Author:
Blog About:
All those in the USA and Canada. How bad is the "weather bomb" Is it as bad as the news reports say?
We had 7 days of -5C 23F weather in the south, although I believe it went as low as -15C 5F in Scotland.
It snowed about 5 inches on Sunday 11th and the snow stayed around without melting at all for 7 days. This is very unusual in the southern UK.
We have had massive price hikes on gas it is almost 3 times more expensive than last year. That meant people avoided putting their heating on.
I cannot remember our house being as cold as it was that week. We have had lower temperatures, but I was living in a newer timber framed house then that was better insulated.
I just cannot get my head around what you are going through when I read things like this.
"Temperatures in Colorado on Thursday dipped to a record-breaking low of -9F (-22.7C) from 42F (5.5C), while Cheyenne, Wyoming, recorded its greatest one-hour temperature drop, plunging from 43F to 3F in the space of 30 minutes."
Comments
It's a mixed bag
I live in Oregon, specifically NW Oregon, in the foothills of the Coast Range. We don't see much snow in the winter or many days above 100 F (38 C) in the summer. In November, we had a week where the daily high temps were below freezing. Christmas Eve saw the high hovering around 32 F (0 C), but Christmas Day, it was in the 40s F (5 C). This month only a few days where the low temps went below freezing. However we are currently experiencing high winds, 30 to 50 MPH with gusts up to 80 MPH. We've had several short term power outages and one that lasted a little over 11 hours.
We have friends who live in Montana and they report that temps are quite low there as in -5 deg. F (-20 C). But temps there are often below freezing, however going below zero Fahrenheit is more than usual. Most folks there have block heaters installed on their cars.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Doesn't sound unusual
I'm not sure what is so weird about
Colorado and Wyoming are in the mountains in the middle of the continent, i.e., there is no moderating influence from the oceans. So extremes of temperature aren't all that odd. They're sort of like somewhere in central Russia. Minnesota frequently has weather below zero Farenheit, i.e., below -15 C.
I'm in the NYC area, and we had several days of below freezing weather, but that's not unusual. And Buffalo, NY, which is about 300 miles west of us, right on Lake Erie, got a big snowstorm which they're still digging out from, but they routinely get 6 feet of snow (2m) in a single storm, due to "lake effect."
tl;dr: it sounds like the sort of weather we can expect at least once or twice in the winter.
What I've noticed, though, is that the news media make much more of a fuss about inconvenient weather events. Maybe because more people are moving into more marginal places, so more people are affected by what are actually normal weather extremes.
"Why, when I was a kid, we had to walk through 6 foot snowdrifts to school each day -- uphill both ways."
Central Russia
No. Russia is at Canada's latitude, and is a lot wider than North America. Central Russia is wide open to Arctic blasts, while huge mountain ranges to the south block warm air from the tropics.
-- Daphne Xu
Port Erie
was on the BBC TV Evening news just now. What prompted it to be mentioned was the fact that all the buildings were covered in ice.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-64116922
I hope that everyone is staying safe and warm.
Personally, I got lucky in 2021 when I installed 33kWh of battery at my home. That can just about run the heating, lighting and cooking on a below 0C day. It charges up on cheap power in the middle of the night. Last night, the spot price of electricity went negative for three hours.
I do know of some people locally who are not so lucky. I've been running an open house lunch three days a week since November. I had six visitors today. With a log fire and a hot drink, something to drink and a chat, it is amazing how quickly people cheer up. I've been playing a game with them closely based upon a crime story that I'm writing. Getting them to decide who dun-it is turning out to be fun.
Samantha
We had very little snow here
We had very little snow here in Northern Ohio, but we still had blizzard conditions. The winds were constantly near 25MPH with gusts close to 50 MPH and the temperatures were below 0F at times with a wind-chill to -50F at times. Buffalo New York had more than 5 feet of snow.
I fought a fire during a blizzard. That was intense.
Not here...
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area (Oakland, actually) and we've been in the high 40's at night and the low 50's to 60 degrees during the day; 55 this afternoon. I will have lived in this house 30 years in February, and it's never snowed here during that time, though we occasionally get hail.
We are, however, getting a lot of rain. It's what they're calling an "atmospheric river." But, since we're in the third year of extreme drought, it is most welcome. I find it interesting that it might be 54 on a dry day but 59 or 60 on a rainy one. Probably because this weather system is coming in from Hawaii and not Alaska.
Nevertheless, I do have sympathy for the two-thirds of our country (and Canada, too) suffering under unusually heavy snow, high winds, and cold.
Considering the sizes of the USA and Canada compared to Britain, we have far more variation in climate and weather then they do. California alone is 1.75 times the size of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland combined, with over 1,200 miles of coastline (over 3,000 miles if you count the bays and inlets.
Please note that all temperatures are in Fahrenheit and distances in miles. While officially we have, in practice we haven't yet joined the rest of the world and moved to kilometers and Celsius.
We are messed up by Europe in
We are messed up by Europe in the UK. We use centigrade, but miles, pounds and gallons. Although 0C freezing point of water and 100C boling is easy.
Leeanna
Messed up?
Miles ? well ok.
Gallons and Pounds (as in weight) ? Nah. What we used to buy by the gallon (petrol/diesel) has been priced in litres for years and while things are sold in odd sizes when it comes to grammes etc to replicate the old lbs/oz sizes the amount in kg or grammes is the prime size given.
The same goes for milk and beer. We buy beer in a pub by the pint(20floz) if it is draught beer. Out of a bottle? All parts of a litre. Milk is the same. I'll be buying 1.136Litres of milk (2 UK Pints) in an hour. I grew up with imperial measurements and never had a problem switching to SI units. I did get floored when Boeing sent us the cockpit drawings of a 747. They were twice full size and in ft/in but each sheet only had two dimensions on it. Everything else had to be measured so we did it in metric.
Variety is the spice of life.
Samantha
Yes we buy petrol in liters,
Yes we buy petrol in liters, but we say a car does 50 miles per gallon. I buy 2 or 4 pints of milk. (yes they are labeled in liters, but the container is a pint size) I would say a town is 10 miles away. When I fish I catch a 10 pound carp. Nearly everyone I know would say someone is 6ft tall. When you by a TV you buy one with a 60 inch screen. You very rarely find someone ask for a kilo of anything. Smaller measurements are easier in meters or mm. It is good to be able to pick and choose. I work in electrical engineering. We do everything in millimeters.
A lot of the kilos and liters were forced on us by the EU. I remember for a brief period all the prices in supermarkets had the Euro price as well as £. Shops were meant to accept the Euro as currency. I never saw it happen.
Perhaps it is my age. I was taught both systems at school in the 70's. We are left with a strange hybrid system.
Leeanna
maybe
i live in a parallel world!
I did all my schooling in the sixties/seventies, i'm a late baby boomer, and after @ 1970 we were only taught in metric, i never really got to grips with pre decimal currency or how imperial lengths/weights worked. Yes, older peeps talk about a pint of milk, gallon of fuel and so on but as Sam says, you've not been able to buy a gallon of petrol at the pump for @ 30 years or more. We might talk about going for a pint but other nations just go for a beer/drink, when it comes to quantity it will be large or, well not large - in Germany this week i had a bier (regular), usually 400ml or Grosser bier which will be @ 750ml. As a kid we bought loose sweets by 'the quarter', ie 4oz, a bag of sweets these days is generally a much healthier 125g, we don't buy them by weight generally. In the UK we have a fixation with weights, measures and currency - use of pre decimal terms prevails sometimes for decades, a sixpence was still a sixpence even if it was only worth 2.5 new pence, 50p was referred to as 'ten bob', for many years, 5p a shilling and so on.
There are some strange anachronisms, we've never officially adopted km's as it was considered too expensive to replace every road sign in the land but i'm not alone in better judging and using km, having to make adhoc conversions from signed distances. Sugar is sold in half and full kilo bags, milk ostensibly in pints but most food stuffs are in metric, you might say a pound of carrots but you buy in kg, paint comes in litres, wine in ml, concrete in metric tonnes etc, etc. When a far ponder says something like 'a 14oz can' i have no idea what size that is. I know what i weigh in kg but no idea what that means in St and frankly i don't care.
Long live metric, Imperial has outlived its usefulness and should be allowed to die peacefully.
Madeline Anafrid Bell
Pints of milk?
Our milkman still delivers a pint bottle every morning to our door, so it's like the eighties never happened.
Same with beer, I think, but it is a very long time since I bought beer in a pub, as (despite being a Yorkshire lass) I'm not a fan of the taste!(sorry!)
I guess that we are a mixed up nation!
Also, in the UK, mountains are hills over 2000 feet above sea level. Not the rather arbitrary 603 m, and when I go on a hill walk, I'm looking to do 10 miles, not some messy measure in Km approximately 16km I think) I think that we just use the measures that we understand.
Plus, it is something that we have in common with our American cousins. Can you really imagine Robert Frost's poem going
" The woods are Lovely, dark and deep
But I have promises to keep
And kilometers to go before I sleep"?
Lucy x
"Lately it occurs to me..
what a long strange trip its been."
The worst of two worlds
Using either system works.
The problem with different systems arises mainly when interacting with another group using another system (such as crashing a Mars probe).
Even more problematic is half-hearted change. The UK is a prime example. To quote Wikipedia: "A formal government policy to support metrication was agreed by 1965". No systematic change though as can be witnessed by comments here. For example: Why couldn't a mountain be defined as 600m or 1000m instead of 2000 ft? Any height chosen is arbitrary. Looking in the other direction the Rees-Mogg initiative to return to the more complicated system has not exactly been enthusiastiacally received by business.
The one area where there was a systematic effort was money. Very few in the UK would express amounts in shillings, crowns or farthings (of which there were 1008 in one guinea if I calculate correctly).
There the British has been more thorough than the French who for decades used old francs when stating large amounts even if born long after the change. Perhaps some still do.
2
Why can't a mountain be 600m?
People get very protective about their neighbourhood hills being "mountains". Have you seen the absolutely terrific film " The Englishman who went up a hill and came down a mountain"? ( apart from the totally misleading fact that they take the limit to be 1000' and not 2000') it explains why some hills need to be mountains. Sorry, it's a hillwalker thing.
So Kinder Scout is the highest Mountain in the Peak District, being barely above the magic limit. But it's slopes were fought over by gamekeepers and steel mill workers in the 1920s, and so it is "The People's Mountain".
In Scotland, "Munro's" are above 3000', and there is enough argument about whether a mountain counts as a Munro or not, depending how far it is from the nearby ones ( it really is a hillwalker thing). My point is that if we know what the measure is, we can work with it, irrespective of the measurements used. The Mars probe was just poor engineering!
As for Rees-Mogg, yes, well he is a product of his class and social strata. I am too much of a lady to describe him in a single word, but it wouldn't be a nice one if I did.
"Lately it occurs to me..
what a long strange trip its been."
I liked the film
Mentioning that film reminded me about the argument about which "mountain" is the highest in Denmark (excluding Greenland and the Faroes). No i't's not Himmelbjerget (Sky mountain) at 147 m.
For a long time Yding Skovhøj (latest measurement: 170.77m excluding bronze age burial mounds) and Ejer Bavnehøj (170.35m) competed. Then it turned out that another hill, Møllehøj, is slightly higher (170.86m)
Danish "mountains"?
Whereas the highest mountain in California, and also the highest in the 48 contiguous United States, is Mount Whitney with an elevation of 14,505 feet (4,421 m). 171 meters isn't even much of a hill here, let alone a mountain.
While I know the measurements
While I know the measurements on the milk carton do state liters. They do say the measurement in pints. Many things have metric measurements, but so many of us still work in imperial. (except fractions. I hated those at school) 6 and 7/64 etc
Leeanna
Four pints?
I would call that a half gallon. I buy milk in gallon jugs (128 oz in a US gallon, smaller than the Imperial gallon). Our pints are 16 oz, not 20 as in the Imperial pint.
Pretty bad
In Minnesota we had some worse than usual weather. -25c without wind-chill and with it was around -40 (I think -42 is where f and c meet up). We don't normally get that low and it lasted for around a week. Snow itself was average as far as I could tell. Like in the video linked above though? That has a chance to happen any year with high winds near the great lakes or any large body of water really.
Beautiful
All of the snow, after an initial blast of watery stuff, was light and fluffy. We never got the high winds so the snow was easily dispatched. However, my aged knees caught colds while shoveling, which were also easily dispatched using the heating pad my daughter gave me for Christmas.
As far as the gas prices. . .. They reached 2.89 a gallon, which is the lowest they've been this year. . .down from $4.80.
News articles reached a new low yesterday with one in the morning predicting 4.00 gas by summer and one in the afternoon predicting $2.50.
I had a beer last night, a twice-a-year affair, and read the dregs. I can predict with certainty that the oil companies will post record profits in 2023. I wish there was a word for making profits due to economic conditions driven by war. Oh yea, there is. . .profiteering, a felony.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
When I said gas, I meant the
When I said gas, I meant the natural gas used for heating. Due to Europe trying not to buy from Russia, all other sources have increased exponentially.
Petrol (USA's gas) is about £6.90 per UK gallon (£1.50 per liter) So around $8.35 . We are taxed to hell on this.
Leeanna
Contrary position to what experiences are being told here...
Well not contrary, as that implies a negative attitude, but the same but different.
Our experience here in Oz is for hot summers during December. Over the past decade it has been significantly cooler during December with the hotter weather moving out through February into March.
In the middle of December I was preparing, during the afternoon, to play at a gig for an outdoors Christmas Carols program. I got sunburnt as the temp did get quite hot. I wasn't prepared for such a hot summer shot. The day before and the day after were quite cloudy but dry.
Temps over Christmas into January used to hover around the 100F mark frequently rising over 110F. Moving irrigation pipes around meant wearing heavy leather gloves as the pipes would burn our hands if they didn't have water in them a few minutes beforehand.
We have had the odd day getting hot. Christmas Day was clear and subsequently hotter. Hot enough to swim in my daughter's pool to cool off. Other days have been quite cooler. Still shorts and t-shirts weather.
I expect that our summer won't really start until later in January. Our Fire Fighting services have been gearing up since early November for a busy season as there wasn't that many bushfires around Sydney last summer as in the previous years and the ground cover has built up. You may remember seeing on your news broadcasts about the bushfires in eastern Australia in early 2020, just like we heard about the recent wildfires in California last northern summer.
I have set the air conditioner to 22C and it remains the same during summer and winter regardless of what is happening outside. Reading about your max & min temps are quite disturbing. Both Rachel and I are not used to such cold temps as we come from a locale that gets to have frosts overnight but has risen to 15C by morning tea and warmer by lunchtime even in winter. Sometimes in summer the night-time temp doesn't even get below 30C.
Time to go and have my shower and get ready to go out for the day, only forecast to be 20.2C
Robyn B
Sydney
weather bomb?
I guess that is some new term I haven't heard before.
Here in Eastern Iowa last Thursday, Friday & Saturday were cold I think the high was -2 F that Friday before Christmas. Yes there was blowing snow and blizzard conditions with wind chills as far as 30-40 below zero. What most in the Midwest would call 'typical January and February weather'.
So yes it was unexpected to be that cold this early in the winter, but there was no record breaking extremes.
One common expression here in the Midwest is, 'If you don't like the weather, give it a few days', Which means it changes often and quite often drastically. As an example, yesterday the high was 48 and today the high was 64F, a pretty big change from -2F this time last week. The weatherman says the high tomorrow should be around 25F.
We the willing, led by the unsure. Have been doing so much with so little for so long,
We are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
Sorry, I heard it referred to
Sorry, I heard it referred to as that on the news. Perhaps it should have been bomb cyclone?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive_cyclogenesis
..
https://inews.co.uk › News
2 days ago — The forecaster explains the phrase “weather bomb” as “an unofficial term for a low-pressure system whose central pressure falls 24 millibars ...
Leeanna