Weather Thread

[Malsua]

Hi Ryan, sorry I didn't chime in but I was busy keeping warm. lol

We didn't get "ice" here, but 40 nm north of here did. They got a lot of it. Some of our friends on FB were freezing their asses off.

The folks that left with us on Wednesday kept going when we turned around and came back in because of bad waves. They are only 70 miles south of us and they got cold too. So, didn't matter where you were, or what you were doing.

We got rain all night Friday night and snow north. VA got a lot I heard.

It is above freezing now, but still cold in the ship. It's in the 50s, and 38 outside right now. Should warm some tomorrow and by Thursday ought to be pretty warm again (60s-70s).

We will, with luck, be getting out of here down the ICW in a few days. Plugging along at 20-40 miles per day from this point on I hope. The weather should be more cooperative (again, I hope).

Good luck...get further south...there's still 8 weeks of winter and the worst is yet to come.

[American Patriot]

According to locals this WAS the worst every year. About this week, they get nasty weather for a few days, and it warms back up to 60-70. I can only hope.

[Ryan Ruck]

I've got to say, this winter has so far gone down as one of the most disappointing I can remember. Worse than even a couple years ago (I think winter of '12-'13) where we had no snow at all.

Reason being is it has been so warm and wet. The warmth by itself isn't terrible as it's kept the heating costs down. It's the fact that it has been stupidly wet. It seems like there's been rain nearly every day for the last week, sometimes with quite a bit of wind, that has done a number on my auto shelters I'd add.

At least a couple winters ago when there was no snow, it was pretty consistently cold so it kept everything frozen. Instead with all of this rain, my yard is a mud bog and there is standing water everywhere. It's crazy to see sections of fields while I'm out driving that look like ponds because of the large amounts of standing water all over.

Right now we're only at, maybe, 2.5" of snow and we're well past the half way point of winter. There are parts of the Carolinas that have seen triple what I've gotten.

I was even pulling for that severe ice we were looking at. If it had panned out with power outages and the like, I'd at least get a chance to give my preps a real world test.

So far it's either been cold and dry or, wet and warm. We're definitely sitting in a warm and wet period right now. Temps into the 50s and 60s after tomorrow with lots more rain. Looks like I might get a break Thursday to repair some of the damage on my auto shelter.


I guess at this point I'm hoping this year ends up like the '14-'15 season where winter showed up late...

[Malsua]

This winter is pretty much done. No big storms. The flow is wrong and if you look at the MJO, it's just now in phase 8 and while it will be in 8 or 1 for the next 2 weeks, it takes time for those storms to get to us. This puts the weather Jan 25 to Feb 10 or so. That far out, you run into "sun angle" and other things that will prevent big blizzards and such.

We'll see, but as far as I'm concerned, this year is a dud.

Interestingly enough, the MJO peaks in phase 1 on Jan 20. Strongly. It suggests something important is happening that will bring major changes to us.

[Ryan Ruck]

Truthfully, I was ignorant about MJO. Reading about it, it's interesting to see how it relates to El Nino/La Nina...

Even though I'm still holding out some hope of 1 or 2 big later winter storms, I'm mostly of the same mindset as you, that this winter is a bust.

At this point, bring on spring! I'd rather see the weather start getting warmer and the days longer so I can start getting ready to paint my truck and take care of other work on it.

[Ryan Ruck]

It's been sputtering flakes all day. By tomorrow morning we may have .5" on grassy areas. When I was out earlier there was some coverage starting on some road edges.

This may well put me up over a whopping 3" for the winter.

[Ryan Ruck]

Punxsutawney Phil says 6 more weeks of winter.

If "winter" means 6 more weeks of what we've had so far, I'll pass. On the other hand, if it means some chance for more than the 3" of snow we've had so far, let's get the show on the road!

At least the sun is going to be out through Saturday. A change from the near constant clouds we've had.

[Ryan Ruck]

First time in a while I've been able to open up the house!

Sure it's only 64 out but it's mostly sunny so it helps.

Even got a chance to get out and hose the salt off the truck.

[Ryan Ruck]

Oh well... At least this 3 day weekend is going to be in the mid 60s. Sunday and Monday look to be especially nice!

[Ryan Ruck]

Oh, and a cool NOAA website that lets you look up storm events.

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/stormevents/

Was able to see that last Winter Storm Warning we got.

[Ryan Ruck]

Pretty windy day today! Very glad I added some extra ground anchors and straps to my soft side auto shelter after the last wind storm we had. Good day to open up the house and do some spring dusting!

We're sitting at 76 right now and it's expected we're going to have storms kick off soon, some possibly severe.

Tomorrow's high is only going to be 44!

[Ryan Ruck]

Local met just said the official recorded high today was 78, breaking 3 records.

Daily record was 72 in 1930, February record was 76 on February 10, 1932, and a winter record of 77 on January 24, 1943. Said records go back to 1870.


Storms are starting to fire off to the west. We're under an "Enhanced" severe threat through the night.

[vector7]

This Creepy Map Shows Just How Early Spring Is Coming to Your City This Year



USGS & USA National Phenology Network

2017 is weird.

FIONA MACDONALD
24 FEB 2017


Let's face it, the weather's been pretty batsh*t crazy in 2017 so far - Oklahoma hit temperatures of 100°F (38°C) in the depths of winter, and California is on the verge of a mega-flood.
But according to the US Geological Survey, it's only going to get stranger, with spring coming unseasonably early to the majority of the country this year.

Spring officially starts on the 20 March 2017 for the US, but over the past decade, weather and phenomena usually associated with the season, such as tree and flower blooming, has been happening earlier and earlier.

Now the USGS has released a new set of research-backed maps showing that, from a flowering point of view, spring will come at least two to three weeks early across almost the entire southeast, from San Antonio to Atlanta to Washington DC - and from there will continue to roll north.



The colour scale down the bottom is broken down into two week blocks. That means that all the coloured parts of the map are already in spring as of 22 February.
You can see that data interpreted by date instead in the animation below:



According to the maps, spring is already making an appearance in coastal California, southern Nevada, southeastern Colorado, central Kansas, Missouri, southern Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Washington DC, and the southern Great Plains. And it's spreading north-east.

"While we've known for over a decade now that climate change is variably advancing the onset of spring across the United States, a new set of maps ... now demonstrates just how ahead of schedule spring is in your precise neck of the woods," the USGS wrote in a press release.

So how do scientists measure when spring has arrived? These dates are based on something called the Spring Leaf Index, which looks at the amount of plant blooming activity in a region - as well as recent temperature conditions - to assess whether spring has arrived.

To figure this out, researchers looked at two common flowers - lilacs and honeysuckles - which are both temperature-sensitive flowering plants.
A team collected data from across the country on when enough heat had accumulated for these two species to begin to bloom - which is part of a field of study known as phenology.

This work is led by the USGS-funded US National Phenology Network (USA-NPN), and they also gathered recent heat and temperature data from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) - including daily data used for the National Weather Service, and historical daily data from a database maintained by Oregon State University.

When the team applied the plant blooming models to the recent weather data, they were able to create national-scale daily maps of leaf emergence for these species, showing where spring had sprung across the country.

The team then compared the daily maps from this year to the long-term average - maps created between 1981 and 2010 - to assess how much earlier spring was coming than normal.

It's the same technique used by another recent study that looked at trends over the past 112 years, and showed spring is arriving earlier than it ever has in half of all national parks in the US.

And when you consider the fact that 16 of the 17 hottest years on record have all occurred since 2000, it's not too surprising that plants are blooming earlier than they usually would.

It's not just the US either, with spring coming at least a week earlier in the UK these days, something that light pollution could also be playing a role in.

Although most of us are happy to see the back of winter, the USGS scientists stress that this early spring has far-reaching effects that we don't yet fully understand.
"While these earlier springs might not seem like a big deal - and who among us doesn't appreciate a balmy day or a break in dreary winter weather - it poses significant challenges for planning and managing important issues that affect our economy and our society," said USGS ecologist Jake Weltzin.

The effect on plants is obvious, but the early blooming of plants across the country also has an impact on the arrival of birds, bees, and butterflies that feed on and pollinate these species. Sometimes an early spring can actually benefit pests and invasive species, the researchers add.

And we're likely to be impacted too. Not only does an early spring bring a longer hay fever season, it also gives disease-carrying pests such as ticks and mosquitoes more time to bite us.

It's too early to say for sure how an early spring is affecting our ecosystems, but it's something researchers are going to need to get a handle on soon. Because if this latest data is anything to go by, spring is just going to keep coming earlier and earlier, whether we're ready for it or not.

The maps are available in full on the USA-NPN website.

https://www.sciencealert.com/this-ma...s&limitstart=1

[Ryan Ruck]

Cool map! Looks like Punxsutawney Phil was wrong this year.

I just hope it doesn't mean summer is going to be a scorcher. I could really do without that...

[Ryan Ruck]

Looks like the cold front has blown through.

Storms weren't anything special. Worst I got was some heavy rain and some wind comparable to what was blowing all day. A few areas saw some hail according to spotters.

[Ryan Ruck]

Forecast is saying tomorrow and Wednesday are going to make for some sporty weather.

Potential severe threat tomorrow night and Wednesday morning/day.

[Ryan Ruck]

Well, "sporty" the weather certainly was.

Didn't get any sleep last night. The weather radio was going off almost every 15 minutes with severe thunderstorm warnings, flash flood warnings, and even a couple tornado warnings.

One of the tornado warnings with a confirmed tornado on the ground was in Amelia, Ohio where my two younger brothers live. Both are okay thankfully. I haven't seen any storm damage but based on the storm velocity readings I was watching as it moved through, I'd guess an EF1, possibly an EF2.

Then around 7ish I was under a tornado warning that was going to cross the river from KY. Velocity readings didn't really show much rotation. It was likely a quick spinup because of the speed of the storm and the winds.

I think I saw roughly 65-70MPH winds here at my house based on what I saw as it was blowing through.

I did learn that the Costco auto shelter is NOT rated for 65-70 MPH winds no matter how many ground anchors you put on it.


I took this at the height of the wind:




Just after everything blew through:










The only other casualty. And these were new mirrors since my passenger was broken when I got the truck.




Really sucks just sitting there watching the stuff get destroyed, totally unable to do anything about it.

[American Patriot]

Global Warming! BRING IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Melt the ice, give me more water to sail in. lol

[American Patriot]

Sorry about your truck, by the way.

[Ryan Ruck]

Well, most everything is now cleaned up (after I fell asleep in my chair for 2 hours after that update )

Surprisingly the damage to the shelter wasn't nearly as bad as it looked and I'm pretty confident it can be rebuilt with some work.

The damage was pretty limited to the bent uprights like you can see in that one closeup pic of the inside. Of the 16 uprights, 4 were still good, and of the 12 damaged ones, I think I can cut the bent sections at the top off and bolt in new lengths of the smaller diameter pipe inside the larger pipe.

The cover was in surprisingly good shape, probably because I went and reinforced everything with zip ties at the panel seams when I assembled it. Only damage I could find was one of the side door zippers ripped off it's stitching. I should be able to restitch that with my speedy stitch I used on my truck windows or, worst case, I've still got 2 unused side panels that would have normally gone on the inner sides when I put the two shelters together. Just means one less side door.

Still have a few things to try and bring inside and find room for like my big 42" shop fan...