Winter Storm Harper is already pummeling parts of the West with heavy snow and will spread its mess of snow, ice and wind into the Plains, Midwest and Northeast into this weekend.
Harper's heaviest snow, so far, is in the Sierra Nevada of California. Early Thursday morning, Lone Pine, California, reported 5 inches of snow had fallen in just 2 hours.
That storm will tap into cold air once it moves through the central and eastern states Friday through the weekend, delivering a widespread swath of significant snow.
[...]
Winter storm watches and warnings and winter weather advisories have been posted by the National Weather Service from the northern and central Plains eastward through the southern Great Lakes and into the Northeast.
Cities included in the winter storm watches or warnings include Chicago, Milwaukee, Boston, Hartford, Providence, Pittsburgh, Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland and Des Moines.
In other words, air travel is going to be severely impacted with many delayed or cancelled flights. Even if your flight is not in the storm area, the plane may be delayed in coming from someplace that is. Better leave early on your tropical vacation.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday January 18 2019, @06:39PM (11 children)
So far, we've gotten a whole lotta nothing. Maybe an inch or two accumulation.
When it does hit, we're going to get a foot or so on the ground. Which isn't all that big of a deal, because we handle 6" storms all the time and the only difference is how much work is involved digging out afterwords.
I've been trying to pinpoint when and why the reporting on snowstorms went from:
to:
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 18 2019, @06:46PM (6 children)
People barely remember what snow was like due to global warming [wattsupwiththat.com], so it is a much more exciting even than in the past. Most children have never even experienced snow, which is strange because record snowfalls were predicted by climate models [skepticalscience.com].
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday January 18 2019, @07:32PM (4 children)
Kids these days experience snow in most of the areas that used to experience snow. They just don't experience it as often.
What may have changed isn't so much that more areas of the country are suddenly in the tropical zone, but that a lot of people moved south to get away from snow. I always found that pretty silly: A snowstorm is annoying, but it won't destroy your house like a hurricane will.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 18 2019, @08:06PM (2 children)
I guess you've never seen a roof collapse due to snow load?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday January 18 2019, @08:17PM (1 child)
No, because roofs in my area are typically designed to handle significant snow load, and if for some reason yours isn't the solution is a relatively inexpensive roof rake.
In general, the colder the climate, the pointier the roof, for precisely this reason.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 18 2019, @09:01PM
Are you saying it doesn't happen?
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Saturday January 19 2019, @08:19PM
"Kids these days experience snow in most of the areas that used to experience snow. They just don't experience it as often."
Exactly this. Eastern Washington when I grew up used to experience winters that averaged far more snowfall. Now when we have what used to be an average winter, it seems far worse. We still get the once a decade average winter from hell, but our averages have been trending higher in the last twenty years or so.
This year has been exceptionally warm as we're in the forties in January with rain and have only seen a couple of inch's since the start of winter. Lots of rain, but nearly no snow at all. Gotta love love an El NiƱo winter here. Saw a Robin yesterday, they don't usually show up till March.
As far as destroying homes yeah, it's a lot easier to design a sloped roof or a strong roof that resists the weight of an average winter snowfall than to design something to withstand wind. But even then an extremely harsh winter will result in big flat topped business buildings collapsing.
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday January 18 2019, @07:44PM
Oh bullshit. So Wisconsin isn't covered in a blanket of snow all winter, but we've had at least 1 or 2 multi-inch snowfalls per year for the last several. It just takes until mid-January for the first one to show up sometimes.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 18 2019, @08:28PM
It started when this new thing called the Internet started sucking all the ad revenue from tv and the written press.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Friday January 18 2019, @09:32PM
Looking at the weathermap it doesn't seem happy, but no snow yet:
https://maps.darksky.net/@emoji,42.277,-78.289,6 [darksky.net]
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Friday January 18 2019, @10:15PM (1 child)
Yeah, well it seems to come from the recent (only the last few years) media thing of naming even winter storms, like they are hurricanes or cyclones. Making them seem like truly dangerous deadly the same as tropical hurricanes and cyclones.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 19 2019, @01:34AM
The problem is that people will learn that most of the named winter storms don't actually amount to all that much of a problem, and many of them will start to ignore "named storms" in general. Including the hurricanes and cyclones.
Which the media, being adept manipulators of the masses, probably knows, and is looking forward to all the future dead bodies they can show after the hurricanes plow through an area.