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Earth United States

Winter Storms Are Breaking Snow and Temperature Records (npr.org) 97

Winter storms sweeping parts of the Western U.S. and the Pacific Northwest have brought heavy snow and record low temperatures in some areas -- and there's more to come. From a report: A winter storm warning continues into Wednesday for parts of the border area of Northern California and Nevada. "We've had quite a series of storms that have impacted the area, especially impacted the Sierra, where we've had some very heavy snow amounts. That's impacted travel to an incredible degree," National Weather Service meteorologist Eric Kurth told The Associated Press. Snow showers blew in from the Gulf of Alaska and blanketed parts of Washington and Oregon, where state officials have declared an emergency. The Seattle area got up to 6 inches of snow. Weather shelters were opened in both Seattle and Portland. The NWS said Seattle's low of 20 degrees on Sunday broke the previous low for the day set in 1948. Bellingham, Wash., hit a low of 9 -- three degrees below the 1971 record for the day. Utilities in western Washington and Oregon reported about 5,000 customers without power Monday. Pacific Power reported early Tuesday that more than 2,000 customers in Oregon still had no electricity.
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Winter Storms Are Breaking Snow and Temperature Records

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  • find a place to store all the runoff this spring

  • by ThurstonMoore ( 605470 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2021 @03:33PM (#62122847)

    Meanwhile here in WV I had to turn the AC on yesterday.

    • Yeah, that damn warm front didn't quite make it to Toledo as it was supposed to. Southern Ohio was in the 70's.
    • Meanwhile here in WV I had to turn the AC on yesterday.

      And though Arizona was supposed to be in a dry La Niña phase this year, it's been raining like hell.

  • We only got a few cm, but since there are steep inclines and no big budget snow removal, I had to rely on my winter tires and 4wd (normally rwd). It's not so bad, but all the buses and cars with non winter tires weren't having fun. The cold and snow happens every few years, so it's not that out of the ordinary. (even for nor cal)
  • Climate Porn (Score:1, Insightful)

    by dewright_ca ( 89241 )

    They misspelled "typical winter storm in the Pacific Northwest ruined our narrative that rising temperatures and draught are turning the region into a desert".

    • by arQon ( 447508 )

      As someone who lives in the Pacific Northwest, and has done so for a long time now, I can confidently say that the 4' of snow we've had in the last week or so is very much NOT a "typical winter storm", nor were the two previous heavy storms in the weeks before it. In fact, this is the wettest December in 50+ years.
      But sure, don't let reality get in the way of your CAGW denial. It's all a Communist lie, etc etc.

  • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2021 @03:46PM (#62122885)

    Snow isn't exactly common here in the maritime Pacific Northwest, but neither is it unheard of. And most of the predicted record cold temperatures didn't materialize - a week out they were saying "3F overnight", but per usual as we got closer to the event the predicted temperatures moderated significantly. We've gotten down to the upper teens where I live - which is something we see every few years.

    The power stayed on, as did the internet - so I'm enjoying the weather.

    • Arlington Wa was 3F degrees the other day, and Mt Vernon and BHam were less than 10F each.
      • Yes, those are all directly in the path of the Fraser River outflow. Originally (a week out), when they were predicting 3F for more southerly areas (e.g. Tacoma, Olympia, Puyallup), the prediction for places like Bellingham was something around -8F. But as we got closer to the event, those extreme numbers moderated to temperatures more typical of a Fraser outflow event.

        Don't get me wrong... 3F with 50mph winds is not pleasant! I love Bellingham, but wouldn't want to live there in the winter.

    • by dryeo ( 100693 )

      It hit minus 16C the other night here, about 3F, looking at the temperature records and my memory, it was record breaking with the records for this time of year being set mostly in the '50's or that cold winter of 1968. And don't forget, we haven't even entered January which is usually the coldest month. I'm in the hills (about 800 ft) north of the Fraser and have really enjoyed most winters this century with only a couple of inches besides the one year where we got 6 feet.
      Lived here for over 30 years and k

  • Thanks Gaia - the California mountains are about 50' short of snow over the last 5 years so this amount is helpful.

    • It's 100% true that western north america is absolutely desperately in need of a wet winter to, if not break the apocalyptic drought, at least give us some hope of coping. It looks like we're likely to get it.

      Unfortunately, the regional climate getting bipolar disorder and swinging between "apocalyptic 500-year droughts" and "pouring rain that just runs off or causes mudslides and floods" is possibly even less helpful. A consistent, even if consistently worse, climate can be dealt with.
  • My area had historic heat wave very early in summer, followed by mass flooding, followed by insane cold very early in winter.

    All fine. Buy moar coal.

  • In Alberta (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dogsbreath ( 730413 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2021 @04:12PM (#62122979)

    I'm hoping for a month of -30 C to kill the mountain pine beetle [edmontonjournal.com].

    From 2019:

    Temperatures need to dip below about -30 C for four or five consecutive weeks to kill nearly all pine beetle larvae nestled inside tree trunks, said Nadir Erbilgin, a University of Alberta professor of forest entomology who studies the pine beetle.

    “I’m not sure we will ever get those good old days of freezing, long-lasting temperatures in Alberta”

    • Well, fortunately I am not in Alberta anymore. The only good thing about the minus 30 cold is the powder snow.
  • Just no. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by eclectro ( 227083 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2021 @04:25PM (#62123021)

    Climate change science is valid (people need to stop talking about it in the context of a belief system because it's not). Glaciers are melting everywhere as a result of this.

    However people look like crackpots (and hence climate science looks bad along with them) when you say this or that record is being broken or this or that storm is really bad. Because all that has been happening anyway for the past century even before carbon was above 3.5.

    Back in November there was a crackpot article about how we were going to have no storms this winter and there was going to be a massive drought because of that. Well for whatever reason we are getting two storms every week and the snowpack is looking good.

    Pollution everywhere is bad and we need to limit the amount of carbon we dump in the atmosphere. What we don't need are political partisans screaming that the weather is bad when we've had bad weather and records broken since they started keeping track of the weather in the nineteenth century.

    I'm much more worried about the health of the oceans due to pollution being dumped into them (like mercury and heavy metals that come from ships' bunker oil) and the overfishing that is going on than I am a bad storm or temperatures that manage to skate a couple of degrees above or below what has been recorded the last century and a half.

    The more you sound like 'Chicken Little' the more people will turn off from your environmental message alltogether.

  • Yup. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Vegan Cyclist ( 1650427 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2021 @04:41PM (#62123047) Homepage

    Victoria, BC here. Been as low as -13C, but hovering around -6C most of the last three days.

    After the 'heat dome' in the summer that had us just barely below 40C (a new record), this year has had the widest range of temperatures on record, at 50 degrees between peaks. And it'll also likely be the wettest year on record as well. (Nearly hit that in November.)

    Nothing to see here, just move along. Apparently preferably in a large truck.

  • I'm seeing many comments on how this severe winter weather is more evidence of global warming. I'll ignore the comments on how record breaking cold weather is potentially evidence against global warming. I will assume global warming is happening, that it is bad for us, and human activity is the cause, with the primary cause being CO2 emissions from transportation, electricity production, and other lesser contributions such as cement production and the refining of metal ores.

    If we assume all this then what

    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by istartedi ( 132515 )

      Nuclear power? Hell no.

      Organize a campaign on web sites that use 3000X more CPU power than necessary to deliver information (because programming is hard, so let's go shopping and end up with 100 JS libs that track everybody).

      Then once the campaign has progressed sufficiently, they'll fly a few million passenger miles and have a huge conference. There, they'll agree to something that won't really solve the problem. Enforcement will be via the honor system.

      Then they'll all go back to their respective count

    • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
      Having possible technologies which are low carbon is not 'problem solved' as it requires implementing a huge transition sufficiently quickly, which you consistently fail to address. It is positive in that the technologies exist, but it will take decades to achieve it, and so we need to employ the cheapest and fastest to deploy technologies and all the associated auxiliary functions and elements required.
  • The suckage is real.

    19 degrees (f) overnight, lots of yucky wind and crap. (That's -7.2 degrees Celsius for the rest of the world.)

    I hate it, but I'd hate it waaay more if I had to do something insane like drive to work. Fuuuuck that.

    As it is my only exposure is when I go out to get more wood for the wood stove.

  • Temperatures go up; temperatures go down. That's the way it always has been and that's the way it always will be.

Truly simple systems... require infinite testing. -- Norman Augustine

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