even random data when so filtered would have shown that shape. So what happened?

                    Suddenly several supposedly independent papers were published which show the same hockey stick shape. And no criticism ever was made towards the researchers for that serious piece of broken research. It was all just "It was right all along".

                    here's [soylentnews.org] a local example where someone gets punished by their own university for having the wrong public opinion on a levy on greenhouse gases emissions in the state of Washington. He cites two other examples where researchers were encouraged to hold back on public speech because it got in the way of the narrative. One got fired for his speech. My take is that this behavior is far from unique.

                    So I need a hell of a lot more reason than merely more computing power before I buy into these climate models. That's going to be evidence from the future, which they can't tune to or fake.

                • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @09:30PM (3 children)

                  by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @09:30PM (#906059)

                  You run the models with old data and if the predictions don't match actual conditions you fix the model. Rinse and repeat til they match. You hope future predictions will be accurate. You don't have nor will you every have the resources to completely model the atmosphere/ocean. You don't gloss over past errors.

                  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday October 12 2019, @01:19AM

                    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday October 12 2019, @01:19AM (#906137) Journal

                    He's not arguing in good faith, you know. He's already made up his mind, such as it is, and now devotes his energy to lazy pseudo-gotchas. Anything, *anything,* so he doesn't have to change his behavior or thoughts.

                    --
                    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 12 2019, @03:07AM (1 child)

                    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday October 12 2019, @03:07AM (#906192) Journal

                    You don't have nor will you every have the resources to completely model the atmosphere/ocean.

                    They have more than enough resources to reach a predetermined destination. My take is that climate research from about 1980 to perhaps 2030 will become a well known case of when science went wrong for a fairly long time, something like Lysenkoism in the USSR during the Stalinist era.

                    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @05:44PM

                      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @05:44PM (#906393)

                      It's obvious you studied modeling at the Barizon School of Modeling.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @04:52PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @04:52PM (#906377)

          https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/meet-the-money-behind-the-climate-denial-movement-180948204/ [smithsonianmag.com]

          So, you work under one of the propagandist assholes? Did you actually fall for their shtick? If so then you should know they make lotsa "cuck" jokes behind yer back.

      • (Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @05:55PM (11 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @05:55PM (#905941)

        That's false, or at least quite misleading.

        High latitudes are warming much faster than lower latitudes. While it's still quite cold at high latitudes, it's not nearly as cold as it was a few decades ago. The tropics receive more incoming solar radiation than they emit to space as outgoing longwave radiation. The opposite is true at the poles, where they emit more longwave radiation than they receive from incoming solar radiation. There is an excess of heat at the equator and a deficit at the poles, requiring the heat be transported poleward. A lot of this transport is accomplished by monsoons, but extratropical cyclones have a role. Rather than the winds transporting heat directly poleward, the rotation of the Earth and resulting Coriolis effect leads to three cells in each hemisphere, with ascent at the equator, subsidence in the subtropics, and a second area of persistent ascent farther north between mid-latitudes and polar regions.

        The boundaries between these cells tend to be associated with a temperature difference over the depth of the atmosphere. Warm air occupies a larger volume than cold air. A warmer column of air, perhaps in an equatorward region of the atmosphere, will be taller than a colder column of air, perhaps in a more poleward region. Air pressure is simply the mass of the air pressing down from above. The temperature gradients in the lower and middle troposphere lead to large pressure gradients in the upper troposphere. These large pressure gradients between the aforementioned cells lead to belts of strong winds in the upper atmosphere, which are known as jet streams.

        Because the poles are warming faster than the tropics, the temperature contrast is decreasing. This means that the pressure gradients in the upper atmosphere are also getting weaker, leading to slower jet streams. When we have a strong polar vortex, that is the jet stream at the boundary between the polar and mid-latitude regions is quite strong, the jet isn't particularly wavy, and the cold air generally remains trapped near the pole. When the polar vortex weakens, meaning that the polar jet stream weakens, the jet also tends to become more wavy and the waves in the jet are generally more amplified. This allows cold air to more readily move away from polar regions and into mid-latitude regions.

        Because the tropics and poles aren't warming equally, the jet stream is weakening, causing it to become more wavy and the waves to become more amplified. While the air near the poles isn't as cold as normally expected for that region, it's still quite cold by mid-latitude standards. If that not-quite-as-cold air can more readily surge into the mid-latitudes, those regions might see more cold air outbreaks and more extremes. The very wavy jet stream with waves that are more amplified will probably result in slower moving mid-latitude cyclones. The more amplified jet may also more readily advect warm, moist air northward from the subtropics on the warm side of the polar front, possibly resulting in heavier precipitation.

        That's the actual theory about how and why global warming may lead to more cold air outbreaks regionally in the mid-latitudes.

        • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @06:11PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @06:11PM (#905951)

          The difference between the poles and equator is due to geometry. It has nothing to do with heat transport. You see the same effect (of more warming at the poles for the same increase of energy) when considering an object like the moon.

        • (Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @07:02PM (5 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @07:02PM (#905989)

          Say the sunlight is 1360 W at noon at the equator, then it will be 1360*cos(80) = 236 W at noon at 80 degrees latitude

          Temperature is proportional to the fourth power of irradiance, specifically according to the Stefan-Boltzmann law:

          T  = I^0.25*[(1 - albedo)/(emissivity*sb_constant)]^0.25

          Lets just call the second term a constant c, then for the temperature at the equator and pole respectively:

          T_e1 = 1360^0.25*c
          T_p1 = 236^0.25*c

          Now say you add an extra 100 watts uniformly over the entire surface:

          T_e2 =  1460^0.25*c
          T_p2 =  336^0.25*c

          The differences will be:

          T_e2 - T_e1 = c*(1460^0.25 - 1360^0.25) = 0.109*c

          T_p2 - T_p1 = c*(336^0.25 - 236^0.25) = 0.362*c

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @09:54PM (4 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @09:54PM (#906066)

            Except that you forgot to adjust the extra 100 watts by your cos(80) factor. Quoted line 5 should be T_p2 = 253^0.25*c

            (Unless you can come up with an isotropic 100watt/m2 energy source.)

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @10:04PM (2 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @10:04PM (#906071)

              That "isotropic source" is supposedly well-mixed CO2 acting uniformly over the entire globe.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @10:53PM (1 child)

                by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @10:53PM (#906086)

                If it is acting as a reflector to send 100 watts back down then the radiative temperature of the ground needs to be taken into account. The polar areas are more than 20 degrees cooler than the equatorial areas. Your 100 watts average should be higher near the quator and lower near the poles.

                • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @11:05PM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @11:05PM (#906091)

                  Well that makes sense to me. But afaict you are now a climate heretic, because all they do is add an equal magnitude CO2 effect to the entire surface with no regard for that:

                  Using the new expressions, the radiative forcing due to the increases in the well-mixed greenhouse gases from the pre-industrial (1750) to present time (1998) is now estimated to be +2.43 Wm −2 (comprising CO 2 (1.46 Wm −2 ), CH 4 (0.48 Wm −2 ), N 2 O (0.15 Wm −2 ) and halocar- bons (halogen-containing compounds) (0.34 Wm −2 )), with an uncertainty 1 of 10% and a high level of scientific understanding (LOSU).

                  https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/TAR-06.pdf [www.ipcc.ch]

                  Can you find an example of someone doing otherwise?

            • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @10:10PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @10:10PM (#906076)

              And 100 W was just a nice example. In reality it would be more like 3 watts.

        • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @07:52PM (3 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @07:52PM (#906015)

          Decades of NASA data show the Earth is warming. According to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, the Earth has warmed about 1.44 degrees Fahrenheit during the last 40 years. But the poles are warming even faster; the Arctic has warmed by more than 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit during the same time period.

          https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/warmingpoles.html [nasa.gov]

          So we observe 2.4x faster when we would expect about 3-4x just from basic algebra and geometry. That means something may actually be reducing the gradient, transporting energy away from the poles.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @09:01PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @09:01PM (#906047)

            Yes. It's called the atmosphere and the ocean.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @10:07PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @10:07PM (#906073)

              The parent apparently thinks energy was being (net) transported to the poles via the atmosphere and oceans. This indicates the opposite is happening (or some other assumption is wrong, eg CO2 is not actually well-mixed).

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 12 2019, @03:13AM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday October 12 2019, @03:13AM (#906197) Journal
            My take is albedo change from less snow cover.
  • (Score: 4, Touché) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 11 2019, @03:31PM (4 children)

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Friday October 11 2019, @03:31PM (#905828) Journal

    That sounds absolutely horrible. Wait, what's that you say? Skiing this winter's going to be off the charts on the off-the-charts snowpack? What's that you say? The snowmelt's gonna wet and replenish the mountains and plains after years of drought, and thus both cause a boom in animal populations and reduce fire risk in the summer? Well, that doesn't sound so bad. What's that you say? The reservoirs are going to fill up again and reduce the traditional political tensions over water rights in the West? That doesn't sound too bad, either. And snow and ice to drive on? Gosh, guess it's terrible that nobody in the West or Midwest own pickups or 4-wheel drives or anything.

    FFS.

    None of these stories ever give you the full picture, only the scariest one-dimensional take they can get away with.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday October 11 2019, @03:46PM (1 child)

      by DeathMonkey (1380) on Friday October 11 2019, @03:46PM (#905839) Journal

      Does Colorado count as the Midwest?

      'Cause we're in the middle of a drought. [denverpost.com]

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 11 2019, @05:19PM

        by Phoenix666 (552) on Friday October 11 2019, @05:19PM (#905907) Journal

        Eastern Colorado, probably yes. From Denver westward? Well, West-ish :-)

        Snowpack always helps in the Rockies. Precipitation is always welcome even if it comes in the form of snow and doesn't water anything until spring.

        --
        Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday October 11 2019, @06:13PM

      by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Friday October 11 2019, @06:13PM (#905954) Journal
      The ground doesn't absorb much water after a prolonged drought - look for major floods.
      --
      SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
    • (Score: 2) by dry on Saturday October 12 2019, @07:43AM

      by dry (223) on Saturday October 12 2019, @07:43AM (#906258) Journal

      What keeps happening here (BC) is that we get a good snowpack then a really warm spring. Snow melts at near record speeds, lots of undergrowth (grasses, ferns etc) happens and then it drys out, leaving a big layer of tinder and no snowpack to keep the rivers flowing.

  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 11 2019, @03:32PM (13 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 11 2019, @03:32PM (#905829) Journal

    There is nothing especially historical about blizzards in late autumn.

    unheard of for October, according to AccuWeather.

    *yawn*

    https://www.weather.gov/unr/2013-10-03_05 [weather.gov]

    https://weather.com/storms/winter/news/rockies-snow-montana-colorado-wyoming-early-october-2017 [weather.com]

    https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/climate/summaries_and_publications/winter_storms.html [state.mn.us]

    Clickbait story is clickbait story. Unprecedented!!!

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Friday October 11 2019, @03:55PM (8 children)

      by DeathMonkey (1380) on Friday October 11 2019, @03:55PM (#905843) Journal

      If you have a record low temperature it is unprecedented, yes.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @04:02PM (6 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @04:02PM (#905848)

        I think we should all agree to quarantine Runaway. No matter what stupid shit he says, no matter how much he tries to troll, just don't reply.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @04:09PM (3 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @04:09PM (#905853)

          I prefer to taunt.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @04:16PM (2 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @04:16PM (#905858)

            Yes, but as we've seen that only entrenches the ignorant into feelings of martyrdom and they double down on the stupid. If we ignore his childish rantings maybe he'll get bored enough to actually pay attention to reality when parroting Fox gets him nowhere.

            • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 11 2019, @04:44PM (1 child)

              by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 11 2019, @04:44PM (#905883) Journal

              I've explained to you children that I don't watch Fox. I don't even watch television, unless I go to a restaurant with a television turned on. Odd, that. Why DO so many restaurants have televisions playing? Are they trying to copy the "gentleman's clubs"? Copy Hooters? Are CNN and Fox paying these restaurants to keep the propaganda playing for the customers?

              • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @05:43PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @05:43PM (#905930)

                Oh, it is even WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT!!

                He gets his talking points from talk radio and breitfart!

                Shoulda stuck with Fox big fella, at least you could claim the big evil Murdoch tricked you with all his fancy monies!

                On the off chance that it is more serious than that please go get x-rays to make sure you don't have a brain tumor.

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 11 2019, @04:25PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 11 2019, @04:25PM (#905869) Journal
          I agree, particularly given how lousy you AC are at handling that. I certainly could do with less AC nonsense in replies to my posts. I have to spend a few precious seconds scrolling past that reply. My few seconds are far more valuable to me than whatever time you spent to write that post.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @04:25PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @04:25PM (#905870)

          You are not qualified to hold his piss pot. Show the man respect.

      • (Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Friday October 11 2019, @04:22PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 11 2019, @04:22PM (#905865) Journal
        Now, you're lawyering. It's not like we've been collected data for thousands or millions of years. It's a bit over a century. Even if climate never changed you'd have more than a 1% over a given time period of having an unprecedented event of any given parameter (high or low). Throw in a lot of parameters and a lot of places and the unprecedented nature of these events is less than unprecedented. It's just another flavor of p-hacking.
    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 11 2019, @05:25PM (3 children)

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Friday October 11 2019, @05:25PM (#905910) Journal

      No, Runaway, I do have to agree that this kind of snow this early is rare. The last time I remember this kind of snow this early was in the mid 70's. This time of year in the northern Rockies is usually when Indian summer is waning and you get a crisp couple of weeks before Halloween. Then 50/50 you get a white Christmas, or not.

      But it's not a bad thing now, because the last span of years has been dry and the West needs the precipitation. Yes, they have to wait until spring thaw to really use it, but in the meantime, unlike in the Midwest, they can ski on it and have all kinds of fun, and earn some tourist dollars from all that. That is, there are several silver linings in it.

      Ahem, oh noes! Climate change! It's all bad and we're doooooooooomed. (Except for the parts that are good and awesome)

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @05:39PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @05:39PM (#905924)

        I agree with you. We should let them eat their cake.

      • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday October 12 2019, @02:52AM (1 child)

        by Reziac (2489) on Saturday October 12 2019, @02:52AM (#906180) Homepage

        Except that north-central Montana got four FEET of snow a couple weeks back (along with temps 30F degrees below normal)... and buried the sugar beets and potatoes that weren't yet harvested.

        https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7521531/Historic-winter-storm-dumps-40-INCHES-snow-Montana.html [dailymail.co.uk]

        While we commonly get the odd snowfall in September, that grade of storm doesn't usually happen until late December.

        And yeah, I remember the hard winters of the 1960s and early '70s. We've been getting off light ever since. Hey Mother Nature, thanks for the reminder, you bitch.

        --
        And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
        • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday October 12 2019, @03:20PM

          by Phoenix666 (552) on Saturday October 12 2019, @03:20PM (#906343) Journal

          Yeah my family in Lewistown sent me pictures. pretty wild. winter out by cutbank is always brutal but 4 ft of snow in september is a surprise. still, there are silver linings to the extra precipitation.

          --
          Washington DC delenda est.
  • (Score: 2) by Hartree on Friday October 11 2019, @05:07PM (1 child)

    by Hartree (195) on Friday October 11 2019, @05:07PM (#905894)

    Of late the weather news sites have been putting out many different "possibly historic" weather anouncements.

    I suspect many of these are "possibly histrionic" weather announcements.

    • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 11 2019, @05:26PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Friday October 11 2019, @05:26PM (#905912) Journal

      Histrionic is right. Remember the hurricane reporting from a year or two ago when the reporter was standing in a puddle on purpose? Gotta generate those clicks, people.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 11 2019, @05:29PM (6 children)

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Friday October 11 2019, @05:29PM (#905915) Journal

    Meanwhile, locations in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, India, and Australia (among others) reported temperatures well over 100°F (38 C)!

    Really? "The Western desert lives and breathes in 45 degrees" -- Beds are Burning, Midnight Oil, 1987. Maybe they were taking artistic license?

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @05:43PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @05:43PM (#905929)

      Ah, that explains it. All this time I thought you just aped the talking points you hear from pundits. I didn't realize you also get your facts from Top 40 song lyrics.

      • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 11 2019, @05:59PM (2 children)

        by Phoenix666 (552) on Friday October 11 2019, @05:59PM (#905942) Journal

        Yes, and also from episodes of Star Trek and ancient B movies like "Surf Nazis Must Die." Repo Man alone doubled my understanding of the importance of buying generics at the supermarket. Thanks to First Blood, I can survive in the wilderness, negotiate abandoned mines, and take out entire police departments and detachments of National Guard single-handedly. We won't even get into all the skills AD&D taught me.

        And what have you got, AC? Snark. A very weak weapon for the very weak. That means you.

        --
        Washington DC delenda est.
        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 14 2019, @04:33PM (1 child)

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday October 14 2019, @04:33PM (#907004) Journal

          And what have you got, AC? Snark. A very weak weapon for the very weak. That means you.

          I wonder what movie he got that from?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @10:08PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @10:08PM (#906074)

      You do know that Midnight Oil are Australian - that's 45 degrees celsius - 113 degrees Fahrenheit.

      Maybe they were taking artistic license?

      Not in this case.
      45 degrees celsius would be quite common in the Western Desert. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Desert_cultural_bloc [wikipedia.org]

      • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday October 14 2019, @09:23PM

        by Phoenix666 (552) on Monday October 14 2019, @09:23PM (#907122) Journal

        You do know that Midnight Oil are Australian - that's 45 degrees celsius - 113 degrees Fahrenheit.

        Of course. Albums cut by Kiwis would include the standard disclaimer, "All interactions with sheep involved with the recording of this album were consensual."

        --
        Washington DC delenda est.
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