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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Cyrix6x86 on Sunday October 29 2023, @06:11AM (2 children)

    by Cyrix6x86 (13569) on Sunday October 29 2023, @06:11AM (#1330714)

    In the winter in north Carolina, the lake behind our house used to freeze over with ice thick enough to walk on. This was the 80's.

    As recently as the 90's, we would hope for and sometimes get a Christmas snow.

    One time we got 24 inches of snow in a single night, January 2000.

    We haven't had accumulated snow since 2018. Also, the lake itself has been gone since 2008.

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  • (Score: 2) by istartedi on Wednesday November 01 2023, @06:13AM (1 child)

    by istartedi (123) on Wednesday November 01 2023, @06:13AM (#1331070) Journal

    Northern Virginia was always "iffy" for Winter weather. Not only could the season vary widely, but it was and still is notoriously difficult to predict in terms of whether it will rain or snow during any particular storm. It's always close to the rain/snow line. I don't doubt what you're saying but our Winter was always fickle.

    Forget the weather there. For me, it's the birds.

    The great migrating flocks. Gone. There used to be what I thought of as a "river of birds", that's just what it looked like, a great pointillist vein high in the sky, or if they happened to settle in your area for the night it was like something out of the Hitchcock movie. I'd say this was pretty much history by the mid-80s for us. I don't know if the migration shifted due to the rapidly expanding development of the suburbs, or if it disappeared. I think it must have disappeared because suburban neighborhoods never seemed to bother them. We still had plenty of trees, and a park nearby that was several square miles of woods and a lake.

    For this generation, it's insects. I hear tales of fireflies going. That would be a terrible shame. They were still around when I left Virginia in the early 2000s. I just can't imagine the east coast without them. When you move across country, it's hard to say what's what in those regards.

    Anyway, for my location is was less about the weather and more about the wildlife. We are apparently in an epic extinction event.

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    • (Score: 3, Informative) by istartedi on Wednesday November 01 2023, @06:33AM

      by istartedi (123) on Wednesday November 01 2023, @06:33AM (#1331071) Journal

      You sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole trying to confirm the decline in birds specific to my area. Alas, I couldn't find it in a reasonable time but the general decline in North American birds [science.org] is well documented.

      You also reminded me of something else. It used to be common for trees and even the sides of houses to be menaced by hornets that built the classic egg-shaped nest. I think the last time I saw one was in the woods, in the 1990s.

      Kids are going to see those in cartoons and think they're made-up.

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